Utah Hockey Club joins the collection, history of 1-year only NHL Teams

 It's always exciting to me when I can add a new team to the collection. Even though it's really just the Arizona Coyotes in a new place, any team name change counts as a new team, with a new album on the Cardboard History Gallery. It's not something that happens every day, much rarer than adding a new person to my collection. 

The 2024-25 Topps Now set is the first release to show images from this season, and this is card #3 in the set- my first Utah Hockey Club card. 

and card #4 is a team card, which I always enjoy and specifically search for. 

The third week brought my third Utah card, and this is my first card of Lamoureux as well, which means it will be the first card showing Utah in the Alphabetical Directory. 

Utah is playing without a name this year and will introduce the actual name of the team next season. So Utah Hockey Club will be pretty obscure in the grand scheme of things. There are only 5 previous team/name combinations that were one year only, and the most recent was the Brooklyn Americans all the way back in 1941-42! Of the six, Utah Hockey Club was the only one that is planned to be one year only. 

The others:

Brooklyn Americans, 1941-42. Formerly known as the New York Americans, the team was renamed the Brooklyn Americans for the final season, despite still playing in Manhattan, but couldn't survive the Depression and WWII. When the team folded it created the Original Six era. There had been 10 teams before the Depression.

Montreal Wanderers, 1917-18. The rarest team in NHL History, lasting only 6 games into the very first season of the league before their arena burned down, never to appear again. (The team dated back to 1903 pre-NHL)

Philadelphia Quakers, 1930-31. The team was struggling as the Pittsburgh Pirates, and moved to Philadelphia to try and salvage the team. It failed, and this was the first of 4 teams to fold as a result of the Depression.

Quebec Bulldogs, 1919-20. Moved to Hamilton and became the Tigers after one season. Playing only 24 games as the Bulldogs, the Utah Hockey Club has already played more games (25 as of this writing) than the Bulldogs did.

St. Louis Eagles, 1934-35.  Had been the original Ottawa Senators, which was a successful team in the early days of the NHL, even winning four Stanley Cups. Holds a unique place in NHL history on two fronts; it was the oldest team of the 4 that the league founded with, dating back to 1883. Secondly, while the team only played in the NHL for one season it actually continued on until 1954 in other leagues, what was known as semi-professional. That format of hockey that is not really around anymore, replaced by the AHL-ECHL format. 

All five of the defunct team logo cards come from the excellent 2004-05 In the Game Franchises set. 

While hockey cards have been produced almost continually during the NHL's existence, the early cards are rare and expensive. All of the one year teams also existed long before I was born, let alone collecting! With three Utah cards in the collection, they have already passed or tied all but one of the 5 previous one year only teams in my collection, and Brooklyn has only 4 cards so it's only a matter of time before they have the lead. The Montreal Wanderers are one of three teams that have only one card in my collection, the other two being the previous names of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Arenas and St. Patricks. Unfortunately I was unable to find a box of the In the Game Franchises Canadian series to purchase which has the only cards of these early teams I'll likely ever be able to add to my collection.