Month: January 2025

The Utah Hockey Club fell 3-1 to the Ottawa Senators on Sunday afternoon.

Senators captain Brady Tkachuk scored to end his 10-game point drought, while Claude Giroux potted a goal and an assist, bringing him one point shy of 1,100 in his career.

“We played in front of them instead of putting the puck behind and go to work,” said Utah HC head coach André Tourigny after the game. “Even the way we tried to change the point of attack in the offensive zone, we were predictable for them and they cut too many plays.”

Here’s some insight into the game, including a few things Utah did well on their first trip to Canada’s capital city.

Utah hockey for dummies

One of the most challenging situations in hockey is a three-game stretch in four days.

If you’ve always followed other sports, you might think that sounds dramatic — but it’s true. Hockey requires so much energy that it’s hard to recover from a game in a short period of time. This was Utah’s third game in less than four days, considering the early start time on Sunday.

What makes it even worse for Utah is that they traveled to a new city each game, spanning one American state and two Canadian provinces. They traveled more than 4,200 miles for the three games (including the return trip to Salt Lake).

That being said, Ottawa was also tired. They hosted their biggest rivals, the Toronto Maple Leafs, on Saturday. It was a hard-fought game in which the Senators came out on top.

Utah hockey for casual fans

Quick disclaimer: This section will be all over the place, but it interconnects a number of small thoughts about the game. It’s all important and somewhat related.

Puck luck cost Utah a goal on Friday in Winnipeg, but it repaid them with a goal on Sunday in Ottawa. It’s funny how that works sometimes.

Clayton Keller got credit for the goal after his attempt at a centering pass deflected off a Senator’s stick and in. Funny enough, Keller had attempted to shoot from that spot on at least two other occasions in the game, but hadn’t had any luck. On his third chance, he tried to pass and ended up scoring.

Keller is now on a seven-game point streak and has 13 points in that span. The first few injuries to players named to 4 Nations Face-Off teams were announced this week. Team USA hasn’t had a winger go down yet, but if they do, Keller is playing like someone who wants to go.

Speaking of point streaks, Sunday marked the end of Nick Schmaltz’ tear. He had points in eight consecutive games previous to this one. Previous to this game, Schmaltz had 17 points in 12 games against the Senators (thanks, in large part, to his seven-point game in 2022).

Utah hockey for nerds

Although he didn’t contribute on the score sheet, Matias Maccelli played one of his better games this season.

He has had so many shifts this year that leave you wondering what he was trying to accomplish, but he did no such thing on Sunday. He drove the play into the offensive zone on a consistent basis, and he always got back to cover defensively.

At one point, for example, an offensive play in which he was involved didn’t go his way. But, rather than heading back to the bench and letting a fresh set of legs take care of the back check, he hustled back and arrived just in time to check Ridly Greig on the doorstep.

Consistency is the difference between an everyday NHL player and a fringe roster player. If Maccelli can make this type of two-way impact night in and night out, he won’t need to worry so much about whether bounces go his way — something that Tourigny mentioned as his biggest roadblock this year.

What’s next?

Utah gets a couple much-needed days of rest before getting back to it against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Delta Center on Wednesday.

It’s been a roller coaster of a season for the Penguins, who had playoff aspirations at the beginning. But the lows have been a little too low and they’re now the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference.

The last time the two teams played each other, Utah HC walked away with a 6-1 win. They’ll look to continue that dominance on Wednesday.

If you won’t be at the Delta Center, you can catch the game on Utah 16 and Utah HC+. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m. MST.

With the new administration officially taking the reins, the future of immigrants in the United States is precarious. Immigration was a significant factor for about 6 in 10 voters in the presidential election, and they will be looking to newly minted leaders — who ran on a platform promising to address it — for action. But as we begin to explore the immigration issue in Utah and across the country, we need to remember the benefits that immigrants bring to our country and work together to develop comprehensive, bipartisan solutions.

Immigrants’ contributions to our country’s economic growth cannot be understated. As of last year, there were 31 million immigrants working in the United States — or 18.6% of the total labor force. In Utah, almost 10% of our population is foreign-born. These immigrants are essential workers, accounting for 14.7% of entrepreneurs, 10.6% of STEM workers and 20.5% of the construction workforce in the state. To sustain this growth and allow our economy to thrive, our legislators must simplify and create more legal pathways for immigrants to come to the United States. But our communities need immigrants for more than the economic benefits. These individuals and families contribute to our society as neighbors, friends, students and much more.

Communities are stronger when they consist of people with diverse ideas, backgrounds and perspectives. Our businesses, schools, churches and communities are made better by acceptance and openness. To be sure, there are steps that we must take to strengthen immigration policy, but as our elected leaders take these steps, they must endeavor to better understand these issues and develop more comprehensive solutions that foster creativity, innovation and better decision-making in our workplaces, schools and neighborhoods.

