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Source: Utah News
The Vancouver Canucks (26-19-11) visit the Utah Hockey Club (24-24-9) Sunday at Delta Center in Salt Lake City. Puck drop is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET (ESPN+). Let’s analyze BetMGM Sportsbook’s NHL odds around the Canucks vs. Utah Hockey Club odds and make our expert NHL picks and predictions.
Season series: Utah Hockey Club leads 1-0
The Utah Hockey Club won 3-2 in overtime on Dec. 18 in the first meeting in the Pacific Northwest as a moderate favorite (-113) as the Under (6) cashed.
The Canucks lost a 3-1 loss on the road against the Vegas Golden Knights Saturday as a heavy underdog (+192) as the Under (5.5) cashed. G Kevin Lankinen allowed 2 goals on 34 shots.
Utah was tripped up 5-3 on the road against the LA Kings Saturday, and it has allowed a total of 16 goals in the past 3 games, or an average of 5.3 goals per game (GPG). In the losing effort against the Kings, C Barrett Hayton had 2 power-play goals and an even-strength marker for the hat trick. Unsurprisingly, the Over has cashed in 3 consecutive outings.
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Provided by BetMGM Sportsbook; access USA TODAY Sports Scores and Sports Betting Odds hub for a full list. Lines last updated at 7:26 a.m. ET.
Arturs Silovs (1-4-1, 4.11 GAA, .847 SV%) vs. Karel Vejmelka (13-15-4, 2.57 GAA, .909 SV%, 1 SO)
Silovs is expected to make his first appearance since Nov. 27, as he has been down at AHL Abbotsford. He was recalled this week with Thatcher Demko sidelined with a lower-body injury. Demko is considered week-to-week, so Silovs could stick around a while behind Lankinen. The latter started Saturday, so with the back-to-back, it looks like it is Silovs time.
Vejmelka is expected to start Sunday after Connor Ingram was in between the pipes Saturday in Los Angeles. Vejmelka allowed 6 goals on 37 shots in his most recent start in Carolina Feb. 8. He made a relief appearance Feb. 9, too, allowing 2 goals on 32 shots in a comeback win in a shootout.
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Utah Hockey League 3, Canucks 2
The UTAH HOCKEY CLUB (-150) are worth a look as moderate favorites in this home game.
Vejmelka has allowed 3 or fewer goals in 5 of his past 6 appearances since Jan. 23, and he is 1-0-1 in the past 2 starts at Delta Center, including 2 goals allowed on 20 shots in a 3-2 OTW against the Philadelphia Flyers Feb. 4.
The Canucks (+125) have had trouble scoring lately, going for just 36 goals in the past 17 games, or just 2.1 GPG since Jan. 8.
The Canucks +1.5 (-210) will cost you more than 2 times your potential return, and that’s way too much risk for just a little bit of insurance. And, personally, I don’t like taking an underdog on the puck line, as a late empty-net goal can ruin a potential cover in the blink of an eye.
PASS.
UNDER 5.5 (-105) is worth a look, but go lightly.
The total has gone low in 5 straight outings, and, again, Vancouver’s offense has had a terrible time lighting the lamp in the past 6 weeks or so.
For Utah, the Over has hit in 3 in a row, but the Over is still 6-3 in the past 9 outings. Go low, but don’t get carried away.
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Source: Utah News
Source: Utah News
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Drew Doughty had a goal and two assists to lead the Los Angeles Kings to a 5-3 win over Utah on Saturday night.
Kevin Fiala, Alex Laferriere, Trevor Lewis and Mikey Anderson also scored as the Kings improved their record at home to 18-3-2. Darcy Kuemper made 25 saves.
Barrett Hayton scored three goals and had the first hat trick for Utah, which was looking for its fourth win in five games. Connor Ingram made 21 saves.
Doughty, who missed the start of the season because of a broken ankle, was back in action after playing for champion Canada in the 4 Nations Face-off and tied the game at 1-all 26 seconds after Hayton opened the scoring in the first. He had the secondary assist on Fiala’s power-play goal and sent a long clearing pass that Laferriere chased down to put the Kings up 2-1 late in the second. It was Doughty’s 16th career game with at least three points.
Doughty’s effort helped spoil Hayton’s first career game with multiple power-play goals and fifth career multi-goal outing.
