KEARNS, Utah — With the preseason wrapped up, Utah Hockey Club players headed back to school Monday to rally some of the team’s youngest fans ahead of the season opener.

Team captain Clayton Keller and center Barrett Hayton skated over to David Gourley Elementary School in Kearns. The duo signed autographs while talking with the kids, and even raised the Utah Hockey Club flag as special guests of the fifth graders.

“It’s a new franchise here, we’re growing the game of hockey … it’s getting younger kids into hockey, growing the game as much as we can,” said Keller. “Super excited and super cool to raise the flag.”

The team sent out more than 600 flags to every public elementary school in the state, with the hopes they fly them before the puck drops for real Tuesday night.

“A lot of chaos here to start the morning but we are obviously excited for tomorrow with the opening season for our hockey club,” expressed school principal Briar Mattucci.

Even the players were impressed by the amount of excitement their appearance brought to the students.

“We felt this energy since we got here, and to see these kids and the excitement and this cool initiative as well,” added Hayton.

The Utah Hockey Club faces off against Chicago at Delta Center on Tuesday to open the team’s inaugural season in Salt Lake City.

Catch nearly all Utah Hockey Club games on Utah 16 this fall!

SALT LAKE CITY — The National Fire Prevention Association dedicates this week, Oct. 6-12, to raising awareness about fire prevention. Utah first responders are also asking people to be cautious as we head into another warm, dry week.

“We’re at 280 acres which is actually spread out over an incline and a pretty steep environment,” said Jon Smith, a public information officer for North Tooele Fire District.

Saturday afternoon, the North Tooele Fire District got the call to a wildfire on the west side of the Oquirrh Mountain range.

“No structures were threatened, no evacuations were issued, but it was really, really dry conditions and we’ve been dealing with record high temperatures — not just for the month of August, but really all summer long. We’ve had extended periods without rain,” said Smith.

The cause is still under investigation, but Smith said it was human-caused. He said they hope to have the fire contained by Monday morning.

This is not the only wildfire the North Tooele Fire District is battling.

“We do work with other agencies, and the Yellow Lake Fire is of course a much bigger event,” Smith said. “People have this misnomer that fire season is over when the summer months have passed, and nothing could be further from the truth. September and October are very busy fire months.”

As of Sunday evening, the Yellow Lake Fire in eastern Wasatch County had grown to more than 15,000 acres, with more than 450 personnel on the ground.

“We do still have hotter than normal temperatures, 15° above average. The winds are still variable and up to 10 to 15 mph,” said Brian Trick, the public information officer for the Yellow Lake Fire.

Emergency crews are asking residents and recreators in certain areas to leave for their own safety.

“The West Fork of the Duchesne River, as well as the North Rork, are under a mandatory evacuation. The Granddaddy Lakes area is under a ready order, as well as the town of Hanna,” said Trick.

While officials are still looking into what caused the Yellow Lake Fire and the West Oquirrh Fire, they believe they were both caused by people.

“We also understand it’s very cold at night, and so if you’re a recreator or are a hunter and you are not in a closure order or an evacuated area and you are just recreating, campfires are permitted,” Trick said. “But it’s that idea: make sure it’s dead out, so cold to the touch.”

Officials say fire season is not over, so the Utahns need to always be mindful.

“As we saw the last two days, we had some explosive fire growth and it would just be very difficult to track folks,” Trick said. “It’s for their safety as well as firefighters and law enforcement officers who might have to go find them and help them.”

According to Marc Stein, the New York Knicks tried hard to get Walker Kessler from the Utah Jazz before making the trade for Karl-Anthony Towns.

From Stein’s substack:

Before coming to terms on a blockbuster swap with Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns mere days before the start of training camp, New York made multiple trade runs at Utah’s Walker Kessler to fill its well-chronicled void at center, league sources say.

It is believed that Utah wanted at least two future first-round picks for Kessler … after the Knicks had exhausted much of their remaining cache of draft picks in the trade with Brooklyn for Bridges.

This is more clarification on the trade rumors we had seen before involving Walker Kessler. Kessler had a very strong rookie season but a disappointing second season where he lost his starting spot to John Collins.

All that said, Kessler still has impressive rim protection numbers and is obviously still very young and there’s no reason he can’t continue to improve.

It’s interesting to see these rumors that are now coming out with the dust now having cleared. It does make sense because, with all these rumors, we learn the asking price for players after the fact. It certainly seems that if a team out there wants a young rim-protecting center, they could have Kessler for two first-round picks. On top of that, it’s clear this was somewhat recent. Will we see more of these offers for Kessler now that other teams are aware of the asking price?