Utah Mammoth Organizational Depth Chart 2025

Utah Mammoth Organizational Depth Chart 2025

Hey everyone, welcome back to 996 the Howell and welcome to the 2025 Utah Mammoth depth chart. This is a great video to digest to share with your family and friends. It looks at all the players the Utah organization owns their NHL rights to. So obviously you got the Utah Mammoth team, the Road Runners, players that they’ve signed to entry- level contracts that still play in junior, and also players that haven’t signed their entry level contracts, like for example, players in the NCAA. I’ll be ranking each of these positions, giving it a letter ranking. I’ll group the wings as one and group the left hand and right-hand defense as one ranking as well. So let’s jump into the wing position. You have our captain Clayton Keller and also Dylan Gunther as your two current best wingers and future best wingers for the foreseeable future. And how these players are ranked in this Excel spreadsheet is the best player at that position separated by the league. So even though AIla should probably be up here around Krauss and Purka because he’s in junior he’ll be at the top of the junior wings but Clayton Keller Dylan Gunther Gunther’s a sniper. Clayton Keller playmaker great two-way game facilitator. He also has a sneaky good shot as well. So you’re those two guys are leading the Utah Mammoth. You got a recent acquisition in JJ Purka. Speedy fast down the wing incredible shot. You got two lethal shots in Gunther and Purka. Nick Schmaltz rounds out that top six wing position. Nick Schmaltz has one year left on his contract. We will not get distracted in this video by speculation, rumors, you know, future trades and whatnot. But I love what Andre Turney has done to Nick Schmaltz’s game. Well-rounding Nick Schmaltz. He’s got a great two-way game. Uh he’s a great playmaker as well. And he also has a sneaky shot like Keller. would like to see him shoot the puck a little bit more. And also, these aren’t lines. These are just players at the best in their position, even though the first row here is Utah’s first line. But let’s not to get distracted by lines either. You have Lawson Krauss, who’s a great depth winger as well, slotted in as the third line wing position here. He yes had an underwhelming year last year not playing up to his standard part of that secondary support role that kind of dropped the ball along with Buchad Machelli and Caronei Buchad Machelli have moved on but Caronei came came crawling back in a sense Brandon Tenev a free agent signing fast speedy can’t wait to see the speed he brings his nickname is Turbo that’s a great third line and great wing depth with Krauss and Tana but then the wing depth starts to get a little bit shallow. Here you have Carone and O’Brien. Obviously, Keroot will most likely be moved to the wing, but he’s a natural center, which is why he’s listed as center, but obviously you can’t have five center lines in the NHL. It’s only four lines. So, the fourth line will be Keroot, Steedland, and Carone. But like I already said, Keroot slotted in here as a centerman because that is his natural position. But he’s a Swiss Army knife. Very versatile. could fit on the wing in your bottom six and your top six. Keroot’s got one year left on his deal along with Kevin Stenland. But back to the shallowess of the wing position after the NHL. It kind of dries up really quick. I think we really only have Daniel Boot and a GILA as our best wing position prospects in the system. I could be underrating and undervaluing Matika, Nord, and Allard, but all three of those guys had very underwhelming le uh seasons last year. Matika scratched here and there. Didn’t play in the playoffs for the Road Runners really. And then Nord and Allard got demoted to the Ontario Hockey League back to junior. And Julian Lutz underwhelming first year with the Road Runners as well. Maybe these guys just needed, you know, one season under their belt and they’ll they’ll have a coming home party this upcoming season for the Road Runners. I expect, one move I expect is a Road Runners forward roster. I expect some moves, some acquisitions to get some American Hockey League veterans. I feel like the center depth is a bit shallow and they’re just missing one or two more good American Hockey League forwards. But if Daniel Boot starts in the AHL, Yamamoto’s there as well. So, it’s not too bad, but the wing position just kind of gets shallow after Ginland. But you have Vadim Morose, who’s a pretty underrated prospect. He has one year left in the KHL. And because the KHL, I can’t watch these guys play. So, it’s hard to really value Vadim Morose. You got Baroo, who they recently drafted. And Zelinka is a bit of a question mark uh as to who owns his rights, but the Coyotes did draft him and no one’s drafted him since. So, I’m pretty sure Utah still owns his rights. And Ilia Fedodof drafted in the same year as Josh Stone. Still yet to come over from the KHL. He’s on his fourth KHL team. So, I’m not spending too much time on Fedoff. And Stephen Hawk, the staff like him. The scouting staff as well like