The Utah Mammoth’s winning ways can somehow feel like an instant success and a slow burn all at once.
Year 2 in Utah is going swimmingly for the Mammoth, who won their seventh consecutive contest on Sunday by a 3-2 score in Winnipeg. Downing a top-notch division rival in its own building certainly has a way of lending credibility to your accomplishments, as do the myriad indicators that this Utah club is for real.
The Mammoth’s .800 points percentage ranks second in the league behind only the New Jersey Devils — winners of eight straight games themselves — and Utah’s plus-13 goal-differential is tied with Jersey for the best mark in the NHL. Utah may not be among the very best two or three clubs when it comes to underlying numbers, but their expected goals rate of 52.75 per cent, per Moneypuck, ranks them a respectable ninth in the NHL.
Standout individual performances are coming from all over the ice, with Nick Schmaltz matching Jack Eichel for the league scoring lead (16 points), Logan Cooley sitting one off the goal-scoring lead with seven tallies and Mikhail Sergachev, with eight points, trailing only Cale Makar (11 points) and Lane Hutson (nine) for the scoring lead among defencemen.
In goal, Karel Vejmelka leads the league with six wins and his 6.1 goals saved above expected ranks sixth in the NHL.
You can’t swing a woolly trunk without hitting somebody on this club having a fantastic start to the season.
Certainly there’s an undeniable freshness to this all, with the debut of a new team name and many players wearing a third kit in as many years, from the final twirl as the Arizona Coyotes to the Utah Hockey Club garb we saw last season to the Mammoth livery that’s now set to be part of Salt Lake City’s sporting iconography for many years to come.
That said, there’s also a serious brick-by-brick element to what general manager Bill Armstrong and the Mammoth have built here. Utah has five of its own top-10 picks in the lineup including captain Clayton Keller, two burgeoning stars in Cooley and Dylan Guenther, top-line centre Barrett Hayton and rookie defenceman Dmitri Simashev.
Of course, this organization hit an entirely different phase of team-building when Ryan Smith bought the club and moved it Utah in 2024. In that first off-season, the team went out and acquired Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning, then followed up that move with the 2025 swap that landed top-line winger JJ Peterka from Buffalo.
Critical as those huge swings were, it’s not like every important move made in service of animating the Mammoth has been a splashy one. How about the spate of signings Utah made just before the trade deadline last year, when the club — sitting outside the playoff picture — very easily could have jettisoned some pending UFAs for futures. Instead, Utah inked third-pair D-men Ian Cole and Olli Maatta, centre Alex Kerfoot (currently injured) and, most critically, Vejmelka to extensions. Management recognized something good was percolating and wanted to keep things on the right path.
Now, all those moves — big and small — are beginning to flower. And there’s every reason to believe the NHL’s newest success story will have staying power.
32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.
• We’re experiencing quite a mediocre moment for a bunch of Canada’s NHL clubs right now. Four of the seven teams that play north of the 49th — Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa — are .500 on the nose. That’s a lot of tires spinning in the Canadian mud.
• The San Jose Sharks may be the last team in the league that still doesn’t have a regulation victory, but don’t pin any of the club’s shortcomings on Macklin Celebrini. His latest effort, a three-point showing in Sunday’s 6-5 overtime victory in Minnesota that ended on Celebrini’s game-winner, left the 19-year-old with 15 points on the year. I guess, with Celebrini just a single point off the NHL scoring lead, we can put any fears of a sophomore jinx to rest for the top pick in the 2024 draft.
• Maybe we shouldn’t fret too much about such an accomplished goalie, but it had to feel good for Andrei Vasilevskiy to get his first win of the year in Tampa’s 2-1 extra-time W over Vegas on Sunday. After a training camp where there was some uncertainty around his injury status, Vasilevskiy posted an .885 save percentage through his first five games while failing to secure a win. Even if he wasn’t very busy, stopping 18 of 19 Golden Knights shots was surely a step in the right direction.
