A Big Crowd Went To The Delta Center To Drink Beer &
Watch The Fights -
A Perfectly Good Hockey Game Broke Out Instead

Something Unexpected Happened On The Way To The Fights

Recently, I joined a large group of people at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center many of whom came to drink beer and watch the fights. The fights were expected to be between the Utah Hockey Club and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Something totally unexpected but much more exciting happened. An NHL hockey game broke out instead. Some fans were disappointed that there ended up being only one fight in the game. Almost all of them, though, ended up much more entertained by the hockey game than by the fights.

If you’ve been out of touch or just plain don’t care, the NHL has come to Utah. While waiting for their official name to be approved (probably the Mammoth), they are known as the Utah Hockey Club. For a life-time NHL fan like me, it is a remarkable step for Salt Lake City.

I am a long-time fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was a Leafs fan when there were only six teams in the league. As a side note, there are no better jerseys than those of the Original Six teams in the NHL. Some are close but all six of those are “classic.” 

TV Does Not Do NHL Hockey Justice

Growing up in Canada, I first attempted to lace up a pair skates when I was six. Man, was that an adventure. I loved playing hockey, though, and did so for the next seven years.

I still regret … a little bit anyway … switching to football. I was so big at a young age that everyone told me I had to switch to football. I ended up loving that too. 

I had experienced the NHL invading my city once before. When I was living in Calgary, Alberta with my dad for a year or so after college ... recovering from back surgery which was my reward for playing football for the University of Utah Utes ... the Atlanta Flames moved to Calgary. It immediately changed the city’s entire vibe. As you might expect, I became and remain a long-time fan of the Flames.

If you’ve never been to an NHL game, it is hard to describe the excitement and speed of the game. TV simply can’t do it justice. It is so much better seeing a game live than on TV. In my opinion, it is the best of all the sports to see live.

If you’re a sports fan and especially a hockey fan, I highly recommend attending one or more NHL games at the Delta Center. It won’t be cheap though. We dropped over $400 for two tickets to see the Maple Leafs play Utah. It was definitely worth every penny but it was a lot of pennies.

Believe It Or Not, Utah Does Have A Hockey History

Utah’s sports landscape changed dramatically in 2024 when the NHL announced the relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City. As I said above, they are now known as the Utah Hockey Club (a temporary name as the franchise develops its brand). The team plays at the Delta Center and brings major-league hockey ... the best in the world … to the state.

Utah has long had a surprisingly vibrant hockey culture with the Utah Grizzlies leading the charge in minor-league play in recent years. I am also old enough to remember the Salt Lake Golden Eagles playing at the Salt Palace in the AHL.

Those were fun games. They drew well and, being a college student during some of their best years, we enjoyed the $5 discount tickets we could buy at the U of U Student Union Building.

Even so, the first thing I noticed about hockey fans in this town was that so many of them were seemingly there for two reasons – to drink beer and watch the fights. Many of them, though, kept coming back because they actually fell in love with the game itself.

I have a personal pet peeve about fighting in the NHL. It doesn’t make sense in this day and age. A lot of fans, analysts, executives and players love it. There are many reasons why it has always been in the game and why it still is. I won’t address those here.

Is Fighting In Hockey Really Necessary?

It just seems to me that with the worries about CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) due to head injuries in athletes, why is it still allowed? They’ve tried to take any head shots out of the game which occur during the flow of the game to the point that barely touching someone can get you a penalty.

When it comes to fighting, though, all bets are off. I’ve seen players literally out cold on their feet due to blows they’ve taken to the head from fighting. Everyone just seems to cheer and move on including those people announcing the game.

The possibility of blood, broken noses, concussions, broken hands and brain injuries are irrelevant. They are even cheered. Many injuries putting players on the Injured Reserve List, though, result from fighting.

There aren’t enough long-term studies available yet to prove this correlation but it seems like common sense to me. It also seems apparent anecdotally there is a distinct correlation between fighting in the NHL and CTE deaths. Numerous NHL enforcers (Bob Probert for example) who made their living by fighting were diagnosed with CTE after dying at a relatively young age.

How about this? A study by Columbia University found that enforcers, defined as those who had 50 or more career fights, died a decade earlier on average compared to their less combative peers.