Takeaways
Utah: Defenseman Sean Durzi returned after missing 52 games because of an October shoulder injury that required surgery.
Kings: Anderson, who was back in action after a hand injury sidelined him for four games before the break, scored an empty-netter with 1:30 remaining.
Key moment
Lewis got to the slot and put a backhand of Jordan Spence’s rebound through Ingram’s legs to give Los Angeles a brief 4-2 lead.
Key stat
The Kings have played a league-low 23 home games and are allowing 2.22 goals on average in those contests.
Up next
Utah hosts Vancouver on Sunday. The Kings host Vegas on Monday.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Source: Utah News
Source: Utah News
The woman’s call came around 7:20 p.m. last Sunday.
Her husband and his 12-year-old son had gone hiking on the Red Mountain trail in southern Utah. She began to worry after the pair failed to show up hours later at a spot where she was supposed to pick them up, according to Sgt. Jacob Paul, who supervises the volunteer search and rescue team for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.
Two search teams were dispatched to scour the treacherous terrain, Paul said. A private medical transport helicopter also assisted for a time but could not locate the missing hikers. With a description of the father’s boots, search teams were able to find footprints, along with a smaller set of tracks, along Red Mountain trail. For more than three hours they followed the tracks, calling out the names of the 33-year-old hiker and his son. Eventually, Paul said, searchers started hearing voices but echoes and darkness prevented them from pinpointing the hikers’ location.
Lost and stranded on a narrow ledge on a frigid night, the father came upon a backpack that – like manna from heaven – was filled with emergency blankets, water, snacks, a small tent and other supplies. The backpack had been left behind by a teen hiker who had to be rescued more than a month earlier after getting lost near the same location, according to Paul and the teenager who assembled the supplies.
“I can’t say 100% that it saved their lives because they may have survived, but they were on that ledge for at least 13 hours before we were able to get them off, and had they not had that bag, they definitely would have had some pretty severe cold-related symptoms,” Paul said.
“That bag essentially kept them from being harmed in any way.”
The red rock mountains of southern Utah are popular among adventure seekers, offering spectacular sand dunes, slot canyons and sandstone cliffs that can be forbidding to even experienced hikers because of hazards from rough terrain and foul weather.
The father who went hiking with his son last weekend agreed to talk about the trek but asked that they not be identified. He has become concerned about his son reliving the experience. “He’s like, dad, I just don’t want to hear anymore about it,” the father said. “It was a tough situation.”
The father said they decided to take the hike the previous night. “It’s a typical trail that we have taken so many times,” he said. On a navigator app on his phone, he showed his wife their expected route.
“I told her, ‘Look, we’re going to start right here. We’re going to end up out there. And we’ll meet each other in the park around this time,’” he said. “You know, it didn’t turn out the way we wanted.”
The boy and his father set out on their hike shortly before 10 a.m. on Sunday. “Everything was going well. We got to the overlook that we were trying to check out,” he said. The plan was to meet his wife at a parking lot on the trail by 2 p.m. at the latest. On the way back, he said, he decided to use the navigator app on his phone.
“The application ended up sending us somewhere else on the other side of the mountains where we ended up getting stranded,” he said. “We were actually walking back, talking about what we were going to do the moment we got home. All that time I was depending on my GPS, and come to find out my GPS took me somewhere on the most rocky places.”
On previous hikes, the father said, he always went “old school,” relying on a compass, footsteps and trails to guide him.
“But the one and only time that I decided to use GPS, we took a turn for the worse,” he said. The navigator app not only led them astray, he said, but also drained the battery on his phone.
“While we were trying to look for shelter,” the father said, “we came across this backpack.”
Inside, there was a space blanket designed to retain heat, an MRE and snacks, and other items that would help them get through the night.
“It was a miracle,” he said.
What he expected to be a three to four-hour hike turned into an ordeal of more than 20 hours. He said his focus was keeping his son safe and warm until the next morning.
“It was a scary situation but right in that moment, you cannot panic,” he said. “My son was handling it really well. For a 12-year-old, you know, to go through that situation and remain calm until the rescue came. He was pretty brave about it. He does tell me that he has overcome his fears but that next time, even if it’s just a small hike, let’s bring our tent and the rest of the stuff we need.”
As the search and rescue team, totaling about 20 people, scoured the mountainous trail late Sunday, the sheriff’s office learned the closest DPS helicopter was down with a maintenance issue, according to Paul. Instead, another helicopter was summoned from Salt Lake City. It took about two hours for that helicopter to reach the search site.
