Utah Hockey Club management drew some criticism for signing Dylan Guenther to a long-term extension before playing a full NHL season. But those critics might eat their words as early as this season.

It’s probably still too early to form opinions, but Guenther scored twice again in Utah HC’s 5-4 overtime win over the New York Islanders on Thursday evening. It was his second two-goal game in as many games.

In Utah’s first-ever road game, Maxim Tsyplakov scored with 2:07 left in regulation to put the Islanders ahead by a goal. However, Josh Doan tied the game 13 seconds later on a partial breakaway, sending the game to overtime.

Guenther, 21, who is under contract for nine years, scored the overtime winner.

“All three of us were in (the offensive zone) so if we didn’t score, it probably would have been a breakaway the other way,” Guenther said of the goal after the game.

Utah leaves UBS Arena with two points, starting the season 2-0.

Utah Hockey for dummies

If this was your first hockey game, you probably think hockey is the greatest sport in the world. It was a nail-biter all the way until the end, and no matter which team you root for, you were entertained the whole time.

Not every game has this much drama, but the speed, physicality and excitement are always the same at the NHL level. Stick around. It only gets better.

Utah HC is now 2-0-0 in the regular season, but their upcoming games against the New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils will be good tests. Head coach André Tourigny called the Rangers “elite.”

Utah Hockey for casual fans

Goalie Connor Ingram told me five days ago that he loves to be a boring goalie. With the amount of times I said “How did that stay out?” during this game, I have to disagree.

Being “boring” is a good thing for goalies because if you’re always in position, you rarely have to make desperate or flashy saves. It’s what made Carey Price as good as he was. But who doesn’t love a good flash of the leather?

In the first period, after a weird bounce behind the net, Ingram found himself way out of position with the puck on an Islander stick. He dove and blocked it in mid-air, bringing the crowd to its feet and immediately back to its seats.

“It is the most lonely feeling in the world being behind the net, looking through the net and seeing the wide open net,” he said. “There’s nothing you can say about it. It’s just pure desperation.”

A period later, he denied an Islander on the doorstep with a sliding pad save.

“Sometimes you’ve just gotta be an athlete,” he said.

Utah Hockey for nerds

The hockey die-hards appreciate a solid defensive play just as much as a fancy goal. “Solid” would describe Utah HC’s defensive game on Thursday — especially on the penalty kill.

Utah HC took six penalties and killed five of them.

“I think our PK was probably the best part of our game,” Tourigny said after the game. “A lot of the guys who played PK, they came out big. They made big plays.”

On Thursday, Utah did all the little things right: blocking shots and passing lanes, playing hard in the corners and backchecking and forechecking as if its season depended on it.

Tourigny specifically shouted out Mikhail Sergachev, Ian Cole and Michael Kesselring for doing the little things right, but he emphasized that there are many more players that did virtually everything right.

What’s next?

Utah HC plays its third and final home opener of the year on Saturday as they take on the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. The Rangers are expected to be Stanley Cup contenders this year.

Interesting fact: It will be color commentator Dominic Moore’s first time ever calling a game at MSG, where he played five seasons for the Rangers.

What’s Tourigny’s key focus for the upcoming game?

“Rest for now,” he said.

On Monday, Utah HC visits the New Jersey Devils, followed by the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday to round out the road trip.

Saturday’s game is at 5 p.m. MDT, Monday’s is at 11 a.m. and Wednesday’s is at 8 p.m. All three games will be available on Utah HC+ and Utah 16.

Utah’s professional sport clout used to be confined to the hardcourt and the soccer pitch, but joining the Jazz and Real Salt Lake this week is a freshly minted NHL team that won their debut game in style 5-2 against the Blackhawks, plus a PGA Tour stop that tees off today.

The inaugural Black Desert Championship, the third chapter of the eight FedExCup Fall, is the first time the PGA Tour has rolled into Utah since 1963 when Tommy Jacobs beat out Don January by a stroke to take the state open, which at the time was part of the circuit.

Golf fans will get to take a gander at the par 71, 7,371-yard Black Desert Resort Course, the centerpiece of a brand new $2 billion project in Southern Utah spanning 630 acres. Tom Weiskopf’s final design, with emerald green fairways set against black lava rock fields and red-hued cliffs, promises plenty of drama for tour players outside the top 50 as they jockey for status on golf’s top circuit.

Fall events carry the same weight as in-season contests. Winners earn 500 FedExCup points, a two-year exemption, and in addition, secure spots in the majors that invite PGA Tour winners, as well as entry into the Sentry Tournament of Champions and The Players Championship.

There are quite a few native Utahns in the field including Zac Blair, Patrick Fishburn and Jay Don Blake. When you include those with strong ties to the Beehive State, the contingent swells to nine. Other notables include Presidents Cup Internationals captain Mike Weir who lives in Park City and attended Brigham Young University where he won WAC Player of the Year in his senior season. Then there’s 18-year-old phenom Kihei Akina, who received scholarship offers from a flood of top tier golf schools, including Oklahoma State, North Carolina and Arizona State before deciding to commit to BYU’s program.

