F*ck Your Team: Why I Hate the 2025-2026 Utah Mammoth | NHL Season Preview

F*ck Your Team: Why I Hate the 2025-2026 Utah Mammoth | NHL Season Preview

The artist formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes and Utah Hockey Club has been reborn now as the Utah Mammoth. A proper club with almost a proper home arena and aspirations of finally making the playoffs with a good young core of players that they have built around. Do the Utah Hockey Club actually have a chance to make it into the big dance for once and excite the fans of the Beehive State? Forget me, but you should forget it. You’re living in the past, man. 2024-25 was an odd year for the Utah hockey club. Sorry, Mammoth. I have to remember not to dead name. I will be better, I promise. But the then hockey club was a team entering its first year in Utah searching for an identity, but also with new ownership that seemed unlike their former predecessors in Arizona. Willing to spend to upgrade the team, they made some big offseason acquisitions that they hoped would propel the Utah hockey club forward towards a brighter future. And indeed that did seem to happen. They finished with over 80 points for the first time since 2018-19 when they were still the Coyotes and were still actually playing in a big boy arena. And in general, fans could see the vision for the team going forward. They had a lot of very talented young forwards who could put up some good points. They had a pretty solid middle six. And while they don’t have a high-end top pairing defenseman, they do have a good one in Sergeev and some decent depth behind them with breakout year from Vijna and net. It was a good year to be a hockey club fan, even if they didn’t quite make the playoffs. Don’t turn your back on me. Let’s get one thing straight. This is shooters tour. I’ve worked hard my whole life, paid my dues, and now it’s shooters turn. The Utah Mammoth entered this season with one of the younger and more promising forward cores in the NHL. Oh, a statement which has also been true for them over the past 5 years, but I’m betting that this is the time it actually pays off for them. It all starts with their centerpiece up front in Clayton Keller. He was one of the most important young players on the Arizona Coyotes when they locked him up to a big extension back in 2019 and the organization’s largely done nothing to support him since. His center on the first line will be Logan Kulie who is himself about to sign a big boy extension unless Keller goes Leith Stanfield and get out and warns him to get away from this horrible excuse for a franchise. On the other side, Dylan Gunther, who finally managed to break the 20 goal and 50 point plateaus, which is good timing because he just had a massive extension kick in. And I’d hate to think that the former Coyotes were bad at spending money. The second line features new toy JJ Purga as well as Baraton in the middle, a perfectly fine second line center with some upside, and Nick Schmaltz, who went a quarter of a season last year without scoring a single goal and managed to put up some good assist numbers. So, between them, hopefully somebody will be able to actually put the puck in the neck this year. The third line includes Alex Keroot, who’s one of those guys you don’t really appreciate when he’s on your team, but then when he leaves and you see him playing for another team, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, he was solid.” He’s centered by Jack McBain, who outside of having the same last name as one of the greatest parody characters in Simpsons history is largely unremarkable. And on the other side is Lawson Krauss, who 10 years into his career is exactly the middle of what people projected he’d be, a bottom six power forward who can score some goals. The fourth one includes Big Tuna himself, Liam O’Brien, who is a beautiful bearded man, Kevin Stenland, whose biggest play last year was cheap shotting Meline Cabbrini. So get ready for that retribution coming up, and Brandon Tanv, who’s still in the league apparently, and is purely on this team for the facial expressions he makes in the profile pictures. But don’t worry, Utah fans, if you weren’t satisfied with all of the young, promising forwards you have up front, let me introduce you to all the guys who are still waiting in the wings. You have Caleb Denoy, who’s taken number four overall in the 2025 draft. a good pick in my opinion. The teacha who was their first round pick last year, the son of Jerome Gimma and Denil, don’t touch my butt, who is probably the guy who’s going to get flipped for defensive help if you actually want to have a serious chance of making the playoffs this year. All we hear is about their defense. They can’t stop a nose bleed. The back end for the Utah Mammoth is probably their biggest weakness. They don’t really have a great number one guy and their depth is a little suspect. Macy Sergev was their biggest addition last off season and he’s a good