Home ice struggles complicate Utah HC's chances of reaching the playoffs

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Finding success at home has turned into a persistent struggle for the Utah Hockey Club.

Utah beat San Jose for its lone win in the first four games of a January home stand and has lost to Florida, Montreal and the New York Islanders. The team has won just three times in its last 14 games in Salt Lake City, and its six home victories are the fewest in the NHL.

“I don’t know why we’ve been struggling at home in front of our fans that have showed a lot of support for us,” forward Nick Bjugstad said. “I feel for them. I just think we’ll find a way, but it’s going to take some digging and looking in the mirror.”

For a team hovering on the fringe of the Western Conference playoff picture, the margin for error is growing perilously thin.

Ironically, road success is keeping the club within striking distance of a spot. Utah has a dozen wins away from home after rattling off five straight road victories in mid-December.

Inconsistent offense has undercut Utah’s efforts to build momentum at home. Over its last four games at Delta Center, the club has allowed 3.0 goals per game but is scoring an average of 1.8.

“Guys are trying,” forward Nick Schmaltz said. “Sometimes (the shots) go in. Sometimes they don’t. You’ve got to work through it, keep putting the work in on practice days and working on your finishing. It’ll come eventually. Once we see one go in, guys get a little more confident. Hopefully, we can get on a roll.”

Tight finishes decided late are a recurring staple at home this season. At one point, seven consecutive Utah home games were decided by one goal.

A couple of games against San Jose show how razor-thin the margin is. Utah lost to the Sharks in overtime on Oct. 28 after allowing two goals in a 25-second span late in regulation, and then beat them Saturday when Barrett Hayton got the game-winner with 1:23 left.

That eased some of the frustration briefly. Subsequent losses to New York and Montreal brought the frustration back.

“It’s part of the growth, it’s part of who we want to become, it’s part of the journey,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “We want to create that relationship with our fans. We want to win, we want to get in the race, climb in the standings and all those things. That comes with a ton of pressure internally and externally.”

Fan support hasn’t dipped amid struggles on the home ice.

Utah has reported a sellout crowd of 11,131 for every home game during the team’s inaugural season. Because of partially obstructed views for some seats, full-view seat capacity for hockey games is lower than seating capacity for Utah Jazz games (18,206) and live concerts (13,898).

Single-goal-view seats are not counted or tracked in attendance figures reported to the league. Demand for tickets has led Utah to open a portion of these seats to fans anyway.

Utah launched a pair of community ticket programs in January to offer single-goal-view seats for up to 2,000 fans each home game for $10 a seat. One program is geared specifically toward local university students, and Utah will host a college game night on March 20th when it takes on Buffalo.

These programs add on to an earlier program Utah announced in September that provides 100 partial-view upper-bowl tickets every home game at no-cost to local nonprofits, schools, community groups and charitable organizations.

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