The Utah Hockey Club has had a turbulent start to its inaugural season in the NHL. It opened the season with three impressive wins against the Chicago Blackhawks, New York Islanders, and New York Rangers. After the early hot streak, Utah was ranked 10th in the NHL’s first ‘Super 16‘ power rankings.
Since then, Utah has struggled to find consistency and has battled several problems, including injuries, special teams woes, offensive struggles, and an inability to play disciplined hockey. These issues have led to inconsistent results throughout the first two months of the season, so much so that Utah has yet to win back-to-back games since they opened the season with three wins.
With American Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror and a quarter of their games on the schedule completed, it is an excellent time to check where analysts rank Utah amongst other NHL teams.
The Hockey Writers – Utah Power Ranking: 23rd
After the first week of the NHL season, Eugene Helfrick of The Hockey Writers ranked Utah 13th after the team ripped off three straight wins. Since then, Utah has steadily dropped down The Hockey Writers power rankings and now sits 23rd in the eighth week of the season.
What is most notable about these rankings is not where Utah is ranked but how much of a logjam the bottom of the NHL is right now. In the standings, Utah is only four points out of a Western Conference wild-card playoff spot but only six out of last place.
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With general manager (GM) Bill Armstrong setting the expectations before the season of playing “meaningful hockey” down the stretch, December will be a make-or-break month for this team as they play an extremely tough schedule. Throughout December, Utah will play 13 games, eight of which are against powerhouse Western Conference opponents. Six of these are division games; Utah will play two against each of the Colorado Avalanche, Minnesota Wild, who sit atop The Hockey Writers power rankings this week, and the Dallas Stars. Utah will also have their hands full trying to take a game off the Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers in late December.
With the expectation that Utah wants to play meaningful hockey coming down the stretch, they must steal some of these games in December to stay in the playoff hunt.
The Score – Utah Power Ranking: 23rd
This week’s theme of The Score’s power rankings was “players who must step up“, and according to The Score, Lawson Crouse is the player who needs to step up for Utah with the article reading, “It’s an abysmal campaign for Utah’s associate captain, who has just four goals and a single assist. Crouse needs to return to the consistent 20-goal scorer he was in recent seasons to provide Utah with more secondary scoring”.
While this is a fair assessment of Crouse’s game so far this season, it is more than just him who needs to step up for this team. Last season, Utah had six players score 20 goals: Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz, Michael Carcone, Nick Bjugstad, Logan Cooley and the aforementioned Crouse.
None of these six players are on pace to drastically improve their scoring output from years past. Only Cooley and Bjugstad are on pace to score 20 goals if they were to have played all 82 games.
The rest have regressed significantly; Keller scored 33 goals for the Arizona Coyotes last season but is only on pace for 24 goals this season. Crouse and Schmaltz scored 20 or more goals in three straight seasons. However, Crouse is only on pace for 13 goals, and Schmaltz is on pace to finish with single-digit goals, something he has not done since the 2018-19 season. Carcone is tougher to blame, considering he is playing on Utah’s fourth line and has only gotten into the lineup 14 times. But, with him failing to produce, his leash could get shorted with Josh Doan and Kailer Yamamoto succeeding in the American Hockey League (AHL) with the Tucson Roadrunners.
Daily Faceoff: Utah Power Ranking: 22nd
Daily Faceoff is one of the few outlets that respects Utah’s three-game win streak enough to move them up their rankings. The Hockey Writers and The Score maintained their ranking from last week at 23rd. However, Daily Faceoff has moved Utah to 22nd, up from 25th in their rankings from last week. This move could be that they had Utah ranked lower than the other two rankings we’ve looked at.
Regardless of why Utah moved up these rankings, they have shown some positive signs over the last week. They lost a one-goal game to a red-hot Toronto Maple Leafs team, then fought to beat the Montreal Canadiens to close out a four-game East Coast road trip before returning home, where they stole a point off the Edmonton Oilers in an overtime loss. Then, they manhandled the Vegas Golden Knights to close the week with a 6-0 win.
Utah has yet to win back-to-back games since its three-game win streak to open the season. This alone justifies its ranking among the bottom 10 teams in the NHL. However, Utah played much more competitive hockey over the last week. Suppose guys like Schmaltz and Crouse can find some offensive consistency. In that case, Utah is one three or four-game win streak away from getting back in a playoff position.
