SALT LAKE CITY — Nick Bjugstad walked out of a meeting with the Utah coaching staff following Friday’s morning skate still in full uniform when somebody yelled, “Five minutes ‘til the first bus!”

“I can do it,” Bjugstad, in his 13th season, yelled back while laughing as he began to strip out of his gear.

But when he realized a Utah TV reporter wanted to grab him for an interview in advance of the club’s game against the Wild and he had also committed to doing a quick radio hit with the local Minnesota sports station, Bjugstad — the epitome of ‘Minnesota nice’ — said, “I’ll take the second bus.”

That’s when the director of team services approached and told Bjugstad he could Uber back to the team’s hotel. Just give him the receipt and he’d make sure Bjugstad was reimbursed.

As more than one person in the locker room joked, “There’s something that wouldn’t fly last year.”

In every conversation with a former Arizona Coyotes player, you can sense how refreshing it is to be playing for an owner — Ryan and Ashley Smith and the Smith Entertainment Group — so committed to treating them right after an accelerated $1.2 billion purchase to move an entire franchise virtually overnight.

This goes beyond a $20 Uber ride Bjugstad can easily afford.

Heck, just the mere fact Utah was staying at the Four Seasons in Minneapolis — voted the “Hotel of the Year” last season by 32 NHL clubs — was notable.

“There’s no excuses anymore,” said Utah general manager Bill Armstrong, who has brought most of his staff to Utah after three seasons running the Coyotes’ hockey operations. “We’ll stay in the best hotel in the city, we’ll make sure we have the best food on the road, the best of everything.

“So we’ve taken the excuse factor out of it. That’s all gone for us. We’re provided with the best so there’s no excuses in our organization. We’re still young, we’re still growing, we’re still getting better, but there’s no excuses as far as the way that we’re treated and all the assets we have to use to be the best.”

From the moment the players touched down in Salt Lake City last spring and were greeted by thousands in an airport hangar and an overstuffed Delta Center to welcome the new NHL franchise, Utah Hockey Club players have felt right at home.

“We walked in and basically we’re looking around like, ‘What is going on?’” Bjugstad said, smiling. “I couldn’t believe it. So that was how it started and then from there, it was just top-notch. Like seriously, treated like kings. Completely first class.

“This is nothing against Arizona. They have die-hard fans. But it became frustrating as players. We wanted news of what was going to happen and there was a lot of limbo for a long period there. So that was probably the most frustrating part. Players and staff, everyone got through it together and then we come here and it’s just a whole other world for us. And it’s fun for the guys that haven’t seen organizations like this and guys that have been in Arizona for so long or have only played for Arizona to come here, get treated so well and realize this is how it is other places. The amenities are great, the interactions with the Smiths have been huge and the fans are so excited.

“This is proof we just had to move on.”

Delta Center pic.twitter.com/ra0LzA998g

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) December 11, 2024

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In a single offseason, the Smith Entertainment Group renovated the bowels of Delta Center to give not just the home team a first-class locker room experience that includes a shared coaches room, weight room and trainer’s room with the Utah Jazz, but also the visiting team. NHLers experiencing a road game at Delta Center for the first time have been blown away by the size of the visitors room and the fact they have access to a full gym, hot tub, cold tub and a medical room that’s bigger than many in their home rinks.

They figured out a way to build a temporary practice facility at the Olympic Oval in Kearns, Utah that was used for speed skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics. They built a practice rink on an island right in the middle of the Oval, buying time for the permanent facility to be built by the fall of 2025 in nearby Sandy. The club quickly scooped up 111 acres of a shopping mall and is essentially gutting a Macy’s that will be transformed into a state-of-the-art facility to house the hockey club’s offices.

The Smiths are also leading a downtown revitalization proposal to reimagine a sports and entertainment district just east of Delta Center.

And over the next two or three offseasons for the Jazz and Utah Hockey Club, Delta Center will be renovated to create a better hockey viewing experience ahead of the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

Currently, there are 11,131 unobstructed seats in the arena and another 5,000 where portions of the ice can’t be seen. Luckily, the building has an enormous, picture-perfect center-ice scoreboard that fans can look at if they can’t see part of the game. Yet despite only counting the 11,131 unobstructed seats as capacity, well more than that have been attending games.