On Sunday night, Gretchen Dittmann was sitting in the hot tub with her husband when a helicopter flew over their home near Red Mountain.
“We knew they were searching for someone,” she said. “They’ve had other searches on this mountain because it just tricks people. They think they’re going down a path and then they kind of get stuck on these ledges.”
Dittmann even called her 15-year-old son, Levi, who got lost while hiking alone on January 3. He was rescued the following morning. She asked Levi to pray for whoever was lost.
The next morning, on a Facebook page of a southern Utah emergency group, Dittmann said she read that a father and son had been rescued and that “they had found this miraculous backpack.”
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s my son’s backpack,’” she said.
On that Friday afternoon early last month, Dittmann said, Levi set out alone on a hike. He later FaceTimed his mother from the top of the mountain.
“OK, well, make sure you’re down before dark,” his mother remembered telling him. “I didn’t think he was going by himself, but I haven’t been up there so I didn’t know how precarious it is.”
But Levi got lost after taking a different route back. At one point, his 28-year-old brother hiked up the mountain to search for him. Dittmann said Levi had set up a small camp with his equipment but packed up after learning his brother was coming. Levi hurled his backpack to a ledge below because he didn’t think he could safely climb down with the large bag.
The battery on the teen’s phone was waning, according to his mother. Around midnight, Levi made another call home. He was upset. Dittmann told Levi to stay where he was and either his father or a search team would find him using the GPS coordinates provided by the teen’s brother.
“We were worried… He hadn’t really been up there before but it wasn’t a cold night. So, you know, we weren’t too worried that he was going to die or anything. I definitely didn’t sleep that night until they got him back down from the mountain.”
Levi said he packed one or two days worth of snacks – including energy and protein bars -along with a sleeping bag and emergency blankets, among other items. He said he wanted to train himself to hike with the weight of the large backpack.
When he learned his brother was coming, Levi said, he decided to move further down the mountain. He threw his backpack to a ledge below before realizing the climb down would be too precarious. He said he would not be rescued until hours later.
“I’m glad that it wasn’t for nothing, that I could help someone,” he said of the backpack.
Dittmann, referring to the discovery of the bag by the lost hikers, said, “I’m a Christian. It’s a total God story. It’s a miracle. The whole time, it’s been like, ‘Why’d you throw your bag down? Why did you do that?’ And now it just feels like God’s handprint on it. Throw your backpack down. It’s for later use.”
After a search team led Levi down from the mountain, Dittmann had her son take a photo with them. “We have to take this picture. This is a memory that you’re not going to forget,” she told Levi.
“It’s a pretty amazing story. There’s hundreds of square miles in that Red Mountain wilderness that they could have gotten lost in. And they just happened to get stuck on the exact ledge that the backpack was sitting on,” Paul said of the father and son.
Just after 6:20 a.m. Monday, a thermal imaging camera on the DPS helicopter recorded the father and son covered with an emergency blanket on a narrow ledge.
“Let’s get down and take a closer look at that,” a rescuer on the helicopter is heard saying in a video. “If we can just come down low. Don’t get in close or we’re going to blow them off.”
The boy and his father waved at the helicopter as the blanket fluttered in the wind. The helicopter left to get another crew member and prepare to hoist the hikers up from the ledge. Later, a rescuer was lowered on a long line – retrieving the boy first, followed by his father.
“The moment I saw the size of that line, the rope line, I was like, please don’t snap,” the father recalled with a laugh.
After the rescue, Paul returned the backpack to Levi.
Travis Heggie, a professor at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University and former public risk management specialist for the National Park Service, lamented that most Americans going into wilderness areas such as southern Utah are inexperienced.
“When you are planning for such a trek it is best to over plan and speak to rangers or others that know the area. This young man did try to do that. However, he broke another cardinal rule and went out by himself,” Heggie said of Levi, adding that hikers should go out in groups of no less than three people. “Even if you are experienced, it’s so easy to get turned around in wilderness areas like southern Utah.”
The father and son were fortunate, Heggie said. Many hikers in similar situations don’t survive, he said.
