Utah is embracing its new NHL team. But is the frenzy sustainable?

Hockey has a rocky history in Salt Lake City but fans are flocking to see its new franchise. The team hopes it can build long-term stability

“The fact has become very clear to us this year that, economically, hockey just does not work in this market,” Larry H Miller told a press conference in March 1994, announcing that he’d sold the minor league Salt Lake Golden Eagles to a group in Detroit headed by the then-owner of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. The Golden Eagles needed 7,000 people a game in the Delta Center, Miller told reporters that day, and “if you look at the paid attendance, we’re not quite halfway there.” The fact was, Miller said, “the natural, homegrown fanbase just isn’t here.”

A couple of days later, some members of that small fanbase grumbled to the Salt Lake Tribune that, despite the financial picture, things could have turned around. “Now is the time for hockey,” Pat Kremers, president of the Screamin’ Eagles Booster Club, told the paper, noting that the “explosion in roller hockey and street hockey is just beginning.” Others were more concerned about what would – or more specifically, wouldn’t – come next. “Now that there isn’t any hockey in Salt Lake, how will there be any interest generated?” Darren Wack, the owner of Hockey Haven, a sports store, asked the paper’s reporter.