Rewind to Oct. 13, 2017. It’s Friday the 13th and the Colorado Eagles are set to open the 2017-18 season at Budweiser Events Center against their Rocky Mountain rival Utah Grizzlies. The result is a 3-2 win after Michael Joly ices the game in the second period. The following night, the Eagles travel to Utah for the second half of the home-and-home set, where they edged the Grizzlies once more by a 2-1 margin.
Little did the two teams know at the time, those two tightly-contested one-goal games would be among the last times the rivals would face-off against each other.