“They were just lucky that they found this old backpack from another hiker who had tried to be prepared and that helped them survive,” said Heggie, who’s researching hiking fatalities on the Angels Landing Trail in Utah’s Zion National Park. “They are lucky to be alive… You really need to know where you’re going and what you’re getting yourself into and prepared for it.”
Paul said Washington County search and rescue, with about 100 volunteers, has one of the highest call rates in Utah – between 130 and 180 calls a year. There were at least two heat-related deaths in the area last year, and dozens of severe injuries from falls, he said.
“Every few days we’re going out on one of these calls,” Paul said.
Source: Utah News
Source: Utah News
Source: Utah News
Drew Doughty and Canada conquered the 4 Nations Face-Off on Thursday, and now he and the Kings will square off with Utah HC, commencing a three-game homestand on Saturday.
Doughty was a late addition to the squad following an injury to Alex Pietrangelo and a recovery from his own malady, a broken ankle that required surgery. As he always has with the maple leaf emblazoned upon his torso, Doughty came through for his country. He added the first-ever 4 Nations gold medal to quite a heap of precious metals: two Stanley Cups (2012, 2014), two Olympic gold medals (2010, 2014), World Cup of Hockey gold (2016), World Junior gold (2008), a Norris Trophy (2016) and more.
“It’s an amazing feeling – the best, the best, the best feeling,” Doughty told Mayor’s Manor’s John Hoven after the final in Boston. “It’s been a long time since I felt something like that.”
Not only did he add to his overflowing collection of accolades when Connor McDavid’s overtime goal won the tournament for the Canadians, but Doughty contributed the champions’ highest net rating for a defenseman, per The Athletic. That came after playing just six games for the Kings, a trial run that more than satisfied the Canadian brass, who opted to invite Doughty over strong wire-to-wire performers at right defense this season.
It was the first tournament that could even approximate the “best-on-best” energy of the Olympics since 2016’s World Cup of Hockey, which won’t return until 2028. The burning desire of players to represent their countries and compete at that level was highly perceptible, especially as a build-up to next year’s Winter Olympic Games in Milan, Italy.
For Doughty’s part, he hoped that it would not be his last time skating in red and white.
“I think I played pretty well. I’m still not exactly myself yet, [but I did get] much better. I’m looking forward to making that team next year,” Doughty told Hoven. “I’ve already thought about that, that’s what’s wild.”
Doughty will don black and silver for the seventh time this season on Saturday, when his typical defense partner, Mikey Anderson, should also return after missing four games prior to the break with an apparent hand injury.
Though Doughty was still en route from Boston on Friday, signs pointed to Anderson continuing to play with Vladislav Gavrikov. With Gavrikov on his off side, the alignment left just two right defense spots for Doughty, Brandt Clarke, Jordan Spence and Kyle Burroughs, though the Kings could opt to dress seven defensemen as they have frequently under Coach Jim Hiller.
Opposing them Saturday will be Utah, which will resume play six points back of the final wild-card berth in the Western Conference and eight behind the Kings. Emergent from the dysfunctional shadow of the Arizona Coyotes, the relocated franchise has designs on the playoffs, especially now that it’s healthier on defense.
John Marino played for the first time this season in mid-January and now Utah will get another blue-liner back as Sean Durzi will face his former team on Saturday. It will be his first action since Oct. 14, when he sustained a shoulder injury that required surgery.
Durzi signed a four-year, $24 million extension over the summer, a year after the Kings traded him for a second-round draft pick that they flipped to Winnipeg in the Pierre-Luc Dubois deal. Durzi matched his career highs in goals and power-play points last season and set new personal bests in assists, points and plus-minus rating.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV: FDSN West
Originally Published:
Source: Utah News
Four years ago, Utah legislators enacted sweeping changes to the state’s “troubled teen” industry, placing more oversight and stricter rules for treatment programs.
But since then, seven teenagers have died at Utah congregate care programs, according to Utah Sen. Mike McKell, who championed the legislation in 2021. These deaths have signaled to him, he said, that the measures didn’t go far enough — and more changes were needed.
Taylor Goodridge was one of those teenagers. She died in 2022 on the floor in a hallway at Diamond Ranch Academy from what her family’s attorney has said was an “easily treatable” infection. She begged for help, the attorney said, but never was taken to a hospital.
(Courtesy Dean Goodridge) Taylor Goodridge loved Disney and helping animals, her father said.
