{"id":557000,"date":"2026-04-21T00:51:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/557000\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T00:51:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:51:23","slug":"cooley-guenther-have-opportunity-to-establish-themselves-as-playoff-performers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/557000\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooley, Guenther have opportunity to establish themselves as playoff performers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">For a good number of hockey fans, especially those situated in the eastern time zone, the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs will efffectively be their introduction to the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/utah-mammoth\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Utah Mammoth<\/a>. The team has had a surprisingly impressive season, and now find themselves down 1-0 to the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/vegas-golden-knights\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vegas Golden Knights<\/a> in their first playoff series since relocating from Arizona.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Neutral observers are likely familiar with Utah\u2019s veterans like Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz, and Mikhail Sergachev, but young forwards Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther have a chance to truly make a name for themselves on the national stage. The early-twenties duo represents the future of the Mammoth franchise, and if they can prove themselves as big-time players this postseason, they can put Utah on the map as a team to watch in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">On Monday\u2019s episode of\u00a0<a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=suAazoSyYcE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>,\u00a0hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton were joined by\u00a0KSL Sports\u2019 Cole Bagley to discuss the opportunity these playoffs offer for Cooley and Guenther.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Cole\u00a0Bagley:\u00a0I think a lot of people understand how bright of a future Guenther and Cooley have, but last night I think what they demonstrated is that they can compete in the playoffs. Their game is built for the playoffs. They\u2019re rising to the occasion, and not just offensively, but defensively as well. I was really impressed by how active Guenther and Cooley were in terms of helping out in the defensive zone. They had a lot of active sticks. Guenther made probably three or four really important defensive plays by breaking up passes or getting on the backcheck, lifting a guy\u2019s stick who was in a prime scoring area. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Those two have an opportunity to prove that they\u2019re not just regular season type of players, they\u2019re not just these young kids that are going to wait to ease themselves into the playoffs. They\u2019re ready to go from Game 1 and they\u2019re ready to assert themselves and dominate in a fashion that\u2019s going to help Utah make some noise. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Monday\u2019s episode here\u2026<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a good number of hockey fans, especially those situated in the eastern time zone, the 2026 Stanley&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5,4,51,5290,232,5291,5289],"class_list":{"0":"post-557000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-hockey-club","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-utah","11":"tag-utah-hc","12":"tag-utah-hockey-club","13":"tag-utahhc","14":"tag-utahhockeyclub"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116439959682600076","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557000","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=557000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}