46 Fun Facts About Utah Mammoth

Which club was the NHL's newest before Utah arrived?

Seattle Kraken, who arrived in 2021 and stocked their roster through an expansion draft; Utah skipped that step and played its first game less than six months after the league approved it.

The Coyotes went 'inactive' when Utah took their players in 2024, echoing which NFL team's 1990s relocation?

Cleveland Browns: their players and staff became the Baltimore Ravens in 1996 while the name, history and records stayed behind, and Cleveland got its team back three years later.

Before the move to Utah, the Coyotes spent two seasons in a rink on which university's campus?

Arizona State University's Mullett Arena, built for college hockey, held about 5,000 fans; after Tempe voters rejected a new arena in 2023, the Coyotes' owner conceded it was not suited to the NHL.

Mammoth owner Ryan Smith dropped out of which university to build his tech company, then finished his degree in 2016?

Brigham Young University: Smith left in his junior year to build a software firm with his father and brother, and only went back to complete his management degree more than a decade later.

About how much did Ryan Smith pay the NHL for the Utah franchise in 2024?

$1.2 billion, nearly double the highest fee an expansion team had paid before; Smith closed the deal through the league without ever speaking to the Coyotes' owner.

Under what temporary name did Utah play its inaugural NHL season?

Utah Hockey Club was a stopgap: approved in April 2024 and playing by October, the team had under six months, too little time to settle on a permanent name and logo.

Which platform's renamed team handle leaked the Mammoth name a week before the official reveal in May 2025?

YouTube: the club's channel handle flipped to @UtahMammoth, screenshots spread before the channel was taken offline, and officials refused to confirm anything for a week.

Which name, widely expected even by Utah's players, was blocked by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office?

Yeti was refused as too easily confused with existing brands, and the cooler maker that owns the name would not agree to share it, so the club dropped its front-runner.

Which mountain-range name spent one day on Utah's final naming ballot before 'Outlaws' replaced it?

Wasatch was a late addition meant to keep a snow-creature mascot alive, but one night of fan voting at the arena changed the club's mind and it was swapped out the next day.

Which goaltender won a franchise-record 38 games for the Mammoth in 2025-26?

Karel Vejmelka was drafted by Nashville in 2015 but never played for them; he reached the NHL from the Czech league at 25 and appeared in 64 of Utah's 82 games that season.

Which survey platform, co-founded by owner Ryan Smith, ran the Utah Mammoth naming polls?

Qualtrics began in the Smith family basement in 2002; two decades later its surveys carried the name search through four rounds and more than 850,000 votes.

Rock black and salt white are two of the Mammoth's three official colours; what is the third?

Mountain blue, chosen for Utah's winter sports and its clear skies; rock black stands for night in the mountains and volcanic desert rock, salt white for snow and the salt flats.

What is hidden in the top of the mammoth's head in the Utah Mammoth's primary logo?

Mountain peaks crown the 'Mountain Mammoth', and one of them traces the outline of Utah; the logo fronts only the home jersey, because the road one kept its stair-step UTAH lettering.

Days after the NHL approved Utah's team in April 2024, what drew more than 12,000 fans to the Delta Center?

A player welcome rally: a week after their last game in Arizona they landed to find hundreds of young skaters at the airport, then took turns firing up the arena crowd.

Which suburb hosts the Mammoth's purpose-built practice facility?

Sandy: the owners bought an entire shopping mall there, The Shops at South Town, and put two NHL-size rinks and the team offices on the site while the stores stayed open.

Who was Utah's first-ever draft pick, taken sixth overall in 2024?

Tij Iginla, son of Hall of Famer Jarome Iginla, earned the pick with a breakout year: 47 goals for Kelowna, after scoring just six the season before with Seattle's junior team.

Whom did Utah name its first captain on October 4, 2024?

Clayton Keller had led the Coyotes in goals, assists and points the season before; the club he came from had played three seasons with no captain at all after trading its last one in 2021.

Whom did Utah beat 5-2 in its first regular-season game on October 8, 2024?

Chicago Blackhawks trailed 3-0 before they scored; Utah then won its next two games in overtime in New York, a perfect start for a team that had not existed six months earlier.

Who scored the first goal in Utah's NHL history?

Dylan Guenther one-timed a Michael Kesselring pass into the net on opening night, then sealed the win with an empty-net goal in the final minute.

Utah won 38 games in its first NHL season; which club holds the first-year record with 51?

Vegas Golden Knights won 51 games in 2017-18 and rode them all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in their first season; Utah's debut finished 38-31-13.

What league first did Utah achieve during its 2025-26 season?

A full 82 games without a single shootout: no team had managed it since the tiebreaker arrived in 2005-06, because every Utah game that went past regulation was settled in overtime, six of them as losses.

Which mascot filled in for Utah during its inaugural season?

Jazz Bear was recruited by video: head coach Andre 'Bear' Tourigny greeted him with 'Hey Bear! It's Coach Bear', and the basketball mascot spent the winter as 'Hockey Bear'.

