SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Mammoth rookies hit the ice on Wednesday as training camps begin around the NHL ahead of the 2025-26 season.

“We’ve got six first-rounders that sit outside our team, and they’re all capable of making the team,” general manager Bill Armstrong told the media before the first practice.

Two of those first-round picks are defensemen, making the conversation around Utah’s blue-liners an interesting one heading into training camp. The group sustained significant injuries during Utah’s inaugural season, but here’s where the depth stands in September.

Starters: Mikhail Sergachev (LH/Russia), John Marino (RH/USA)

Sergachev was one of the first major additions to the Mammoth after moving from Arizona to Utah, bringing a Stanley Cup-winning pedigree from the Tampa Bay Lightning on June 29, 2024, the same day Marino was traded from New Jersey.

Sergachev went on to play in 77 games and led the team in average time on ice at 25:07, a full four minutes above the next highest average, which fittingly came from his blue-line partner, Marino. Sergachev finished fifth on the team in points with 15 goals and 38 assists and served as an alternate captain.

Marino, on the other hand, missed the first three months of Utah’s inaugural season with lower-back surgery and played in just 35 games after making his Mammoth debut on Jan. 14.

He put up 13 assists in those 35 games, however, and appears to be locked in alongside Sergachev on the starting line when healthy.

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“I think that’s the goodness of our club right now… We’ve got six first-rounders that sit outside our team and they’re all capable of making the team. It’s going to be exciting times for us.” @utahmammoth Bill Armstrong ahead of Rookie Camp pic.twitter.com/CjdTe6pSuj

— Utah Mammoth PR (@UtahMammoth_PR) September 10, 2025Second line: Sean Durzi (RH/Canada), Ian Cole (LH/USA)

The next players in average time on ice behind Sergachev and Marino were Durzi and Cole, making them natural selections heading into the second shift for Utah’s defense.

Durzi missed 52 games after an early-season shoulder injury that was initially feared to be season-ending, but returned in February and played a key role down the stretch. He is also the second-highest paid Utah defenseman on a per-year basis with a four-year, $24 million contract signed in 2024.

Cole was the token veteran of the group last season, making Utah his ninth NHL team at 36 years old, though that title might be contested by a newcomer to be named in the next section.

He led the team in blocks last season at 211, with 71 separating him and Segachev in second place. He was one of only six Utah players to appear in all 82 games during the inaugural season, joining the now-departed Michael Kesselring as the only defensemen to achieve the iron man feat.

Third line: Nate Schmidt (RH/USA), Olli Maatta (LH/Finland), Nick DeSimone (RH/USA)

The five-through-seven spots are where things got a little interesting for Utah’s defense last year, and could continue to be a point of interest, according to Armstrong.

“I don’t believe you can ever have enough good (defensemen),” Armstrong said. “And the way the game is played, at the speed, there’s a lot of injury, and you need, really, seven good (defensemen). So I believe that there’s some young kids that push for position, and I like our depth.”

Having said that, Utah made a free agent signing in the offseason that could stabilize the back of its defensive rotation considerably with the addition of 34-year-old Schmidt from the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.

He played in a career-high 80 games for Florida last year and earned a three-year, $10.5 million contract with his move to the Mammoth. Schmidt and likely third-line pairing Maatta are tied for the fourth-highest salary on the blue line behind Sergachev, Durzi and Marino, in that order.

Maatta was second on the Mammoth in plus-minus last season and finished third on the team in blocks behind Cole and Sergachev with 117, which was 50 ahead of fourth-place Kesselring.

DeSimone earned a shoutout from Armstrong when talking about the defensive depth, with the 30-year-old AHL/NHL journeyman joining the Mammoth on waivers midway through the season. He was tied with Kesselring and Durzi for the third-highest plus-minus over his 20 games in Utah.

The final official roster spot in last year’s defense belonged to Finnish 26-year-old Juuso Valimaki, who will miss the first half of this season with an ACL tear. Minnesota native and former second-round pick Scott Perunovich signed a two-way contract with Utah in free agency and could also factor into the late rotation.

Prospects: Maveric Lamoureux (RH/Canada), Dmitri Simashev (LH/Russia), Artem Duda (LH/Russia)

This is where we get to the “kids pushing for position” that Armstrong mentioned, with the three players above specifically earning shoutouts from the general manager and making promising appearances on Day 1 of rookie camp.

Lamoureux, who technically made his NHL debut last season over 15 games before returning to the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners, was taken at the end of the first round in the 2022 NHL draft, and Duda was taken just seven picks later at the start of the second round.

Lamoureux had a goal and two assists in his brief big-league stint, but posted a positive plus-minus that was good for fourth-highest on the team. He was paired with Simashev, taken sixth overall by Arizona in 2023, for much of the first day of rookie camp and commented on the two possibly pairing up at the next level.

“I definitely like playing with him,” the 6-foot-6 Lamoureux said of 6-foot-4 Simashev. “So if both of us do good and we end up playing together with Utah, I think it’s going to be a pretty dangerous pairing.”

Simashev and his fellow Russian teammate at Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, left winger Daniil But, signed three-year, entry-level contracts with the Mammoth on May 28.

Lamoureux and Duda both played in Tucson last season and became close, according to Lamoureux. The two are beginning their fourth year in the Mammoth organization, bested in longevity at rookie camp only by center Sam Lipkin, who was drafted with the penultimate pick of the 2021 NHL draft.

Utah will finish camp in Colorado at the 2025 Rookie Showcase, where the Mammoth will be joined by the Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights at the South Suburban Sports Complex in Highlands Ranch from Sept. 12-14.

Keep an eye out for our forward position preview next week ahead of the Utah Mammoth preseason opener on Sept. 21 in Denver.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.