“We’re going to renovate the arena as quickly as we can,” said Chris Armstrong, Utah’s president of hockey operations and not related to Bill. “You start making major changes in the lower bowl and pushing the building out and doing things, we’re going to discover things along the way. Anybody who’s been through a house renovation knows about that.

“But we’re going to try and do it as expeditiously as we can, but we also want to get it right for the fans and during that process make it as minimally disruptive as we can for fans. We will focus on making as many unobstructed seats as we possibly can. We’ve had great demand for the limited view, the single goal view seats this year. People are hungry to get in the building and experience NHL hockey and the environment here at Delta Center. That’s exciting because people are still getting hooked on hockey while they wait for the renovations.”

One idea being played with is a section of seats from the glass to the top of one of the end zones, creating a continuous wall of fans. If that can be achieved, the suites and hospitality areas currently in that end zone would be moved to the other end zone.

Last Wednesday, a few hours before the game, Ryan Smith announced on X that he was giving away tickets for that night’s game against Vancouver, including eight seats in his suite. There was so much demand, Smith quickly got together with SeatGeek and gave away an additional 2,000 single-goal view seats for free. They disappeared in less than an hour.

Pretty neat from an owner who never watches games from inside his snazzy corner suite. Instead, in a tracksuit, he sits along the glass with guests that have included NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, several Jazz players such as former hockey player Lauri Markkanen, former NBA star Dwyane Wade, golfer Tony Finau and music stars Post Malone and Benson Boone.

That game against the Canucks? Utah rallied from a 2-0 deficit in the third period on goals fittingly by captain Clayton Keller and budding young star Dylan Guenther before Bill Armstrong’s big offseason acquisition, Mikhail Sergachev, won it in overtime.

To see and hear Delta Center erupt was another stark reminder these players are no longer playing in a 4,000-seat college rink as they did the previous two years in Tempe, Ariz.

“Listen, when you’re us and you haven’t had that luxury over the last few years to play out in front of a crowd that big and sold out, it’s a beautiful thing,” Bill Armstrong said. “And it gives you that little extra boost. Down 2-nothing in the third, I think the crowd was what put us over the edge.”

Things haven’t just been special off the ice for the Utah Hockey Club.

They are rolling on the ice, too.

Andre Tourigny’s club has won seven games in a row on the road and is 6-0-2 in its past eight, 8-1-3 in its past 12 and pulled within a point of a playoff spot in the Western Conference Sunday with a shootout loss to Anaheim.

This is no longer the Coyotes, where Armstrong’s edict was simply to meet the cap floor, acquire dead-money contracts for essentially retired players to help him do that and gobble up as many draft picks and prospects as possible.

Yet because of the latter, the future in Utah is bright with a core that includes Keller, Guenther, Logan Cooley, Lawson Crouse, Nick Schmaltz and Michael Kesselring (who has soared in the wake of injuries to Sean Durzi and John Marino) and prospects on the horizon such as Maveric Lamoureux, Tij Iginla, Dmitriy Simashev and Daniil But.

“A lot of people start a rebuild, not many people finish it,” Armstrong said. “You don’t want to change the plan depending on what’s going on day-to-day. But this summer, we were able to get some players like Sergachev to help push the process along. You’re getting some pieces that allow you that opportunity to become better and take that next step.

“It’s interesting — you got all the cap space, but that cap space goes quick with a couple of bad decisions. We just try to stay to the timelines and stay to the rebuild to be true to the sense that we want everybody roughly the same ages to some degree, to kind of grow together. The Sergachevs of the world joining the Kellers, the Crouses, and now the Cooleys and Guenthers and that. We added Cup winners — Sergachev, (Kevin) Stenlund, (Ian) Cole, (Robert) Bortuzzo. When we’re going through the rough times and we’re beat up physically and we have some injuries, those guys keep that ship going pretty straight for us.”

Armstrong laughed when asked what he considers the timeline for Utah’s rebuild.