Having lived overseas for several years because of my husband’s work, I can sympathize with the immigrant experience. It is difficult to be a foreigner in an unfamiliar land. You’re functioning in an entirely new language. You lack the cultural cues and shared experiences that are crucial for navigating the school system, health care and everyday life. Still, I was fortunate to have the support of my husband and family, which not everyone does. This experience made clear to me just how much courage it takes to move to another country permanently. I admire immigrants — in the United States and beyond.

For instance, while living in the Middle East, I met families who fled their native countries for their safety and religious freedom. Many individuals fled their countries due to political instability or because they were driven by their most deeply held beliefs. They faced incredible danger to reach safety. Hearing their touching stories about escaping their countries was humbling and inspiring.

They were allowed temporary refugee status in neighboring countries, but many were applying for asylum in the United States, Canada or other countries that offered more stability and opportunity. This process was long, expensive and filled with uncertainty. Some waited years — and others are still waiting. According to the International Rescue Committee, there are currently “more than two million pending asylum cases in the U.S. The backlog of asylum cases has led to unprecedented waiting times, forcing asylum seekers to endure waits of up to seven years.”

These families live in limbo: They can’t return to their home countries due to the danger they face, and they can’t stay permanently in their current country. The long, arduous pathway to citizenship in the U.S. often puts people in difficult positions, even if they are trying to do things legally.

When I moved back to Utah, I was welcomed by my neighbors, my church and my community at large. Every immigrant who is here to contribute should be met with the same receptivity. Our laws and communities must be more open to people from other countries. Change and growth are difficult, but integration makes us stronger — and immigrants aren’t the only ones who benefit. Regular interactions with people from different cultures promote tolerance and challenge stereotypes, helping us see each other as individuals, neighbors, co-workers and friends. Accepting others into our communities doesn’t mean betraying our beliefs or traditions; it means recognizing that, as humans, we share more in common than we differ.

We need immigrants as workers — but moreover, for their ideas and friendship. Legislators must create more legal pathways for immigrants — and as citizens, we must welcome them when they arrive.

Note to readers • This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University.

Farms are quickly becoming mementos of a different time in Moab.

Over the four decades Gary Wilson has grown alfalfa in this touristy corner of southeast Utah, his fields have increasingly become islands in a sea of new development.

“Agriculture is getting a little thinner in these counties, that’s for sure. I don’t know that it’s any different in St. George or Salt Lake or Orem,” he said. “All seems like it’s the same as here.”

Utah’s growing fast, and that has a big domino effect on the state’s housing development, water consumption and agriculture.

One of Wilson’s fields on Moab’s south side illustrates this first domino to fall. After kicking through knee-high green stems, he arrived at the fenceline and pointed next door.

A neighboring field that he previously leased and farmed has transformed into a subdivision with around two dozen modern southwest-style homes. One of the houses that sold in 2024 was listed for $1.25 million.

“We don’t have any hard feelings against our neighbors, that’s for sure. Just lots of them,” he said with a chuckle.

It’s a common story across Utah, which continues to be one of the country’s fastest-growing states. An influx of people and money pushes land values up, and many farmers decide to cash out. Home prices in Moab’s Grand County jumped 642% from 1993 to 2023, according to federal data. So when farmland is put up for sale, local farmers have a hard time competing with developers’ pockets.

“Over half of the property we used to farm is not here anymore,” Wilson said. “Every piece of that property is in a housing development.”

Grand County lost nearly a quarter of its farms between 2017 and 2022, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Wilson doesn’t have any plans to quit, but he understands why others here have.

“I don’t think it’s going to survive too long, personally, I think there’s going to be a very [small] amount of people here that survive with the agricultural business.”

Ag water goes urban

That’s the tough reality facing much of the Utah farming community. But here’s a key thing to keep in mind: Those farms had water rights — a silver lining for Utah’s booming, thirsty cities.

When farmland gets developed, its allotment of water often gets transferred to municipalities. Essentially, water that was once used to irrigate crops can flow to kitchen sinks.

“These transfers are happening in Moab, across Utah and across the western United States, and they’ve been happening for decades,” said David Rosenberg, a Utah State University professor who studies water management. “And they’re just really important to understand because they’re a potential source of additional water for urban water users.”

There’s a lot of uncertainty about exactly how much water the transfers might free up for cities, Rosenberg said, and a whole bunch of factors determine how far that water can stretch.

On the agricultural side, the seniority of the water right matters because a farm may have been at the bottom of the pecking order and often didn’t get to use its full allotment. It’s also important to know how much of the farm’s irrigation was used by the crop, as opposed to drifting into the air through evapotranspiration or returning to the system as runoff. Then in cities, local zoning rules about landscaping and the efficiency of irrigation controls can have an impact.

