HIGHLIGHTS
- Utah Mammoth clinch their first playoff berth since relocating to Salt Lake City, beating Nashville 4-1
- The franchise hasn’t been in the postseason since 2019-20, when it was still the Arizona Coyotes
- Full breakdown of how they got here and what comes next below
Playoff hockey is coming to Salt Lake City.
The Utah Mammoth clinched their first postseason berth Thursday night with a 4-1 win over the Nashville Predators at Delta Center, combined with San Jose’s loss to Anaheim. It is the franchise’s first trip to the playoffs since 2019-20, when it was still the Arizona Coyotes playing in a college arena.
Clayton Keller had three assists and was all over the ice. The 27-year-old is in his ninth season with this franchise going back to the Coyotes days, and he leads Utah with 80 points in 77 games. He stuck around through all of it. The instability, the relocation, the rebrand. This is his reward.
Nick Schmaltz scored a power-play goal. Dylan Guenther had a goal and an assist. Lawson Crouse and Kailer Yamamoto added the other two. Karel Vejmelka stopped 29 shots for his 36th win.
Vejmelka has been a machine. The 29-year-old Czech leads the NHL with 60 appearances this season and owns a 36-19-3 record. He has quietly been one of the most important players in the Western Conference.
Utah is 42-30-6 with 90 points and has won five straight. They sit in the first wild-card spot and will likely face the Pacific Division winner in Round 1, which could be Edmonton, Anaheim, or Vegas. That race is still not settled.
The roster was built aggressively. MacKenzie Weegar came over from Calgary at the trade deadline. JJ Peterka was added in a summer blockbuster. Logan Cooley and Schmaltz both signed long-term extensions during the season. The Mammoth lead the entire NHL with six different 20-goal scorers.
Head coach Andre Tourigny deserves a lot of credit. He took over ahead of the 2021-22 season when the franchise was still in Arizona, coached through some of the most unstable years any NHL team has ever experienced, and kept building something. The results are now showing up when it matters.
The Zammoth is real, the building is loud, and the team is in. Ryan Smith’s hockey experiment in Utah just took a massive step forward.