• With two helpers in Saturday’s shootout loss to Columbus, 39-year-old Evgeni Malkin is your NHL assists leader with 12.
• It’s early, but the Blues and Wild — who play in the unforgiving Central Division — must be at least slightly troubled by slow starts. St. Louis blew a 4-0 lead by allowing six unanswered goals in a loss to Detroit on Saturday, while the Wild were pumped 6-2 by Utah on Saturday and allowed six more goals in an overtime loss to the Sharks 24 hours later. Minny has now dropped six of its past seven outings and while the Blues’ results haven’t quite been that bad, both squads need to get in gear soon.
• A huge hockey hug to Brandon Montour, who returned to the Kraken lineup on Saturday after saying good-bye to his brother. Cameron Noble-Montour was taken way too early, at 34 years old, by ALS. Here’s hoping Brandon and his family find comfort anywhere they can while remembering the time they had with Cameron.
Red and white power rankings
1. Winnipeg Jets (6-3-0): Jonathan Toews will face his old team, the Chicago Blackhawks, for the first time in his career in Manitoba on Thursday.
2. Montreal Canadiens (7-3-0): Nick Suzuki was held off the scoresheet in Montreal’s opening game of the season, but he’s been on it every outing since. After netting a goal in Saturday’s 4-3 win over Vancouver, the Canadiens captain is up to 13 points on the season. Keeping this guy off Canada’s Olympic team is going to be tough.
3. Edmonton Oilers (4-4-2): With two wins in their past seven outings, Tuesday night’s matchup versus the red-hot Mammoth suddenly feels like a big one for the Oilers. Certainly Edmonton — after starting the year with seven of 10 games on the road — will be looking to turn things around with its next three contests being played in Northern Alberta.
4. Toronto Maple Leafs (4-4-1): After scoring the OT winner versus Buffalo on Saturday for career goal No. 499, John Tavares can net No. 500 on Tuesday when the Flames come to town.
5. Ottawa Senators (4-4-1): Saturday’s 7-1 smashing of the Capitals in Washington had to be therapeutic for a Sens team that’s endured a frustrating start to the year. Shane Pinto is getting the press, with his eight goals being tied for the NHL lead, but Dylan Cozens is up to six tallies on the season after burying one versus Washington. It sure seems like that swap with Buffalo — Cozens for Josh Norris — at last year’s deadline is going to age beautifully in Ottawa.
6. Vancouver Canucks (5-5-0): With two assists in Sunday night’s 4-3 win over Edmonton, Conor Garland is up to 11 points in 10 game this year. That’s quite a start for the top-line right winger.
7. Calgary Flames (2-7-1): It took 10 tries, but the Flames finally got their first 60-minute victory of the year with a decisive 5-1 thumping of the Rangers on Sunday night. Matt Coronato was scratched for the big win, so we’ll see if he draws back in when the Flames visit Toronto on Tuesday.
• All 32 teams are in action on Tuesday, headlined by J.T. Miller’s return to Vancouver as a member of the New York Rangers. There’s also a Keystone State battle, as the Flyers and Penguins meet for the first time this year amidst very respectable starts for both clubs. You know Sidney Crosby would relish becoming the ninth member of the 1,700-point club with a couple points against his team’s longtime rival. There’s also a heavyweight tilt in Raleigh, where the Golden Knights visit the Hurricanes. Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin can net his 900th goal when the Caps visit the Stars.
• Crush candy on Halloween while watching a perfectly staggered trio of matches, with Vegas visiting Colorado in a big Western Conference showdown at 4 p.m. ET, the Capitals hosting their Metro rivals from Long Island at 7 p.m. E.T. and John Gibson visiting his old home in Anaheim when the Wings tackle the Ducks at 10 p.m. E.T.
• It might get a little hot at the Bell Centre on Saturday when the Sens visit the Habs. Those two teams really got into it in the pre-season and this marks their first matchup of the regular season. Also, Connor Bedard and his Hawks land in Edmonton for a showdown with Connor McDavid and the Oilers later that evening.