Housing density is another big factor. According to the Utah Division of Water Rights, the average domestic water use for a Utah family is 0.45 acre-feet per year, although Rosenberg noted that number can vary widely based on a water user’s behavior. One acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of ground a foot deep in water. Irrigated farmland can use up to six acre-feet of water per acre in Utah.

So, depending on how many houses are built per acre, a neighborhood could end up using less water than the farm that previously occupied that same land.

Despite the uncertainty, Utah cities count on these transfers to help sustain future growth. Washington County, for instance, expects that converting farm fields into homes will free up around 7% of the extra municipal water it will need as it grows into the 2040s.

Utah’s state water plan estimates ag-to-urban transfers will offer between 27,000 and 45,000 acre-feet to Utah’s urban water supplies this decade alone. Based on the state’s average domestic water use estimate, that could potentially be enough to supply one year’s worth of water for up to 90,000 households.

That’s a big deal in a dry state, especially with the future of major sources like the Colorado River in limbo. And it illustrates why it’s vital to better understand these transfers, Rosenberg said.

“It won’t address all the water issues that Utah has — or water needs — but it’s an important component of a portfolio,” he said. “And having a portfolio of options, including water conservation, water reuse, water for ecosystems — these are all really important.”

Big cities, small farms

As Moab’s disappearing farmland shows, however, these urban water gains come at a cost for Utah agriculture.

It doesn’t necessarily mean the end of farming near cities, though — if farming can adapt.

One potential solution is for farms to get smaller. Roslynn McCann, a sustainable communities specialist with Utah State University extension in Moab, said there are lots of benefits when farms produce food for the local community on a small scale rather than a large commodity crop operation.

“I see a big potential in that in the Moab area, especially as conversations increase about water conservation and our water issues in Utah,” McCann said. “Using that water to grow our own food and increase our self-sufficiency as a community.”

Down the street from Wilson’s alfalfa field, there’s an example that shows how this can work. Rhonda Gotway Clyde’s Easy Bee Farm is just a couple of acres. And it’s relatively new, at least in ag years. She bought it in 2007.

It took a lot of work — years of applying compost and alfalfa mulch — to turn the red sandy dirt here into rich black soil, she said. Now, they grow 40 different kinds of produce from cherry tomatoes to leafy greens.

“I’m a plant person. I like to talk to the plants,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing farming, but I love the plants.”

Smaller farms can be more water-efficient, too.

Clyde switched to drip irrigation in 2017, and she said it uses about half as much water as the overhead sprinklers she had before. A USU study that Rosenberg was part of also suggested small-scale farms and home gardens tend to use less water per acre than large-scale agricultural activities like alfalfa.

In a remote, desert community like Moab where a lot of food comes from thousands of miles away, Clyde said it’s important to offer residents fresher, healthier options, too.

Easy Bee Farm sells produce to people in Moab through a subscription service and a farm stand Clyde set up on her property in 2023. She’s seen demand rise, and that tracks statewide. A 2024 USU survey suggested Utahns are increasingly interested in buying local fruit.

She’s also begun to work with federal food assistance programs to offer her harvest to more lower-income Utahns and has a work share program where people can put in a few hours at her farm and earn a basket of produce.

“We’re feeding a lot of people,” Clyde said. “It’s a feel-good thing.”

And as Utah neighborhoods continue to gobble up farmland and look for water, there’ll be even more mouths to feed.

KSL TV photographer Mark Wetzel contributed to this story.

Milwaukee Bucks (25-17, fourth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Utah Jazz (10-33, 15th in the Western Conference)

Salt Lake City; Monday, 9 p.m. EST

BOTTOM LINE: Milwaukee will attempt to keep its five-game win streak intact when the Bucks take on Utah.

The Jazz are 3-15 on their home court. Utah is 2-2 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 17.1 turnovers per game.

The Bucks have gone 8-10 away from home. Milwaukee is 10-9 against opponents over .500.

The Jazz score 111.3 points per game, 0.6 more points than the 110.7 the Bucks give up. The Bucks average 114.3 points per game, 4.2 fewer than the 118.5 the Jazz give up to opponents.

TOP PERFORMERS: Lauri Markkanen is scoring 20.0 points per game and averaging 6.1 rebounds for the Jazz. Collin Sexton is averaging 17.0 points and 2.7 rebounds over the last 10 games.

Damian Lillard is scoring 25.1 points per game and averaging 4.5 rebounds for the Bucks. Gary Trent Jr. is averaging 2.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.

