The Utah Mammoth are 9-5-0 to start a 2025-26 season full of excitement, and all of a sudden, expectations. They signed Logan Cooley to an eight-year extension worth $10 million per year, which should kick off a long run of contention. But before the team got to Salt Lake City, they were toiling in mediocrity as the Arizona Coyotes. Mammoth head coach Andre Tourigny discussed how Arizona has shaped the Utah club with The Athletic's Chris Johnston.
“You need to go through it,” Tourigny said, per Johnston. “Your parents can tell you all your life, ‘Don’t do that,’ or ‘Be careful of this.’ When you go through it, it’s just to realize ‘Ah, Mom was right,’ or ‘Dad was right.’ That’s just the way it is. I think that was maybe a tough pill to swallow at the time, but now we took our medicine and we learned from it. It’s not over, but we’ve been through some battle scars, and that helps now.”
The Mammoth have a line of young, future superstars with Cooley in between Dylan Guenther and JJ Peterka. They still have flaws they need to fill, which could happen at the trade deadline, but the core is coming together.
The end of the Coyotes was a spiraling dumpster fire, which ended with the team playing in a 5,000-seat college arena. Mammoth general manager Bill Armstrong was with the club then and spoke about the difference between Salt Lake and Scottsdale.
“We have a TV set in the video room where the players meet every morning that is probably worth more than our entire facility was in Arizona,” Armstrong told Johnston.
The Mammoth are set up to contend in the Western Conference for years to come, thanks to the investment from Ryan Smith. Can that start this year?
