SALT LAKE CITY – It’s been a busy offseason for General Manager Bill Armstrong and the Utah Mammoth.
As soon as the clock hit zero in a one-sided game six loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Utah’s season was over and the front office immediately went to work.
The goal?
Continue to take steps forward towards eventual contention with measured growth year over year.
But as the summer comes to a close, has Utah taken the necessary steps in order to improve?
Let’s take a look at each of their moves to determine whether or not they’ve set themselves up for success.
Before we jump into the ins and outs of the summer, let’s first paint a picture of what Utah wants the achieve this upcoming season.
After delivering on their promise of a postseason berth last year, Utah offered a commendable first-round performance as they pushed the eventual Western Conference Champion Vegas Golden Knights to six highly competitive games.
But that was just the beginning.
No team is going to hang their hat on making the playoffs once which means Utah has to return to the postseason in 2027.
“The biggest thing is that we’ve got to build off of where we are,” Armstrong told KSL Sports. “We’ve got to come into camp hungry. Our mindset has to be right coming through the door because sixteen teams made playoffs the year before and only ten came back.”
“There’s a hunger that you have to have in your blood that’s got to be boiling all summer. It’s going to be a slugfest to get back into the playoffs and each game is going to be huge for us.”
In addition to returning to the playoffs, Armstrong wants to see the team reach 100 points this season which means somewhere between 45 to 47 wins.
With two additional regular season games being added to the schedule, it may require triple digits to simply qualify for the postseason which is also why the bar must be raised.
“When I talk about building off this year, it was having that confidence, knowing that we’re a good team coming through the door and trying to be a step better. Trying to improve on the PK, power play, and get to one-hundred points,” Armstrong explained to KSL Sports.
“That’s our goal this year and I think if we focus hard and everybody has a great summer of training, is hungry, and makes a difference, we have a great chance to do that.”
Reflecting on the players Utah moved on from this summer, I’m drawn to a specific comment that Head coach Andre Tourigny made during his contract extension press conference.
When asked about what he ‘d learned from the first-round series loss to Vegas, Bear pointed out some of the challenges they faced with Barrett Hayton and Jack McBain sidelined for most of the series and an inability to call upon other players to fill those roles.
“As an organization that gave us a really good read of, if you don’t have players in certain roles who are capable of doing a certain job, you can survive eighty-two [games], but you cannot survive best of seven,” Tourigny said.
So, what did the Mammoth do?
They moved on from players who struggled to contribute during the postseason.
That meant trading JJ Peterka (zero points, plus/minus of -3) and Sean Durzi (two assists, plus/minus of -2) while parting with Alexander Kerfoot (one assist, plus/minus of -2), Ian Cole (two points, plus/ minus of -2) and Vitek Vanecek (DNP).
Not bad players by any means but rather individuals who Utah needed to move on from as they’d served their purpose in a Mammoth sweater.
Peterka wasn’t a good fit, Durzi wasn’t playing up to his potential, Vanecek couldn’t support Karel Vejmelka, Kerfoot didn’t fit the playoff mold and Cole had aged out.
Difficult skaters to move on from for different reasons but absolutely the right moves to make if this team was going to get better.
For those who watched the first-round series between the Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth this past spring, there was a pretty blatant discrepancy between the two clubs through each of those games.
Of the 23 goals the Vegas Golden Knights scored in the first round against Utah, 14 of them could be considered dirty goals.
As demonstrated throughout the series, the Knights dominated the front of the net as they consistently won 50-50 position battles near the crease, screened Karel Vejmelka and successfully tormented the defense by finishing a plethora second chance opportunities.
Meanwhile, of the 18 goals scored by the Mammoth, only five of those could be considered dirty as they simply could not compete with the Knights in front of the net.
Upon examination, that didn’t sit well with the front office which is why they heavily pursued Vincent Trocheck and Anders Lee.
“When we internally broke down our team, a lot of it had to do with the Vegas series,” Utah GM Bill Armstrong told KSL Sports. “We have to get to the inside. We’ve got to play harder on the inside.”
“You have to have people who are designated to be net front guys and they own the front. To the Barrett Hayton’s of the world to the Vinny Trocheck and Anders Lee, who is a master at it, you can just feel we’re going to be a harder team to play against when we get to the middle of the ice.”
In addition to adding Lee and Trocheck, Utah also repurposed one of the first-round picks they received in the Peterka trade to acquire 23-year-old goaltender Sebastian Cossa to cement their backup position.
But how does this help Utah?
What do these players bring that the team was missing a season ago?
Standing 6-foot-3, 234 pounds, 14-year veteran Anders Lee is a pure power forward known for his net-front presence, physicality, scoring touch, and proven leadership as an eight-year captain of the New York Islanders.
As for Trocheck, while not as big as Lee, he too likes to use his body as he plays a hard-nosed, agitating style of hockey that produces dirty goals while getting under the skin of the opposition.
Anders Lee wasn’t kidding today when he said he plans to create havoc around the net for Utah. pic.twitter.com/zO4t8JWiSa
— Cole Bagley (@BagleyKSLsports) July 11, 2026
DOUBLE OT GAME WINNER FOR THE HOME TEAM! 🚨
Vincent Trocheck is the Game 2 hero for the Rangers as he scores the @SUBWAYCanada OT winner. pic.twitter.com/LIRRm5dKuL
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 8, 2024
For Cossa, with an expectation to graduate from the AHL to the NHL this season, Utah finally solved their backup issue with a promising young goaltender who could lead the team to even greater heights down the road.
“We’re in it to win it now,” Utah Mammoth Radio Pregame & Postgame host Adrian Denny said on the latest episode of the Utah Hockey Podcast.
“I think there’s no question, [the Mammoth are] probably the most improved team in the NHL … If there was one thing about Utah over the last two seasons that you look at and say this is an area where we can improve on, that’s net front presence. I watched every goal that Vinny Trocheck and Anders Lee scored and they’re in front of the net.”
As Denny pointed out, Utah addressed their biggest need by adding two gritty, grimy, net front players in Lee and Trocheck.
Not that those acquisitions will solve all of their problems, but as demonstrated against Vegas, playoff hockey is different.
With less time and space to operate, the game demands more physicality and an ability to net greasy, dirty goals right in front.
So, can you say with a surety that Utah had the best offseason in the National Hockey League this summer?
We won’t know the answer to that question until the puck drops in October.
However, what we can say is that Utah took the summer seriously and should be associated with the likes of the New York Rangers, Washington Capitals and Toronto Maple Leafs as teams who won the offseason.
But as Armstrong has stated many times, winning the summer doesn’t matter if you go onto to lose the winter.
Time will tell whether or not Utah made proper calculated acquisitions in order to win both, but I like their chances.