LAST 10 GAMES: Jazz: 2-8, averaging 110.7 points, 46.8 rebounds, 25.4 assists, 6.5 steals and 5.1 blocks per game while shooting 44.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 116.2 points per game.

Bucks: 8-2, averaging 119.6 points, 47.6 rebounds, 27.2 assists, 7.0 steals and 5.1 blocks per game while shooting 50.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 108.5 points.

INJURIES: Jazz: John Collins: day to day (illness), Johnny Juzang: day to day (hand), Cody Williams: day to day (ankle), Jordan Clarkson: out (plantar ), Taylor Hendricks: out for season (fibula).

Bucks: Bobby Portis: day to day (personal), AJ Green: day to day (quad).

——

The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.

PROVO, Utah – In their first of two games along the Wasatch Range, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats men’s basketball squad got punched in the mouth by the torrid shooting of BYU Saturday night, 80-52.

To add insult to injury, BYU’s Elijah Crawford hoisted a good 3-pointer at the buzzer. UC has now given up 80 or more points in back-to-back games.

BYU was 15-for-24 from behind the arc, where their marksmanship was far from a secret. The Bearcats could only make 5-for-28. 62.5% easily trumps 18%.

The Bearcats only had one scorer in double figures as Simas Lukošius had 14 points. Richie Saunders had 21 for BYU and Egor Demin had 15. UC led in rebounding 20-17 at halftime but lost at game’s end, 34-28.

Some bad ideas can, with some reflection and revision, be turned into good ideas. Others are unsalvageable. Of this last category are online age verification mandates, an ill-conceived proposal that has — notwithstanding its many defects — gained purchase in the minds of state legislators nationwide.

To date, several states have imposed such mandates on social media platforms, of which many have fallen in court. Age verification carries significant privacy and cybersecurity dangers, often requiring users to upload a picture of government-issued identification documents or to submit to a facial scan. Conditioning Americans’ (including adult Americans’) access to online speech on the offering up of sensitive personal information cannot withstand First Amendment scrutiny — as numerous courts, including the Supreme Court, have ruled.

Perhaps seeing these faults, age verification advocates have pivoted from platform-level age verification to app-store-level age verification. The year is young still, but state legislators have rushed to file app store bills in several states, including Alaska, South Carolina and Utah. Utah’s bill — SB142 — would require app stores to verify each user’s age and would allow underage users to download apps only after obtaining “verifiable parental consent.” However, like all bills of its type, SB142’s purported benefits are illusory, and its differentiation from failed platform-level models is scant. If app-store mandates can be considered a road different from platform mandates, both nonetheless arrive at the same unconstitutional destination.

To determine a user’s age, an online service must collect some sort of data. According to the French national data-protection agency, no age-verification software exists “that satisfactorily meets (the) three requirements” of “sufficiently reliable verification, complete coverage of the population and respect for the protection of individual’s data and privacy and their security.” The Australian government reached a similar conclusion: “Each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues.” These manifest defects in the technology — when foisted on users by the government —put heavy burdens on Americans’ speech rights.

Requiring verification of app stores instead of platforms fails to erase these risks. Sensitive personal data must still be harvested from users, making that data vulnerable. Even government agencies and the largest corporations fall victim regularly to hackers, as do third-party identity-verification services. The additional risks that attend online age verification distinguish it from offline age checks, such an ID check at a bar or tobacco shop. The weight of these additional impositions on the constitutional rights of adult Americans doom online age verification mandates to death-by-injunction.

Age verification mandates are among a suite of children’s safety policies that concerned activists and politicians have advanced in recent years, usually with sterling motives. Besides examining intentions, however, one must also ask whether their proposed solutions will, in practice, protect children. It seems they will not. First off, requiring children to submit personal data to tech companies seems likelier to endanger their privacy and security. Children can, moreover, dodge app-store age verification by using devices on which app stores do not act as gatekeepers, such as desktops, laptops, gaming consoles and other internet-enabled devices.

It bears emphasis that, as noted by the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, attempts to simply ban children from certain types of media trespass on parental rights and responsibilities. “While some of the legislation’s effect may indeed be in support of what some parents of the restricted children actually want, its entire effect is only in support of what the State thinks parents ought to want,” Justice Scalia wrote.

Usually, age verification bills propose to block children under the designated age threshold from accessing social media. Parents everywhere should consider whether they wish the government to make such decisions.

Intending to write an effective and constitutional bill does not, unfortunately, guarantee that the final product will be anything of the kind. Promoting an ineffectual policy at the cost of the speech rights of every adult American social media user fails by every metric of good governance. The digital world operates by the same laws — both constitutionally and economically — as the “real” world. Lawmakers — in Utah and nationwide — must work within the constraints of the available technology and the Constitution to craft policy that will work in practice, not just in theory.