him. So, we’ll see. He just got recently drafted in the third round. We’ll see how he develops with Utah. I’ll give the wing position a B+ as a letter ranking. just missing one or two more high quality wing prospects to bump that to an A. Then we go to the center position which I gave an A or I give it an A. It’s led by Logan Culie who is eligible to sign a contract right now and I hope Logan signs an 8-year contract. He’s a future one number one centerman for Utah. And uh right below him is Barrett Hayden who some will say he’s not a true number two NHL centerman. He just had a career year last year. 20 goals, 40 points. I feel like he’s still got another gear to unlock. He’s got a great two-way game. Goes to the front of the net, goes to the dirty areas. I think in the future Barrett Hayden as a 3C is perfect. And then you have Dier in juniors to fill that 2C role. That’s incredible center depth. You got McBain, Keroot, and Stenland giving that bottom six center depth, which is great. This center position for the Utah Mammoth is center by committee and once Dana Oy comes it’s it’s watch out. This could be one of the one of the good center prospect pipeline pools in the NHL. Like I said in American hockey it’s a bit shallow. You got Sam Lipkin there who also had a rough year his first year in the American Hockey League. I expect a bounce back from him to lead this team as pretty much the top center on this Road Runners team. Maybe they grab some of these wingers to play center. And then in the Junior Leagues, incredible, incredible center to have Douay, who hasn’t decided if he’ll go back to Quebec. He is eligible to play in the NCAA this season under the new rules because he hasn’t signed an entry- level contract yet with Utah. Whereas Agindla and Bod Du, they’ve signed entry- level contracts. So, they’re stuck in the Canadian Hockey League. Can’t go to the NCAA. They can’t even go to the American Hockey League because they’re under 20 years old. But starting next year, there’s a new rule. One ti a team could send one player per year from the Canadian Hockey Leagues to the American Hockey League. One player per year. They could be under 20 years old. So maybe Dana plays in the Quebec League this upcoming season and then next year he could jump immediately to the American Hockey League, which be which would be great development. Gabe Smith, huge monster centerman, signed to an entry-level contract about a month ago. Heratic had a great coming out party at the World Junior Championship this past December. I really liked his game in that tournament. Great two-way player as well. Castia had a bit of a underwhelming second year in the NCAA in terms of offensive numbers. I want to see him get better in his third year. Tanner Luck has changed NCAA college teams. I think now he’s going to play for the University of Minnesota. So maybe he gets more opportunities playing on a better team and maybe we see him break out this upcoming NCAA year. And Samoa, he won the most improved player award at the most recent development camp a couple weeks ago, so could be underrating him as well. But I give the center position a rank A for me. Next, we go to the defense. And I’m completely enamored by this defensive depth. I give it an S tier. This is unbelievable. You guys need to show me an NHL team with better defensive depth. I mean, this NHL depth is unheard of. Like, one of Cole Schmidt, D Simone, even Valamaki. One of those guys is going to be healthy scratched. You got Dimmitri Simisha fighting for a spot. a young hardened, he’s still 20, 21 years old, but he’s been playing in the KHL for years. This guy’s been playing against men. He just won the KHL championship along with Daniel Boot. He’s ready. He’s hungry. He wants a spot. And then look at this American Hockey League depth. Lamaru Duda Grunovich who won the Hobie Baker a couple years ago for the best NCAA player in the league. He’s a sneaky offensive small stature Dman. Herrell Goldsmith, big body, physical boon type defenseman. His first year coming into the road runners because he’s 20 years old coming from the Canadian Hockey League. Zuber, big puff, big defenseman. Kevin Kannadin is like a fringe NHLer and you have him in on your bottom pairing in terms of defenseman. Montana on Yabushi recently signed a two-year contract with the Road Runners along with Cameron Hebbe about a week ago. And then this defensive depth in juniors. I mean, Will Scahan, big body defenseman, really young but relied upon a lot in the NCAA. Maxichka, most recently s drafted in the second round in this most recent draft. He’s a tall, big body defenseman who skates well as well. You got all this all these defenseman here. It’s just an unbelievable defensive depth chart. And credit to Bill Armstrong because when he inherited the Coyotes and got the job, their top defensive prospect was Victor Sodestrom. And now they traded Sodestrom at the deadline with Sheay Weber’s contract to Chicago that afforded them the cap space to go out and grab a guy like Purka. And then Chicago traded Sodestrom to the Bruins for a seventh round pick. So you can