{"id":538145,"date":"2026-04-03T07:30:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/538145\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T07:30:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:30:52","slug":"utah-mammoth-beat-seattle-kraken-6-2-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/538145\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah Mammoth beat Seattle Kraken 6-2 \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Utah Mammoth believe Logan Cooley is a franchise-level player, which they declared by giving him an $80 million contract<\/a> in the fall.<\/p>\n

But this season hasn\u2019t indicated that as clearly as they\u2019d hoped.<\/p>\n

He was playing fine before he got injured in December<\/a> \u2014 14 goals and 23 points in 29 games \u2014 certainly good enough to play in a top-six role in the NHL, but it\u2019s not superstar-level offense.<\/p>\n

The team didn\u2019t miss a beat when the injury struck, which led those who closely follow the team to wonder how integral the 21-year-old really is at this point in his young career.<\/p>\n

But over the last week, Cooley has shown why 92 is one of the most common jersey numbers seen walking around the Delta Center concourse.<\/p>\n

The Mammoth got into a rough patch in their most recent home stand, which allowed the teams trailing them in the standings to get a bit too close for comfort. They were struggling to generate much of anything, and they needed someone to step up.<\/p>\n

Cooley saw the Bat Signal, put on his mask, cape and utility belt and headed to the streets of Gotham.<\/p>\n

It started with a goal in the Mammoth\u2019s loss to the Washington Capitals. The next game, he increased that to two goals, leading the Mammoth to a 6-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings. <\/p>\n

And in Thursday\u2019s 6-2 win over the Seattle Kraken, he totaled three points \u2014 two goals and an assist.<\/p>\n

Some of those goals came from opportune moments, but the most impressive ones were when he made something out of nothing. That\u2019s what superstars do.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s barely old enough to accompany his teammates to 21+ establishments after games. Players his age only tend to get better with time. Mammoth fans, you can get excited about this guy.<\/p>\n

Down, but never out<\/p>\n

With a four-day break between games, the Mammoth coaching staff had ample time to plan for the Kraken, but at no point did they conclude the best plan of attack would be to give the opponent a two-goal head start.<\/p>\n

But the beauty of hockey is that a two-goal deficit just means you\u2019re two good shots away from tying it up.<\/p>\n

Both of those \u201cgood shots\u201d came from Cooley, and he knotted the score five seconds past the halfway point in the game. The latter half was all Mammoth, as they scored another four unanswered goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, (we) started the game not the way we wanted,\u201d said head coach Andr\u00e9 Tourigny. \u201cWe knew we would have a little bit of rust \u2014 we didn\u2019t play for four days \u2014 but I like the way the guys responded.\u201d<\/p>\n

When management talks about players learning how to compete, these are the instances they\u2019re referring to. In future games, maybe in the playoffs or other must-win situations, if they don\u2019t start a game the way they want, they\u2019ll have this one to look back at.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll know they can pull out a win because they\u2019ve done it before. That\u2019s half the battle in player development.<\/p>\n

Video coaches to the rescue<\/p>\n

When you think of the Utah Mammoth, Hunter Cherni and Alec Rippetoe aren\u2019t likely the first names that come to mind. But in this instance, they contributed more to the team\u2019s win than most of the players.<\/p>\n

Cherni and Rippetoe are Utah\u2019s video coaches. One of their responsibilities is to review goals, looking for potential coach\u2019s challenges \u2014 and they\u2019re almost never wrong.<\/p>\n

NHL officials are good enough at their jobs that video coaches don\u2019t have to call for challenges super often, but against the Kraken on Thursday, they challenged twice: once for a Seattle goal to be overturned and again for a disallowed Utah goal to count.<\/p>\n

They were successful on both occasions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to keep the credit on the players, but this one, I need to give some credit to Hunter and his group,\u201d Tourigny said after the game with a smile on his face. \u201cI think they did a really good job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Utah\u2019s nine successful coach\u2019s challenges this season are the second-most in the league (Toronto has 11). They\u2019re now 9 for 10, which is the fifth-best percentage in the NHL this season.<\/p>\n

In other words, Utah\u2019s video coaches have been among the best in the league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Utah Mammoth believe Logan Cooley is a franchise-level player, which they declared by giving him an $80…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[5,4188,3157,4,2686,234,5318],"class_list":{"0":"post-538145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-kraken","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-kraken","10":"tag-news-feed-local","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-kraken","14":"tag-seattlekraken"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116339610976058757","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}