“I was in Montreal last year and I pointed to the banner when somebody asked me the same question,” Armstrong said. “I pointed to their last Cup banner and I go, ‘Thirty years ago you won a Stanley Cup.’ There’s a patience aspect that has to go into this where you have to look at the numbers and you’ve got to do the research. The research is that the quickest team ever to come out of the rebuild was the Penguins and they did it with Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang and they did it within a five-year period. Most rebuilds are somewhere between five to 16 years sometimes to get it done.

“We’re in Year 4 and we’ve been able to, because of COVID and the bad contracts, we were able to accelerate that in the sense of we were able to get a lot more quantity of really good prospects early on. They’re going to filter in the next three to four years. But the good news is the team on the ice right now is a good team and then we’re going to look to add one or two of our prospects to come in over the next few years and you’ll see the team kind of grow and get better.”

But as Armstrong quickly reiterated, the excuse factor of the Coyotes’ yesteryear and their old ownership is gone.

“When you talk about the bull—-, you’re dealing with the negative,” Armstrong said. “Constant stories of negativity. After a while, that gets to players. They want to go to the rink and concentrate on hockey and whether you play bad or well or good, you’re just dealing with hockey. So that makes it easier for the players instead of all the negativity that they couldn’t control that surrounded them.

“So on this end, it’s been really a positive thing and I think our players finally feel like they’re a top-notch NHL franchise. The Smiths have gone above and beyond. The NHL has taken something that was bad and made it good. (Bettman) deserves a lot of credit along with Ryan and Ashley and Chris Armstrong on how they’ve been able to transform it.”

Utah’s eventual nickname and logo are in the final stages and will be announced this offseason, Chris Armstrong said. On Nov. 15, Utah jerseys went on sale and sold out in 24 hours.

Fans lined up at the team store, and Utah set a Delta Center single-day sports event sales record. It beat the previous record — set at its inaugural game against the Chicago Blackhawks on Oct. 8 when other merchandise was available — by 48 percent.

In fact, only one game in NHL regular-season and playoff history had a higher single-game net merchandise sales total: the Golden Knights’ clinching win in Game 5 of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final at T-Mobile Arena on June 23, 2023.

Utah’s closing in on a playoff spot, but you also won’t catch Bill Armstrong jumping for joy and getting ahead of himself just yet.

“It’s been nice for the guys to be rewarded with this win streak,” Armstrong said. “But there’s no nights off in the NHL. I mean, the greatest thing that you can say about our league is the parity. Every night’s a battle. So just when you think you got it mastered, you don’t. Success in the NHL is rented, and rent’s due every day.”

(Photos of Clayton Keller, Delta Center and Ryan Smith: Jamie Sabau / Getty Images)

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Mike LaFleur laughed coming off the field. He shook hands and hugged Jets employees he used to know, and dapped up media members who used to question his decisions and wonder whether he was the right man to be the Jets’ offensive coordinator. Now in the same position for the Los Angeles Rams, LaFleur got the last laugh on Sunday, his Rams leaving with a 19-9 victory over a hapless Jets team that already feels checked out on the 2024 season.

Nearly two year ago, LaFleur’s fate as the Jets’ play-caller was in the balance. In exit interviews after the 2022 season, some key players made it clear to their bosses that the offense, in their minds, had become predictable — Garrett Wilson said as much during his season-ending press conference. But that was only a microcosm of the problems the Jets had on offense. Many of them were rooted in quarterbacking incompetence, particularly from Zach Wilson. When Wilson wasn’t behind center the offense under LaFleur often thrived, especially with Mike White and Joe Flacco.

But outside pressure won out. Jets owner Woody Johnson pushed coach Robert Saleh to fire LaFleur. Saleh pitched alternate solutions, including one in which LaFleur would stick around but in a reduced role, working alongside Todd Downing and Keith Carter. But too many of the Jets’ key offensive players were frustrated, plus fans (and some media) were calling for LaFleur’s head — Johnson wasn’t swayed.

To many in the Jets locker room, that was a lifetime ago. On Sunday, the Rams offense didn’t exactly run circles around a Jets defense that’s fallen far over the last half of this season — L.A. had 110 passing yards. But LaFleur’s presence on Sunday, and his smiles, are part of a larger conversation about how many wrong turns the Jets have made since LaFleur was fired and replaced by Nathaniel Hackett.

