The Utah Hockey Club is in the midst of a largely successful inaugural season. Contrary to what some people believe, the Utah Hockey Club is not an expansion team. It’s an existing NHL franchise that was relocated.
Indeed, the Utah Hockey Club’s heritage goes way back. In fact, the Hockey Club has been around for about 50 years in its various incarnations. So, let’s dig into what an NHL expansion team is and why the Utah Hockey Club is precisely not your typical expansion team.
Three reasons why the Utah Hockey Club is not an expansion team
What is an NHL expansion team?
The NHL played its inaugural season in 1917. The league was comprised of a number of teams that no longer exist though their host cities continue to have NHL franchises. For example, the Toronto club was named the Toronto Arenas. Then, it became the Toronto St. Pats before becoming the Toronto Maple Leafs as known today.
Montreal had two clubs, the Montreal Canadiens and the Montreal Wanderers. Similarly, the Ottawa Senators played for a few seasons before going under and then resurfacing in the early 1990s.
After some additions and subtractions, the NHL eventually settled on six teams in the 1920s. This era is known as the Original Six era consisting of the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, and Chicago Blackhawks. These teams played until the first round of NHL expansion in 1967.
So, expansion consisted of the addition of brand-new teams to the Original Six. Now, it’s important to point out that “expansion” teams are those that did not previously exist in one way or another. As such, they were created completely from scratch to join the NHL.
Thus, in 1967, the NHL added six new teams to double the league in size: The California Golden Seals (defunct), the Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars (now Dallas Stars), Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and St. Louis Blues.
While the league continued adding teams over the years, not all of them were expansion teams. Some were added through a merger with a rival league. As such, the new clubs were not expansion teams in the traditional sense as they already existed before joining the NHL. It was during this merger that the Utah Hockey Club got into the NHL, though it would be a long road before the franchise hit Utah.