see how quickly Soda Shrom fell off the NHL the face of the NHL world and he was our top prospect for the Coyotes four years ago and now four and a half years later look what Armstrong was able to do just four and a half years of stacking good player on top of good player and all of these positions are so well created in terms of depth. They’re not shallow and with good drafting, good pipelines, it affords the organization to go out and make moves. Like last year when we traded Geeki for Sergeev at the time, like yo, like Geeki was a really good center prospect. What are we going to do? Well, now you have Bodu who pretty much replaces Geeki. You just drafted Duoay. Gabe Smith is emerging. Heratic is emerging as well. So, you could kind of move on from Geeki. and Sergeef has been unbelievable for Utah. A true number one demon this organization has hasn’t seen since prime Oel and prime Keith Yandel. I would make that trade a hundred times out of a hundred today. Even JJ Purka, you’re able to trade Kessle Ring and then you just replaced him at the draft with Maxichka. You have all these Dmen who could replace Kessle Ring. Yes, at the current moment, trading dome really shallowed up our wing depth, but you know, you have all these guys still battling and developing in the next few drafts. You got three second round picks next draft. You still have your first round picks. You can go out and draft a winger as well. And the wing position, it’s not a premier position. You could trade for a winger. You could uh grab a a good winger in free agency. It’s not like the center or goalie position where those are premier positions or first number one Dman. Uh it’s hard to acquire them. You need to build them up from inside. Even though I just mentioned the Sergey Chev trade, but I give the defense an S tier. Unbelievable. I need to print out just the defensive depth and put it beside my bed and just look at it before I go to sleep every night. Then we go to goalies. I give the goalies an A. I think the the NHL depth is great. Hopefully Connor Ingram is back 100% and then they’ll decide what to do with Vanichek. It’s only one year for Vanichek and Ingram’s also got one year left. But Vamela won the starting role last year. This will be the first year where Vamela is actually the number one starter to start the season and there’s no question marks. So maybe that gives him more confidence. I think he started like 20 or 24 games in a row last season. Vamela did. So I really hope Ingram is healthy. if he’s not, you know, Vamela and Vanichek makes me a little bit uncomfortable as a tendum, but hopefully it’s only for the short term. And then you got great American Hockey League depth in Viala Stabber and they just signed Dylan Wells a couple weeks ago for insurance in case any of these goalies get injured or get called up to the NHL. Dylan Wells can come back in. And oh, you also have Anthony Thordon in the East Coast Hockey League who could shore up an injury or being called up to the big leagues as well. Thordon can freely move from ECHL to AHL. Valta and Stabber, they have one year left on their contracts and then once those expire, either one of or both would move on and then that’s a clear path for Hurabal to finally sign an entry- level contract and get into American Hockey League starter or backup position. I think it was a right decision by Herbal to decline signing a couple weeks ago or a month ago because there wasn’t a clear path this season. Like I said, these guys, Stabber and Valta, still have one more year and so you’re going to be a third third uh string goalie being in the press box. You get way more practice time in the NCAA and then next year it’s a clear path uh for your development through the American Hockey League and then to the NHL. And you got some good depth goalenders who will take a long time to develop. Carson Mooer in the NCAA, Melker Thielen in Sweden, and Ivan the goalie in the KHL. This is a great video. This would be a great video as well as a companion to the YouTube shorts on the official Utah Mammoth YouTube page. They’re uploading some shorts from development camp with all the rookies. They are having so much fun like asking them how many hot dogs you can eat in 20 in 20 minutes and they put the names attaching to the face in those shorts. So, you know, even though these are just names on an Excel spreadsheet or on a whiteboard, you can now put a name to a face and get to know these prospects and players that Utah owns their NHL rights to more intimately, which I feel now thanks to watching those YouTube shorts. So, I I feel like this is great information. you could always look back on it throughout the off season and throughout the season and uh it’s just going to get better and better from here on out for the Utah Mammoth. So that’s it for me. Thanks for watching. And if you like what you see, spread the word.

Ranking Utah’s positional pipeline and going through all their players they own NHL Rights to.

2024 Depth Chart Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H0BgK6LBUA

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