“Love him, man,” Jets wide receiver Garrett Wilson said of LaFleur. “My rookie year, looking back on it, it was a special time and I might’ve taken it for granted.”

The Jets were young whippersnappers in 2022, a team that wasn’t supposed to be any good but jumped out to a 6-3 record powered by a remarkable rookie class. They fell apart and finished 7-10, and that collapse led to a decision the Jets probably regret in retrospect. Saleh had a hard time convincing any offensive coordinators to take the job if it was only going to be for one year — the perception at the time, especially since Johnson forced LaFleur’s firing to begin with — and so he settled on Hackett with the idea that it could help the Jets land Rodgers. But the Jets were basically starting over on offense, with a coach (Hackett) whose track record was spotty when he wasn’t working with Rodgers. Then, when Rodgers tore his Achilles in Week 1 last year, the offense unraveled.

Now it’s the end of 2024. Hackett was demoted earlier this season and Downing — hired as the passing game coordinator after LaFleur was fired — has taken over play-calling. Really, it’s still Rodgers’ show, though the offense has improved both in terms of production and creativity since Downing took over. But many of the same problems persist.

Wilson was targeted only three times on Sunday before the Jets’ final offensive drive as Rodgers instead funneled targets to Davante Adams, seemingly determined to have his 500th touchdown pass land in the arms of his closest friend on the team. Wilson was targeted four more times toward the end of the game, but it was too late to matter at that point. Rodgers said he didn’t target Wilson because of the way the Rams were covering him. Wilson was less sure of the reason.

“I don’t know, to be honest with you man,” Wilson said. “I don’t know. I just gotta go out and put my best foot forward and hope that things fall my way. I would love to be involved, love to make an impact on the game, but if people see it differently that’s out of my control. Just trying to do what I can do.”

The Jets started their opening drive at their own 1-yard line. Rodgers authored an impressive 14-play, 99-yard scoring drive, capped by an 11-yard touchdown pass from Rodgers to Adams (followed by a missed extra point from Anders Carlson). After that, their decision-making at large left plenty to be desired.

On their next drive — which started after Tony Adams intercepted Matthew Stafford — interim coach Jeff Ulbrich made the confounding decision to go for it on fourth-and-1 from the Jets’ 33-yard-line. Running back Breece Hall was stuffed at the line of scrimmage, and the Rams scored a touchdown three plays later.

“For one, their offense was being very efficient at that point,” Ulbrich said. “Our offense was being very efficient as well. We were maintaining drives. We were moving the ball. We were converting third and fourths there for a while, so I wanted to stay aggressive and keep the ball in the hands of our offense.”

Next, the Jets ended a 15-play, 67-yard drive with a 21-yard Carlson field goal. Outside of those two scoring drives (of 99 and 67 yards) the Jets  gained only 155 total yards. On a cold afternoon — the coldest of the season so far at MetLife Stadium — they only ran the ball 20 times versus 44 dropbacks. The Jets have run the ball less than any team in the NFL this season despite the presence of Hall, who expressed some frustration with his lack of carries earlier in the week: “I don’t really have too much to say, you know, just with how the season’s going, how the games are going, you know, that’s just like just how it worked out,” Hall said on Friday. “So, you know, obviously I want the ball as many times as I can, but if I’m not getting the ball out, all I can do is just my job.”

In the third quarter, the Jets got to the Rams’ 13-yard-line and went for it on fourth down again — rather than taking the points with a field goal. Rodgers threw for Adams in the end zone, but the ball was batted out of the receiver’s hands for another turnover on downs.

Early in the fourth quarter, Rodgers held on to the ball too long, got strip-sacked and the Rams recovered in Jets territory. L.A. scored again a few plays later to go up 16-9.

“Probably should have dealt the ball,” Rodgers said. “Looked like we were pretty gloved to all the spots, but I think I should have gotten out of the pocket and just dumped it somewhere.”

The Jets went for it on fourth down again on the next drive — and failed again. On another fourth-quarter possession, Carlson missed a 49-yard field goal wide right. The game ended when Xavier Gipson muffed a punt and the Rams recovered. Though none of that even scratches the surface of all the Jets’ confounding mental errors on Sunday.

