SALT LAKE CITY – “Let’s go to Utah!”

A special voice shouted the familiar chant moments after the puck dropped during the Utah Hockey Club’s opening game on Tuesday.

“Let’s go to Utah!”

The chant slowly picked up steam and spread from section to section of the Delta Center.

“Let’s Go to Utah”

Soon the organic call echoed throughout the area, masking the sounds of skates on ice and sticks on pucks.

“That was the loudest building I’ve ever played in,” Logan Cooley said after Utah’s 5-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks. “It was special.”

The NHL arrived in Utah with great pomp and ceremony. ESPN did a live broadcast from outside the arena – for about 10 hours; there was a free concert in the square – from the artist with the #1 song in America; and players walked down a blue carpet surrounded by hundreds – perhaps thousands – of fans to enter the arena.

Oh, and there was the game.

Towels were waved, there were chants and fans paid hundreds of dollars in hopes of an unforgettable evening. It didn’t take long for the Utah Hockey Club to get results.

Dylan Guenther scored with a masterful one-timer less than five minutes into the game, and Clayton Keller followed suit later in the first period. Thus, thousands upon thousands of diehard fans were born. Salt Lake City had become a hockey town.

“It’s been a great journey. Every step of the way has been fantastic,” said head coach Andre Tourigny. “To hear the crowd starting the match, the presentation of the players, when we score our first goal, and then when things got a bit messy, it was just phenomenal.”

If Tourigny wanted a reminder of the magnitude of that match, all he had to do was look at his phone. Half the league’s coaches texted him Tuesday about the historic game; that usually didn’t happen.

“Last year I didn’t get a text from the head coaches, you know what I mean?” he said. “And I haven’t texted another head coach either. It’s special.”

When Guenther scored his second goal of the night with less than a minute to play, sealing Utah’s first win, the crowd went into a frenzy. Towels waved, people hugged each other and fans shouted with joy.

In the grand scheme of the season, it’s just one game of 82, but everyone knows Tuesday night will stick around… maybe forever.

“That building erupted and we see the towels disappearing,” goalkeeper Connor Ingram said. “I think that’s why we all started playing hockey – that moment there, that sound. That’s what you wake up to every morning.”

Yes, the game was the grand finale of a special day in Utah, but it was also a great start.

The match was the start of a journey for a team that had drifted for so long. They stayed together through the tumultuous years in Arizona, playing in a college arena in hopes of finding a permanent home.

It was clear they had found one on Tuesday.

Tourginy is not the reflective type. There will come a day – maybe years later, maybe sooner – when he will sit down and allow himself to think about everything that has happened over the past six months and more. He will think of the pain of leaving Arizona and the joy of finding a safer place in Utah.

But for now, there is work to be done. There are concerns about a long flight to New York on Wednesday and preparing for a weeklong road trip; and ensuring that moments like Tuesday are not one-off.

“That’s where my brain is,” he said. “I don’t look back much other than, ‘Okay, what can we do better and things like that.’ “I’m not the kind of guy who thinks and thinks so much about what’s happened in the last six months.”

What will he remember from Tuesday?

“We won,” he said. “That’s what I’ll remember.”

Everyone else will too.