{coyotes} Mammoth rebuilding project puts Utah in playoffs in team’s second season since moving from Arizona

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Utah’s rebuilding process began in the Arizona desert, where the team was known as the Coyotes and progress was incremental.

In the first year after a move to Salt Lake City, the team became the Utah Hockey Club and took a bigger step, winning eight more games than the previous season to inch closer to the NHL playoffs.

Now known as the Mammoth, the young players who served as the rebuild foundation have developed into a skilled, cohesive unit that’s reached the postseason for the first time in six years.

“The guys are getting older, more mature, and they learn from what happens,” Mammoth coach André Tourigny said after his team’s playoff-clinching 4-1 win over Nashville on Thursday night. “The GM does a great job to improve the team every year. It’s easy now to look back and see we started from scratch. It’s a privilege when you start the process where you start. It’s not every time you have that much runway, so I feel fortunate and try to keep improving every year for the next.”

The win over Nashville put Utah (42-30-6) in the top Western Conference playoff wild-card spot, six points ahead of the Predators. The Mammoth are the third team in 45 years to make the playoffs in the first two seasons as a franchise — with Vegas and Seattle — but did it with a foundation of players who played in Arizona before the team moved.

The Mammoth already have four more wins than last season and their 90 points is two more than last season, which had been highest since 2013-14. Utah has won five straight, eight of its last 11 and are 21-14-3 at home.

That puts the Mammoth in the postseason for the first time since the 2020 NHL playoff bubble — then as the Coyotes — and second since reaching the 2012 Western Conference finals.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Utah captain and leading scorer Clayton Keller said. “A lot of us haven’t played in the playoffs in a while and we want to taste that. You want to play against the best teams and see what it’s all about.”

They’ve done it with superb goaltending and balanced scoring.

Karel Vejmelka has been solid since joining the Coyotes in 2021, superb this season.

The 29-year-old has a career-high 36 wins, 10 more than his previous best and second only to Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy’s 37 in the NHL. Vejmelka’s 36 wins also are the most by a Czech goaltender since Dominik Hasek’s 38 in 2006-07 and he had a career-best eight-game win streak (8-0-0) in January.

The offense has been a nice change for a franchise that’s long lacked in that aspect.

Utah is 10th in the NHL at 3.31 goals per game and scored at least six goals in four straight games, eight of the last 10, before putting up four against Nashville. The Mammoth have six players with at least 20 goals, matching Vegas and Colorado for most in the NHL.

Keller has been his usual steady self. The four-time NHL All-Star leads the team with 80 points — his fourth straight 70-point season — and 54 assists, and is third with 26 goals.

Dylan Guenther has continued to get better in his fourth NHL season, setting career highs with 38 goals and 69 points.

Mikhail Sergachev has been a superb two-way defenseman since joining the Mammoth prior to the 2024-25 season and is fourth on the team this year with 56 points, including 46 assists.

Then there’s Nick Schmaltz.

The 30-year-old has been one of the NHL’s best under-the-radar skilled players and has peaked this season, his eighth with the Mammoth.

Schmaltz is an elite defensive forward, but also creative with the puck and his movement. He’s having a career year, reaching 30 goals and 70 points — both second on the team — for the first time in 10 NHL seasons.

“He’s just go gifted; fast, skilled, thinks the game such a high level, has such a good stick,” Keller said. “There’s so many things about his game that people don’t recognize or truly appreciate as much as all of us do in this room, just how good he is.”

Same could be said for the Mammoth, who now get to show the rest of the hockey world in this year’s playoffs.