The study also found that enforcers were more likely to die of suicide and drug overdose. These are common occurrences in people with CTE. This is an argument for another day though.

Utah Has A Talented & Exciting Young Team

We recently attended a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Hockey Club. As I said above, I’ve been a fan of the Leafs since there were only six teams in the league. I am now also a Utah fan.

The atmosphere was fantastic. The fan involvement was “crazy” and the hockey action was what I expected … second to no other sport.

As a long-time hockey fan, even I am surprised at how passionate the Utah fan base has already become. These games have become packed-house, must-see affairs in only their first year in Utah. Even opposing players and coaches are impressed by the electric atmosphere.

It is easy to see that as the team’s young core gets better and they add some key pieces to become a playoff team, this team will only continue to fill the Delta Center. The fans are already passionate and on-board. The team has some free agent money to play with apparently and this management team has done a great job of drafting young talent recently.

One thing Toronto Maple Leaf fans do is travel well. We attended their game at Las Vegas last year and probably 20% of the crowd was made up of Leafs’ fans. They also traveled to Salt Lake City as expected. There weren’t quite as many as there was in Vegas but there were still thousands of Leafs’ jerseys at the game.

If you go to a Leafs’ road game in western Canada … Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver … it seems that half the crowd is cheering for the road team. That’s because droves of people have fled eastern Canada and moved to the west. It doesn’t matter where people move, like me they always seem to retain their sports allegiances.

The Utah Hockey Club lists their sellout attendance as 11,131. That’s because the Delta Center was designed for basketball not hockey. There are thousands of obstructed view seats that they can’t officially count but have butts in them every game.

There are 4,889 of these. So an actual sell-out is 16,020 and they get this just about every game. The plans are to redesign and renovate the arena to make it hockey-friendly and increase the actual official attendance at around 17,000.

They Said There Would Be Beer

One stat that came out after the first home game this year … a complete sell-out … is that the Delta Center sold a record-breaking $120,000 in beer alone. This was the most sold by any NBA or NHL event at this arena. Everyone seemed proud of it. “It’s amazing” said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

What was amazing to me was that this was even reported. Only in Utah would this be news. It has always seemed to me that non-Mormon Utahns like to make it known that they aren’t Mormon. This is one way I guess. “Look at us. We’re crazy.”

Of course, at the game we attended, what was celebrated on the big-screen? Beer chugging. Watching some fool chug a beer as fast as he could on the big screen overhead. Just like a trained seal. Of course, at $12-$15 a pop, what is the price for that notoriety? Dropping another $15 for a refill.

Being Canadian, I did find the guy in the Leafs’ jersey wearing the hat with the caption “Canadian Beer Drinking Hat” amusing. Typical slob. By the 3rd period, he had at least eight empty cups stacked one on top of the other drinking beer out of the top one. He seemed to be enjoying himself and looked harmless.

Lots of Great Action And Then Bonus Hockey

In the game we attended, the Leafs went up 3-0 in the 1st period and it looked like it was over early. Utah stormed back and tied the game with three goals in the second period. After a scoreless third period, the score remained 3-3 after 60 minutes of play.

The result was a 5-minute 3-on-3 overtime period. The speed of 3-on-3 is frenzied and electric. The NHL definitely did it right when they adopted this format in 2015.

In case you’re not well-versed on the NHL rules, a regulation win gives two points to the winning team. A regulation loss gives you nothing. A tie after regulation gives each team one point.

Then they play a 5-minute 3-on-3 overtime. If no one scores, they go to a 1-on-1 shootout. The winner of either one of those gets another point or two points total. Every point seems huge as the season winds down.

The young men behind us who had been drinking beer all night became more and more vociferous as the game went on. With each beer, they became more vocal about wanting to see someone “kick someone’s ass.” By the end, though, it did seem that they got into just the hockey action as it was non-stop.

No one scored in the overtime so they went to a shootout. One skater against the goalie. Three chances for each team. If there is no winner, then they shoot one each until someone wins. Eventually, Mitch Marner of the Leafs won the game with a deciding shootout goal.

It is easy to see that NHL hockey is here to stay. It was an awesome environment and lived up to everything I remembered about NHL games. I can’t wait for Utah to make the playoffs as there just is no other part of sports that compares to the excitement of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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