Inside the hectic 173-day formation of the Utah Hockey Club

One hundred and seventy-three days.

That's how long they had to build the team and the operations, transport the infrastructure and the people. To equip an arena built for basketball, to build facilities for training. To build interaction with the community and attract fans and sponsors to the franchise. Choosing a color scheme, designing jerseys and creating a logo – at least temporary, badges that will be retained until the team's official name and symbol are decided.

On April 18, the NHL Board of Governors approved an NHL club for Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith and Salt Lake City.

On Tuesday evening, October 8th, the puck drops at the Delta Center and the Utah Hockey Club begins its inaugural campaign.

And you thought your summer flew by.

“It was an amazing example of what anyone can accomplish together on the ropes,” Chris Armstrong, Utah’s president of hockey operations, told The Post on Monday.

The pace at which they have moved is Herculean.

A new expansion team would have years to put the pieces of its franchise together. Utah isn't, but the five-month lead time is still unprecedented – not just by NHL standards, but by professional sports standards.

While traditional expansion teams like the Golden Knights and Kraken were building their rosters and front offices from the ground up, Utah inherited the hockey assets of the Arizona Coyotes. This included players, draft picks and coaching staff.

But it wasn't just the players on the ice and the coaches behind the bench that made the move to Utah, it was also the staff in the back of the house.

“The reason we thought this was all possible was because of the people we were bringing into the organization,” Armstrong said.

Physically moving the players, hockey operations staff and their equipment from Phoenix to Salt Lake City was the first task. Setting up in NHL-like facilities came next.

As a practice site, Utah chose the Olympic Oval, the long-track speed skating venue built for the 2002 Olympics.

The team constructed an ice rink within the skating oval and constructed a 17,000-foot-tall structure in one of the building's unused corners. Inside, they built state-of-the-art locker rooms, coaches' offices, video rooms and players' lounges.

Concurrent with this retrofitting of the oval, a similar process was taking place 15 miles north.

To optimize the Delta Center (a purpose-built basketball venue and home of the Utah Jazz) for hockey, the club built new locker rooms, coaches' offices and training areas. These renovations are part of an ongoing, multi-year project.

As for staffing the venue, Armstrong says, “We are on track to be one of the top 20 teams in the NHL in both ticket revenue and partnership revenue this year.”

Utah finalized its color palette, jersey and logo in a matter of weeks. And while these assets are temporary in nature, there is nothing ephemeral about the brand the club is building under them.

“From the beginning, we invested at the grassroots level, creating opportunities for community programming and fan engagement,” Armstrong said. “These are the things we are focusing on as we continue to evolve our overall brand identity for the future.”

A development that took 173 days. Now comes the fun part.