Her father, Dean Goodridge, traveled from Washington to plead with Utah legislators on Friday to support a new bill that McKell introduced this week which, among other changes, would fund an independent ombudsman who can investigate complaints from parents or teenagers who are in these programs.
Maybe if someone had been in that position a few years ago, he said, someone would have listened to his daughter when she asked for help.
“If she would have went to a doctor when she was throwing up and everything,” he said, “she’d still be here.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dean Goodridge traveled from Washington to support Utah legislation which he said could have prevented his daughter's death in a teen treatment facility.
Another parent, Katy Silvers, also tearfully pleaded with the members of the Senate Judiciary committee to support the bill. Her son, Biruk, died at Discovery Ranch Academy in November. She described to legislators how she later found out that her son had told his therapist there that he had a detailed plan of how he would die by suicide. She was never informed of these admissions, she said, and he followed through with that plan.
“No staff told us [about his suicidal ideation] or took further action to help him,” she said. “Had we known, we would have been there. We were never given the chance to save our son.”
(Silvers family) Biruk Silvers was 17 when he died at Discovery Ranch in November. His mother said Friday that they sent him to the Utah teen treatment facility thinking it was a safe place he could focus on school and heal from trauma he had experienced when he lived in Ethopia prior to being adopted.
Silvers said they adopted Biruk from Ethiopia hoping to give him a better life — but, she noted, he was “safer in a third world country than he was in care in Utah.”
“I am angry that I am here today,” she said. “I’m angry that laws either don’t exist or aren’t followed. My son’s death was preventable.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Katy Silvers speaks at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday.
SB297 would also create an advisory board with members who would examine admissions criteria for programs, with the goal of ensuring that programs are only taking kids whose needs they can address.
Data from Primary Children’s Hospital suggests that some programs may be taking in children who have higher behavioral needs than they are equipped to address. In 2024, the hospital treated 169 out-of-state children who were brought to Utah to go to congregate care facilities but ended up in the hospital, said Amanda Choudhary, its administrative director, on Friday. Those children represented about 9% of the total pediatric behavioral health inpatient stays that year, she said.
She noted that there are only 53 beds at Primary Children’s behavioral health programs, and treating out-of-state kids is causing a shortage of space for Utah children who need help.
Utah kids, she said, stay an average of seven days in inpatient care. Out-of-state patients have stays that are, on average, 30% longer. Choudhary noted that one girl who came to them from a treatment program lived at Primary Children’s for five months.
“That means we delayed or denied treatment for 22 Utah kids during the time this one out-of-state kid lived with us in the hospital,” she said.
“... We understand and recognize the congregate care industry exists to help kids,” she added. “However, it’s our responsibility to make sure the organizations bringing behaviorally complex children to Utah don’t place undue burden on Utah’s hospitals, emergency departments, and mental health systems — delaying and denying mental health access for Utah’s kids.”
State legislators in 2021 reformed Utah’s youth congregate care laws, the first time in more than 15 years that more oversight was added to the industry. The bill then placed limits on use of restraints, drugs and isolation rooms in youth treatment programs, and boosted funding so licensers could inspect programs more often. That bill was pushed by celebrity Paris Hilton, who has said that she was abused while at Provo Canyon School, overmedicated and sexually assaulted when she was given pelvic exams that had no clear medical purpose. She detailed her experiences to Utah’s Senate Judiciary committee four years ago.
In a letter delivered to the committee on Friday, she said that the deaths since that bill passed have shown that the previous legislation did not go far enough.
“Since that time, more children have suffered, more families have been devastated and tragically more young lives have been lost,” she wrote. “... We must act swiftly and decisively to close the gaps that continue to put children in residential treatment facilities in grave danger.”
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Paris Hilton wipes her eyes after testifying at a Utah Senate committee in 2021 about the abuse she says she endured at Provo Canyon School.
The committee room on Friday was packed with people donning green ribbons in support of congregate care programs, a showing of public support for programs that wasn’t visible in 2021 when more regulations were first debated by Utah’s Legislature. Several parents and young people on Friday said these programs were life-saving, including Meg Ortiz, who told legislators that those who helped her at a teen treatment program in Utah have become like a second family to her.
“Some of these changes restrict families and their ability to get help that their children need,” she said. “There needs to be a balance.”
The Senate committee voted unanimously to favorably recommend SB297 on Friday. It now goes to the entire Senate for consideration.
Source: Utah News