The Jets, one of the NFL’s most penalized teams, had eight more penalties on Sunday — including at least one from each of the six offensive linemen who played. (Rookie left tackle Olu Fashanu left in the fourth quarter with a foot injury that appeared to be serious, though Ulbrich didn’t have an update after the game.)

“It’s been all year,” said Rodgers, who finished 28 of 42 for 256 yards. “I think that’s what needs to clean up moving forward for some of these guys to reach their full potential is to just lock in on the details. And that’s not just this offense. Whatever comes next after this, there’s going to be important details in every offense. And that’s just the little tweaks that are the difference between explosive gains or conversions and turnover on downs.”

Maybe the Jets would still have many of the same problems even if they had stuck with LaFleur. They had some of these issues when he was around — same for Saleh, before he was fired. But it was never this bad, this undisciplined, this confounding. Good teams find ways to win. Week after week, the Jets find ways to lose. Sunday was only the second time since 1940 that an NFL team didn’t punt in a game yet failed to score at least 10 points, according to ESPN.

It’s clear that neither Hackett nor Rodgers was the remedy to what ailed the offense — and it’s fair to wonder how things would have looked if LaFleur was able to stick around and build the unit the way he envisioned, the way Saleh envisioned. Hall told the New York Post on Sunday that he, Garrett Wilson and LaFleur are still in regular contact, a sign that their relationship perhaps has grown stronger since LaFleur was forced out.

LaFleur appears to be happy in Los Angeles. The Jets, on the other hand, will start from scratch again in 2025 — coach, play-caller and, probably, quarterback.

So what did Wilson mean when he said he might have taken his time with LaFleur for granted?

“Just some of the relationships,” Wilson said. “I look around and there’s not too many familiar faces from that time. That’s kind of how it goes when you don’t win games.”

(Photo: Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)

2024 U.S. Open men’s doubles champion Max Purcell has admitted breaking anti-doping rules and has been provisionally suspended from tennis while under investigation.

Purcell has been suspended since December 12, having made the admission and requested to be provisionally suspended December 10. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the suspension December 23, saying that the Australian, 26, breached rules relating to the use of a “prohibited method,” rather than any positive test for a banned substance.

Purcell said in a statement on Instagram: “I have voluntarily accepted a provisional suspension since I unknowingly received an IV infusion of vitamins above the allowable limit of 100ml. Until last week when I received medical records from a clinic showing that the amount of an IV I received was above 100ml, I was fully convinced I had done everything to ensure that I had followed the WADA regulations and methods.

“But the records show that the IV was over the 100ml limit, even though I told the clinic that I was a professional athlete and needed the IV to be under 100ml.”

According to the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA), “infusions or injections of 100 ml or less within a 12-hour period are permitted unless the infused/injected substance is on the Prohibited List.”

A “prohibited method” comes under three possible definitions in the WADA code: blood manipulation, widely referred to as blood doping; chemical and physical manipulation, which extends to all forms of tampering or doctoring either blood or urine samples and also covers intravenous infusions; and gene and cell doping. Purcell’s violation falls under chemical and physical manipulation.

The ITIA has not yet commented on the specifics of Purcell’s violation.

As the suspension is provisional, it is unclear how much tennis Purcell will miss but that time will be credited against any ultimate sanction when the investigation into his case concludes. He was absent from the Australian Open’s list of singles wildcards despite being ranked world No. 105, just outside the cut-off for entries to the main draw.

Doubles entry lists have not yet been released, but Purcell, who won the U.S. Open title in September with compatriot Jordan Thompson and is ranked world No. 12 in doubles was in line to enter his home major. Purcell also won the Wimbledon men’s title with Matt Ebden, another Australian, in 2022.

Purcell is the third major champion in 2024 to be charged with an anti-doping violation. Defending Australian Open champion and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who twice tested positive for the banned substance clostebol in March, was found not to be at fault by three independent tribunals convened by the ITIA. Sinner, who also won the U.S. Open title, is awaiting the result of a WADA appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which could see him banned for up to two years.

French Open champion Iga Swiatek, who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) in August, served a one-month ban. 22 days of that ban were covered by her provisional suspension, which saw her miss three tournaments. Swiatek was deemed not to be at significant fault.

(Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)