“The scenery out here is pretty insane. I think it’ll look amazing on TV and everything like that. Pretty interested to kind of see what the scores are like and what it plays like in tournament conditions,” Blair said.

Ogden, Utah’s Patrick Fishburn, 85^th in the standings, is hoping to improve his position in priority rankings to increase playing ops in the 2025 FedExCup Season. The 32-year-old rookie has had four top 10 finishes this year including a third place showing at the Procore Championship last month.

“It’s been a lot better than where I started. Started off really rough. I was not playing good. Of course, there is no net to flight out here on the PGA Tour,” Fishburn said, adding that his play improved with equipment changes to his driver and putter paying off in tandem with him becoming more comfortable tackling courses with more challenging set ups and firmer and faster greens.

“Lately I’ve been playing pretty consistent and I like playing in the state of Utah. Got a lot of experience playing at altitude. The dry desert air, a lot of factors I just feel comfortable with, bent greens and things like that,” he added.

Jay Don Blake, born, raised and still residing in St. George, marks his 500th PGA Tour start today at the tournament. The 65-year-old veteran’s career high point came in 1991 when Blake earned six top-10 finishes, including a leaderboard topping performance at the Shearson Lehman Brothers Open. A consistently rock solid player, Blake ranked in the top 125 for an impressive 15-year stretch.

Blake learned he’d received a sponsor exemption to play in this week’s tournament during the filming of documentary short about his life. As he and his wife stepped out of a golf cart following a morning of shooting, they were suddenly swarmed by ten of his grandchildren. Patrick Manning, managing director of Reef Private Equity and Black Desert, then appeared from behind his family and presented him with a framed certificate, officially inviting him to compete in the championship.

“It was a very emotional, very proud moment to be part of what’s going to take place this week, to have my family be part of that and all the support they’ve given me throughout the years,” Blake said, calling the gesture a “big surprise” and likening it to a dream come true.

“Being at 499 tournaments, it’s been, I don’t know, 12, 13, 14 years since I’ve played a PGA Tour event. I never thought I’d make that 500th. I’ve tried to get sponsor exemptions, I’ve tried to qualify a few times and it just hasn’t worked out.”

SALT LAKE CITY — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding a new emergency preparedness center led by a University of Utah professor. 

The Rocky Mountains and Great Plains Center for Emergency Public Health will help Utahns and neighboring states ramp up preparation for extreme weather events and public health crises. 

It doesn’t have a brick and mortar building. Center Director Dr. Kimberley Shoaf said instead, it’s an academic center designed to help us be ready when disaster strikes. 

“As much as we’d like to, we can’t control Mother Nature,” Shoaf said. 

Natural disasters like Hurricane Helene show the devastation many communities are left with after extreme weather rolls through.

‘As resilient as possible’ 

“We need to be able to respond and do the things that we can to make ourselves as resilient as possible,” Shoaf said. 

The new emergency preparedness center she leads with the University of Utah’s Division of Public Health is designed to help with that. 

“They funded 10 centers across the country, one in each of the regions, to work with state and local health departments and tribal health departments to help them be ready to respond to public health emergencies,” Shoaf said. 

The Rocky Mountains and Great Plains Center includes Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. 

“Congress has reallocated funding to ensure that each health department across the country have access to one of these centers,” Shoaf said. 

Her team, in partnership with the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health, has been working with those health departments for the last year. 

“Wildfires was what was their top priority, flooding was actually another one in some of the areas,” Shoaf said. 

They’re also concerned about severe winter weather. 

“When something happens during the winter, how do we get people to respond? How do we get people from here to there? What do we do about sheltering?” 

Prepared for earthquakes

Included in Shoaf’s list of priorities is earthquake readiness. 

“I currently have a research project looking at the earthquake in Turkey from a year and a half ago, and trying to get a better idea of exactly how people get injured,” she said. “We have some data about that we’ve done in the past, but really looking at within a specific building with a specific type of damage, what kind of injuries would we expect to see?” 

Dr. Shoaf’s team helps train members of public health agencies for emergency response. She said public health is a field where turnover is high. 

“There’s always there’s a constant need for training, and to keep them up to date on how do they work with their partners, how do they work with emergency management, how do they work with the fire department,” she said. 

It’s part of a national effort to have a coordinated response to disasters when they happen. Part of that is ensuring rural and tribal communities are included. 

“We have an advisory council that has worked with us from tribal communities across the region, and so we’ve got those relationships there,” Shoaf said. 

Nearly $1 million of the $5 million worth of funding the center has over the next five years will be allocated toward working with tribal communities. 

She said they’re working on sending out messaging and alerts to help us prepare for what mother nature could bring our way. 

“It certainly gives me a sense of hope that we’re turning the corner on recognizing the need to do this sort of thing,” Shoaf said.