10 Pre-NHL Highlights in Utah Hockey History
A look back —
A half-century ago this spring, Utah hockey enthusiasts were one year away from relishing their local pro chapter’s first championship. Three decades ago at this time, they wistfully watched that franchise get away in search of ostensibly thicker ice.
On the latter occasion, Dave Soutter wrote in Deseret News about a time when the Salt Lake Golden Eagles were “the most successful pro sports franchise in Utah.” Briefly owned by colorful Oakland Athletics boss Charlie Finley in 1972–73, they made green and gold garb and later the radiant red and gold of the parent Calgary Flames synonymous with prosperity.
“Through the ’70s and early ’80s,” Soutter noted in the same story, “the Eagles set minor league records for attendance, outdrawing some NHL clubs.”
That habit carried over with the Eagles’ eventual replacement, as did the theme of instant postseason gratification for Utah-based teams entering a new league. To date, in all but one of the last fifty-five seasons, two different brands have represented the Salt Lake City area in five leagues at two levels and won six titles, including one apiece after either moving into a new league or into town from another market.
Local rooters of the NHL’s yet-to-be-nicknamed Utah Hockey Club can take stock in omens on those grounds, if they please. As the new team prepares to start earnestly mingling with its major-league peers at this weekend’s NHL Draft, here is a timeline of milestones in the state’s pro hockey history plus a few born-and-raised players making a splash in The Show and a time when the locale hosted the sport’s definitive international tournaments.
May 3, 1975
To cap their first year since transferring from the defunct professional version of the Western League, the Golden Eagles won Game 7 of the Central League’s Adams Cup Finals over the Dallas Black Hawks in double overtime, 5–4, at home. Per Soutter, forward Gary Holt outmaneuvered his opposing brother Randy Holt to convert fan favorite Lyle Bradley’s pass for the clinching goal.
May 8, 1980
The first-place Golden Eagles won another seven-game Adams Cup Finals, scoring another home-ice victory lap with a 2–1 triumph over the Fort Worth Texans. As Deseret News noted in 1989, they dedicated that title to their late co-owners O. Thayne and Lorraine Acord, who had been murdered in a home invasion earlier that season.
May 18, 1981
The Golden Eagles repeated as Adams Cup champions by ousting the upset-minded Wichita Wind in Game 7 at home, 5–2. Second-year pro and future 16-season NHL veteran Joe Mullen led the club with 117 regular-season points and tied for tops in playoff scoring with 11 goals.
May 20, 1987
Now third-year members of the International League after the CHL folded in 1984, the Golden Eagles corralled their first Turner Cup in Game 6 over the Muskegon Lumberjacks in Michigan, 7–3. In the second half of the regular season, a hot streak starting in early January saw them pole-vault from last to second place in their division, ensuring their playoff eligibility and certifying their contenders’ persona.
May 22, 1988
The Golden Eagles repeated as Turner Cup champions with another Game 6 clincher in the state of Michigan, this time a 9–5 win over the Flint Spirits.
Ironically, the Eagles would eventually move to the Great Lakes State themselves, resurfacing as the Detroit Vipers in 1994. But Utah would get a new IHL franchise, and an instantly successful one at that, within another year.
April 12, 1992
Late in a season that began with the Golden Eagles’ housing upgrade from the Salt Palace to the still-in-use Delta Center, Utah sent its first native son to the NHL. Salt Lake City native Steve Konowalchuk made his debut with the Washington Capitals, recording a shot on goal in a 4–3 overtime road victory over the New Jersey Devils.
Konowalchuk ultimately logged a 15-year professional career, dressing for 790 NHL games and serving as the Capitals captain for three years before retiring with the Colorado Avalanche in 2006. He has since held three assistant/associate coaching positions in the pros and two head coaching jobs in the elite amateur ranks, with his top highlight thus far coming in a 2017 major junior Western League championship run with the Seattle Thunderbirds.
June 8, 1996
The Utah Grizzlies, who had moved from Denver over the summer to make room for the NHL’s new Avalanche, defend the Turner Cup by sweeping the Orlando Solar Bears. Playing Game 4 before a league-record audience of 17,381 at the Delta Center, the Grizzlies secured the title, 3–2, via winger Marc Rogers’ connection from the front porch at 8:32 of the first overtime in Game 4. Future nine-year NHL goaltender Tommy Salo was named the playoff MVP.
When yet another league called it quits in 2001, the Grizzlies brand since shifted to the last remaining Triple-A circuit, the American Hockey League. Four years later, it took on its more recent form as a Double-A franchise in the ECHL, where it has operated in suburban West Valley City since 2005.
February 11–24, 2002
West Valley City’s E Center and Provo’s Peaks Ice Arena shared the men’s and women’s ice hockey hosting duties at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
Leading up to their gold-medal date with Canada, the host U.S. women posted three shutouts at the E Center plus a 12–1 Valentine’s Day romp over China in Provo. Their male counterparts went 2–0–1 in their round robin, outscoring their opponents, 16–3, along the way. They too would face Canada for gold after edging Russia, 3–2, in the semifinals under coach Herb Brooks, who had overseen the Miracle on Ice in the same matchup precisely 22 years prior.
Both American teams settled for silver upon losing the final clash with their northern neighbors.
March 15, 2002
Three weeks after the doubly bittersweet Olympics, the E Center witnessed an American triumph at the Winter Paralympics sledge hockey final. After sweeping through a five-game round robin, Team USA met a formidable Norwegian squad that took an initial 1–0 lead, then deleted a 3–1 deficit to force a shootout in the gold-medal match.
The U.S. fell behind in that five-inning deciding round, 1–0 and 2–1, before goaltender Manuel Guerra Jr. stopped everything else. Meanwhile Chris Manns and Kip St. Germaine pumped in the equalizer and eventual game winner, respectively.
June 11, 2012
Center Trevor Lewis — who debuted in the NHL as a Los Angeles King in 2008–09 and has since surpassed Konowalchuk for the league’s longest career of any Utahn — became the first Beehive Stater to hoist the Stanley Cup.
Born midway through the Golden Eagles’ first Turner Cup championship season, Lewis lived in Utah through the age of 15 and briefly starred in scholastic hockey there before shifting east to a denser competitive hotbed in Colorado. His transfer virtually coincided with a 2001 Stanley Cup Final that saw the Avalanche — the team that hip-checked the Turner Cup champion Denver Grizzlies in the other direction to Utah in the 1995 offseason — deny New Jersey a repeat title.
Uncannily, the Devils were again the unfortunate foes when Lewis practically piloted the Kings toward their first Cup clincher in 2012. In Game 6 at L.A.’s Staples Center, he scored on a power play to spot his club a 3–0 lead and later on an empty net for a 5–1 advantage that eventually turned into a 6–1 rout.
As of the 2024 offseason, Lewis has played seventeen years for three organizations in the pros and aggregated 974 games in the big league. He won a second Cup with the Kings in 2014, and in between spent six games of the 2012–13 NHL lockout with his hometown Grizzlies in the ECHL.
