2 weeks Ago By Dana Greene
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 Sports) - The Utah Hockey Club was hoping its first season in Salt Lake City would end with a playoff berth, but they still are extremely thankful for the fan support they received in their inaugural season."An awesome experience," said center Alexander Kerfoot at Thursday's exit interviews. "An opportunity to be a part of the first season in Utah and the way that the city and organization rallied around this team was was awesome and great experience.
Lots of fun to be part of.""I never had the support like that from the fans," added goalie Karel Vejmelka. "So, it's kind of unique for me, and I really enjoyed every moment on the ice.
""I didn't really know what to expect coming here," said center Nick Bjugstad. "But it exceeded what we were expecting coming in. It's been it's been a pleasure seeing the growth of interest, especially not having an NHL team the other day.
"Utah HC loses to St. Louis in season finale, 6-1But missing out on the playoffs did leave a bad taste in the players' mouths."The way the season ended for the team was certainly disappointing," said defenseman Ian Cole.
"I think to say anything else would be a bit of a lie. But I think not making the playoffs was something that was disappointing and it should be.""We all kind of got a little taste of it this year of just how hard it is to win and how hard it is to be up there with the top teams every single night," added Utah captain and leading scorer Clayton Keller.
"As a group, our plan was to get to play meaningful games," added center Logan Cooley. "Obviously we'd like to be gearing up for the playoffs right now. But, I think it set us up for next year.
"Utah did finish with 12 more points than Arizona did last season. But all the close losses and the blown leads are tough lessons to learn, and will hopefully serve them well in the future."You need to learn through these experiences," said center Lawson Crouse.
"We have a group of guys that want to learn and want to be better."Keller’s four points leads Utah past Nashville, 7-3"The games in October and November, they all matter," said forward Dylan Guenther. "So I think that it was good to kind of go through that and understand it and have that feeling when we come into it next year.
"Utah is the second youngest team in the NHL, and with a young core of Guenther, Keller and Cooley leading the way, every season is a learning experience."We were a young team this year," said Keller, who set a new career high with 90 points. "Those are kind of stretches that you have to kind of go through to almost get over the hump.
""Sometimes teams need to lose to figure out like how they want to play or how they want to sacrifice to win, and win consistently," said Cole. "So I'm hoping that this is going to be a situation where we're like, alright, enough is enough. We're not going to let this happen again.
"Overall, their first year in Utah was a memorable one, one that the players will never forget."It was really fun being a part of this first season," said defenseman Michael Kesselring. "Going to the Jazz games, and getting to experience Utah and all the new restaurants, living in a new place again.
This is a great place to live."Utah HC thankful for tremendous fan supportAnd hopefully it will be a place for championship hockey, because that's the goal moving forward."When we're on, we're one of the top teams in the league," said Cooley.
"And when we're not, it's pretty ugly. So I think finding consistency and finding ways to make sure we have it every night, finding ways to play the right way. We can't let games slip.
""With our roster that we have, there's no reason why we're going to go down," said Crouse. "We're going up and we all believe that. You feel it.
Obviously, at the end of the day, we came up short. We all you know, our goal was make playoffs. But next year we'll be back.
We'll be even better.".
