The Utah Mammoth remain a work in progress.
Last season, among the 32 NHL franchises, the Utah Hockey Club ranked last in home attendance, but that had more to do with seating capacity than fan interest. Having the league’s smallest (temporarily) seating capacity in the NHL at 11,131, the team achieved 41 home game sellouts.
For the start of this season, the second since the franchise relocated from Arizona, where it had skated for the prior 27 NHL seasons as the Coyotes, 1,100 new lower-bowl seats were added to boost fan engagement and the team’s bottom line. Ongoing renovations to the 34-year-old Delta Center promise a seating capacity of 17,000.
During the Coyotes’ existence, the team has called three different arenas home. Mullett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University hosted the Coyotes during their final two full NHL seasons under that name. But, while listing 5,000 seats for Sun Devils college hockey in Tempe, Arizona, capacity shrunk to 4,600 for NHL games due to professional set-up requirements.
Selecting the new team name Mammoth this past May, to increase franchise awareness among its fan base, represents progress. During its 2024–2025 season, the team was billed simply as the Utah Hockey Club: Utah HC. Since April 2024, when the NHL Board of Governors approved the sale of the Coyotes to SEG (Smith Entertainment Group) and the team’s relocation to Utah, ownership has shown a long-term financial and community-minded commitment to sports fans in the Beehive State.
SEG, which also owns and operates the NBA’s Utah Jazz, understands the long hockey history in the state. Dating back to the 1968 independent Salt Lake Sea Gulls, to professionally affiliated teams in the Central Hockey League, American Hockey League, International Hockey League, to the present Utah Grizzlies in the Double-A ECHL, competition on ice has been part of the fabric of Utah sports. Now, with the funding needed to compete at the game’s highest level, NHL fans are being recruited at record pace.
Across their 27 years in Arizona, the Coyotes failed to qualify for Stanley Cup playoff participation 18 times. Bill Armstrong, Mammoth general manager, has been working to change that trajectory. After signing goalie Karel Vejmelka to a five-year contract last March, and with team captain Clayton Keller’s veteran leadership and Olli Maatta, a two-time Stanley Cup winner, anchoring the Mammoth defense, the roster is being built for the long haul. This past Friday, center Keller was named to Team USA’s men’s team for the upcoming Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy. Maatta has been selected to take part in the Olympics for Team Finland.
Arguably playing in the toughest NHL division, just past the halfway point of the season, Utah sits in sixth place, a whopping 28 points behind the Central Division and Western Conference-leading Colorado Avalanche. Also trailing division rivals Minnesota (58 points) and Dallas (57 points), the Mammoth’s 19–20–3 record, good for 41 points, has them within striking distance of fourth place Nashville.
Lagging behind by a single point of the Nashville Predators, Utah is just two points out of a Wild Card invitation to the Stanley Cup playoffs, if the postseason were to begin today.
Although Utah isn’t logging the most travel miles for an NHL team this season, the anticipated 42,000-plus miles on the road is another hurdle the team is adjusting to. The current road trip for Utah has taken them to the northeast. Beginning on Jan 1, the Mammoth skated Thursday on New York’s Long Island against the New York Islanders, Saturday with the New Jersey Devils, and had a Monday match in New York City’s Manhattan borough with the New York Rangers. Saturday’s visit to Newark’s Prudential Center for the Mammoth was the second meeting between these two teams in as many weeks.
In December, at Delta Center, New Jersey eked out a 2–1 victory. Following Thursday’s 7–2 road win over the Islanders, Saturday’s 4–1 loss to the Devils saw the Mammoth make 31 shots on goal, but only Michael Carcone’s wrist shot in the third period, his seventh goal of the season, sneaked past Devils’ netminder Jacob Markstrom.
Mammoth center Logan Cooley in the 2024–2025 season attained 25 goals and 65 points, all before his 21st birthday. Thus far in his second year in Utah, the Pittsburgh native has 23 points. Dylan Guenther leads the Mammoth in goals scored with 20.
Utah currently comes in 16th place among NHL teams in goals scored this season with 127 and 331 points. On the power play this season, the Mammoth are tied with the Los Angeles Kings for 27th place at 16.1 percent. In their play on the penalty kill, however, Utah is among the top 10 teams.
Coach André Tourigny is sure to get a contract extension, after signing a three-year deal that he accepted prior to the 2023–2024 season. With much work still to accomplish, in order to move up the ladder of competitive franchises, the Mammoth have found in Utah a stable and appreciative home base that had been lacking throughout their history. SEG is building a proud franchise, and hockey fans in Utah are responding. Next, the team needs to do the same.
