There is absolutely no reason to move teams among divisions for the AZ to Utah move; it lines up perfectly fine as is and maintains the building rivalries amongst the teams.

Salt Lake City Beasts has a nice ring to it

OMG Dom's latest at The Athletic... how is it possible they still pay for that fan blog clown show?

What it is now?

Through the magic of his cherry picked "analytics" he says it's clear that this Matthews season is actually like the 7th best goal scoring season of all time. Some nonsense like that.

You can use stats to spin any argument.

And if you can't, just make a "model". Dude is always thumbing the scale to his preferences.

How do Russians playing in non traditional market stack up? 😋

Some names I thought of for Utah

Salt Lake City Lions
Salt Lake Coyotes
Utah Coyotes
Utah Warriors
Salt Lake City Rams
Salt Lake City Cougars
Salt Lake City Bison
Salt Lake Cyclones
Utah Tornadoes
Utah Cyclones
Utah Blizzard
Salt Lake City Cheetahs
Utah Dragons
Salt Lake Lizards

Are any of these not total trash? Lol

I'm sure they will use "Utah" as the placename for the team to incorporate a larger demographic into their fanbase.

I wonder if it will be the Utah Eagles. There is a connection to Smith's early hockey fandom and of course Eagles are local birds of prey in the area and they can keep some of the southwestern color schemes from Coyotes into the design (not that that is a primary concern).

If ARI relocates, can we get back the picks we gave them LOL

(I know that’s not how it works before anyone comes after me lol)

I would say it should be something royal to sync up with RSL, but Kings is already taken, Monarchs has already been used in SLC and Princes sounds dumb.

Salt Lake City Beasts

There yah go lul

As then u can use any animal logo

Saints?
Bishops?

Utah Phoenix (as in the immortal bird that cyclically regenerates or obtains new life by rising from the ashes of its predecessor)



see what I did there

Who’s going to tell TSN that SLC isn’t in the southern US?

You can twist any stats to make a player look good though... Especially one that could score 70 for the first time since the dead puck era...

Kind of surprised that Gretzky and Limieux season weren't higher and Ovi/Stammer's lower but that's what happens when their era is higher scoring compared to Ovi/Stamkos

I’m leaning to want Salt Lake City’s team name to have 3 syllables. Since it’s being acquired by an individual who does choose to openly celebrate their religion choice, and since golden knights are in style:

Salt Lake City Paladins
Salt Lake City Crusaders
Salt Lake City Avengers <— if not for Marvel this is my fav
Salt Lake City Sundays Best

I see all the talk of Arizona moving to Salt Lake City, which I think is a good one, but I had a similar idea that might work better.
Relocate the Coyotes to Quebec City or Hamilton
Create 2 new expansion teams in the West (1 would go to Salt Lake City)
Return to the 1v8 playoff format
Could have a schedule where you play 48 intra-conference (3 per team) and 34 inter-conference (2 per team) for 82 total
The reason it's relocation to Quebec City/Hamilton and expansion to 2 other cities is that Bettman could get the US cities to pay higher expansion fees than Quebec City/Hamilton
I understand this is not as easy of a solution as just moving the Coyotes to Salt Lake City, but would this work, and if not, why?

Honestly that's not far-fetched given era adjustments, a lot of the huge raw goal numbers were achieved in the late 80s and early 90s when overall scoring was way up.

A relatively simple calculation, taking the raw goal number * 82 * 2023-24 goals per game, divided by season goals per game and number of games per team (to account for the fact that season lengths have been changed over time), puts Matthews' current season at number 15 all time if he doesn't score another goal all season, and 10th if he keeps up his goal scoring pace.

Edit: See this calculation for all 47+ goal scorers here

Probably one of the 2 or 3 word ones. I remember that Vegas made a point of not wanting to have a 4 word team name, like Las Vegas Golden Knights would've been

Heh. Nah, that's what happens when Dom cherry picks to write a fanboy article. As usual.

Yes, a relatively simple, nonsense calculation. And most of those 80s and 90s goal totals were done with wooden sticks, but that never gets mentioned. Or how certain crazy talented scoring teams threw off the averages. Or how clutching and grabbing and hooking and all sorts of things were allowed back then. No two line passes. Etc etc etc.

When folks start elevating 100% subjective, cherry picked and inherently faulty stats to gospel, it's just nonsense.

That seems pretty fair, era adjusted stats are kind of their own niche thing where they don't really serve a purpose unless you want to dig deep and compare players from different hockey eras but they're very useful in seeing a glimpse of how stats would stand up through time

Would that count for pace as well (talking about the 41 in 56 season Matthews had to win the RR)?