defenseman, but he’s currently begging Tampa Bay to take him back or else he’s going to expose more secrets about how bad Jeff Blasio was as their coach a few years ago. His partner is John Marino, who is another big offseason addition last year, but him on your first pair is a bit ambitious for his skill set. On the second pairing, you got Ian Cole, who I genuinely didn’t realize was still playing in the NHL. Is this guy like 100 or something? I feel like he’s been in the league for my entire life. And then there’s Shawn Dery, who was locked up last year to keep Sergev comfortable, which he is by being consistently terrible, but at least Sergeev knows what to expect. On the third pair, we got Holy Mata, who looked pretty decent at Four Nations. Well, he played at Four Nations last year. How the hell does this guy keep failing upward? But he’ll be paired with Nate Schmidt, who’s another one of those great possession monster defenseman who doesn’t play like a prototype defenseman, so naturally, he’s one of my favorites. And then still waiting in the wings, you have Maverick Learu and Dmitri Semichev, who had better hulk. He turns out better than the guy that was taken right after him at the Michkov. Wait, it’s not Goldberg. It’s here. Take it. Now, goender is a bit of an adventure for the mammoth. Carl Vinoa, who like I said, had a incredible year last season and got rewarded with a 4-year extension, which is kind of odd to do for a guy who’s never put up a save percentage above 91. But he’ll be their starter because their backup is VTEC Vanichek, who, yes, did just win a Stanley Cup as part of the Florida Panthers team in the same way the kid who ate pace got an A as part of the group project. I dare them to start Vanich more than 20 games this season and just see what happens. You ain’t going to be able to hit them. They’re too good and you suck something up. Yes, sir. The Utah Mammoth head coach is still Andre Turney. Somehow the cockroach survived the move from Phoenix and the name change twice to remain the head coach of one of the most meh teams in the entire league. Now, all that being said, I do think Turigdi is not a terrible coach. There’s only so much you can do when you have no defenseman and no starting goalender. But at the same time, I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that he is anything more than an above average NHL head coach, which hey, if that’s where you want to be, Utah, you do you, boo. Since you’re new here, uh, I’m going to cut you a break. The Utah Mammoth were involved in probably the biggest trade of the off season when they acquired JJ Purka from the Buffalo Sabres. He leaves a dysfunctional NHL team that almost nobody cares about to go to a another dysfunctional team that absolutely nobody cares about. So, he’ll fit right in here. Although, he is used to playing in a legitimate NHL arena in Buffalo. Pedurka does give them some more young, talented forwards to work with, something that they definitely don’t have. Why bother moving assets to get, you know, defense or starting goalender when you can get another guy who’s going to underperform for you, but you’ll swear by his potential? Oh, yeah, and Brandon Tan is also here. Luckily, the Utah Mammoth didn’t have to trade the number four overall pick to get Purka, and they use that pick on Caleb Denoy, who jokes about him joining a glut of forward prospects aside, is a really good skilled young prospect. Pretty good. Pretty damn good, lads. It’s easy to talk up Logan Culie as one of the most underrated forwards in the entire NHL because he is. If this guy was playing on a team that actually got some shine, people would be talking about him as one of the most lethal shooters and playmakers in the entire NHL. I mean, the guy put up 90 points last year and nobody’s talking about him. I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be gray. And it’s going to last you for the rest of your life. There’s not really a whole lot to say about the Utah Mammoth. They made some changes. Yes. and they got a big addition up front. They still have the exact same questions going into this year that they did last year. Are their young offensive players going to be good enough to carry a pretty mediocre defense and questionable goalending? The answer for me is I don’t know. I’d like to say so. They’re so loaded up front with top end talent and their depth is actually really good. I think they can outscore a lot of teams if they get just good play out of a Jelma like they did last year. If he actually elevates and puts up like decent goalending numbers, this is a team that’s going to make the playoffs easily. And I think that there’s going to be a mammoth surprise. That’s right. Utah’s making it in this year. [Applause] [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music]

Are the Utah Mammoth ready to make a big push to reinvent themselves in the mountains and get into the playoffs?

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