There are few experiences more rewarding than putting on an NHL jersey with your own name and number on the back — not the kind you can get custom-made at the team store, but the kind that comes when a lifetime of hard work culminates in your first NHL game.
I asked a handful of Utah Hockey Club players about their respective first games. The common theme was fond retrospection and admiration for how far they’ve come.
Here are their stories.
Sean Durzi
Not everyone has a smooth path to the big leagues.
Sean Durzi went to the 2017 draft hoping to hear his name called, but it never happened. As he left the United Center in Chicago, where the draft was held, he vowed to work hard enough to prove that he could, in fact, play in the NHL.
Four years later, he was pulling a Los Angeles Kings jersey over his head as he prepared to touch NHL ice for the first time.
He’d been drafted by his hometown team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in 2018, but they traded him less than a year later to the Kings. As it sometimes goes, his first NHL game was against the Maple Leafs.
It didn’t all go according to plan: He got scored on during his first shift. Coincidentally, the goal scorer was current UHC teammate Alexander Kerfoot.
But he didn’t let the setback get him down.
Less than two minutes into the second period, he notched his first NHL point: an assist on Viktor Arvidsson’s power play goal. Before the end of the game, Arvidsson would return the favor by assisting on Durzi’s first NHL goal.
“I couldn’t have asked for much more,” Durzi said of the game.
Josh Doan
Like Durzi, Josh Doan’s first NHL game involved the team he grew up cheering for. Unlike Durzi, he was playing for his childhood favorite team, rather than against it. And, like Durzi, Doan had 2 points in his debut — both goals.
But it almost didn’t play out that way.
In an attempt to beat traffic, Doan left his childhood home an hour and a half before he normally would. But the traffic on the highway was so bad that, at one point, his maps app told him he wouldn’t arrive until 7:07 for the 7 p.m. game.
A handful of his teammates and his coach also got stuck in traffic, which calmed him down. Eventually, everything cleared up and he was able to arrive with enough time to be ready.
“I think that took away the nervousness,” Doan said. “I was now just more nervous about even getting there than I was about the actual opportunity to play an NHL game. When the puck dropped, it kind of just felt normal, just another game.”
Being from the area, Doan obviously had plenty of friends and family at the game — so many that he didn’t dare put a number on it. Thankfully for him, he didn’t have to foot the bill for nearly all the tickets: The team provided a suite and ASU bought a suite for all his former teammates. He was only on the hook for a group of close friends.
Mikhail Sergachev
When Mikhail Sergachev first suited up for the Montreal Canadiens, he never imagined that he’d be a two-time Stanley Cup champion by age 24.
“I wasn’t even thinking about Stanley Cups back then,” he said. “I was just thinking about that game. When you’re young, you just think about today and tomorrow. You don’t plan things. You don’t think about winning or getting Norrises.”
Sergachev didn’t score any points in that first game, nor did he score in any of the other three games that season. But his team won every time he was in the lineup that year, and that trend, to an extent, has followed him throughout his entire career.
Michael Carcone
When Michael Carcone laid down for his pregame nap on Dec. 28, 2021, he had no idea he’d be playing in the NHL that night. He’d been called up from the minors the day before, but he didn’t expect to actually suit up.
His attempt to sleep was unsuccessful, so he reached for his phone. That’s when he saw the text saying his six-year grind of playing in the minors had finally paid off in the form of an NHL game.
The opportunity came because two Coyotes forwards had entered the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol, leaving a gap in the lineup. One of those forwards was Matias Maccelli, who was supposed to play his first game that night.
“The adrenaline just kind of took over,” Carcone recalls of the game. “I was kind of blacked out during the whole thing.”
Carcone and the Coyotes suffered a loss at the hands of the San Jose Sharks that night, but it wasn’t for lack of offense: The final score was 8-7.
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