What is the name of the Utah Mammoth's mascot, unveiled in October 2025?

Tusky burst out of a giant block of ice before the first home game under the new name; the owners said the name leans into the team's 'Tusks Up' rallying cry.

Which nickname did Utah fans adopt for themselves during the team's first NHL season?

Clubbers was the fans' play on the stopgap name their team carried all that first winter, when it had no real nickname.

Which AHL club became Utah's top minor-league affiliate in 2024?

Tucson Roadrunners did not change hands with the NHL players: the Coyotes' old owner held on to the farm club, and Utah simply signed on as its parent team.

Which minor-league club played in Salt Lake City from 1969 to 1994 before becoming the Detroit Vipers?

Golden Eagles played 25 seasons in three leagues before being sold and moved to suburban Detroit, which left Salt Lake City without pro hockey for a year.

The 1995 Utah Grizzlies arrived as reigning IHL champions from which city?

Denver: the Grizzlies won the league title there in their only season, then had to leave when the NHL's Quebec Nordiques moved in as the Colorado Avalanche.

The Delta Center staged figure skating at the 2002 Olympics, so which arena hosted the gold-medal hockey games?

Maverik Center, then called the E Center, opened in suburban West Valley City in 1997; Canada beat the host Americans there to win its first men's hockey gold since 1952.

Salt Lake City was awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics at a July 2024 IOC session in which city?

Paris hosted the vote two days before its own Summer Games opened; the award means the Delta Center, a skating venue in 2002, is now planned as the 2034 Olympic hockey rink.

Which Utah businessman privately financed the Delta Center, opened in 1991?

Larry H. Miller, a car dealer who owned the city's NBA team, built the arena to house it; in 2020 his family sold both to Ryan Smith, who added hockey four years later.

Which company's 2006 naming deal earned the Delta Center mocking nicknames like 'the Chernobowl'?

EnergySolutions disposes of radioactive waste, so fans raced to rename its arena: the Glow Bowl, the Tox Box and the Melta Center were among the entries a local TV station collected.

The $900 million in public money for the Delta Center district comes from which Salt Lake City measure?

Sales-tax increase of half a percentage point funds the district, and it came with strings: the arena's two teams face heavy penalties if they leave within 30 years.

Where did Utah forward Clayton Keller play his one college season?

Boston University: Keller scored 45 points in 31 games as a freshman, then left school in the spring to play the last three games of the Coyotes' NHL season.

Which title did Utah's Logan Cooley help the United States win in 2025, its first standalone one since 1933?

World Championship gold came on Tage Thompson's overtime goal against Switzerland in Stockholm; 'standalone' matters because the 1960 Olympic win also counted as a world title.

Logan Cooley became the first player in Utah's NHL history to do what in a November 2025 home win?

Score four goals in a game: Cooley's third and fourth both went into an empty net in the last five minutes, the final one while his own team was a man short.

Which QMJHL club did Utah's first head coach, Andre Tourigny, run for 11 years?

Rouyn-Noranda Huskies: Tourigny was both coach and general manager there from 2002 to 2013, and was later promoted to lead Canada's juniors a year after winning World Junior gold as an assistant.

Which team traded Mikhail Sergachev to Utah in June 2024 for Conor Geekie and J.J. Moser?

Tampa Bay Lightning had prised Sergachev out of Montreal for Jonathan Drouin in 2017, won two Stanley Cups with him, then moved him on during the second day of Utah's first draft.

Dylan Guenther's overtime goal won Canada World Junior gold in 2023 against which country?

Czechia had erased a 2-0 deficit with two goals 54 seconds apart in the third period before Guenther, who had also opened the scoring, ended the final in overtime.

Where did Utah centre Logan Cooley play his one college season, reaching the 2023 national final?

Minnesota: Cooley's Gophers lost that final in overtime, and he announced he would come back for another try before changing his mind and turning pro that summer.

Whom did Utah select fourth overall in the 2025 NHL entry draft?

Caleb Desnoyers was only within reach because Utah won a lottery draw and jumped ten places to fourth; he had just been named playoff MVP as Moncton won the QMJHL title.

Who was Utah's first general manager when the NHL team was founded in 2024?

Bill Armstrong spent nine seasons as a minor-league defenceman and years as an NHL scouting director before taking over the Coyotes in 2020; the move carried him and his staff to Utah.

Which former Coyotes announcer was hired in September 2024 as Utah's TV play-by-play voice?

Matt McConnell spent 13 seasons calling Coyotes games before the move; it was the second time one of his teams had left town, after the Atlanta Thrashers went to Winnipeg in 2011.

What happened to the ECHL's Utah Grizzlies after the 2025-26 season?

They moved to New Jersey as the Trenton Ironhawks after a sale; though the NHL had arrived down the road, the Grizzlies were never its farm team and stayed tied to Colorado.

Which franchise single-season record did Utah's Dylan Guenther set in 2025-26?

Most goals: Guenther's 40 came three seasons after the Coyotes sent him back to junior hockey in mid-winter, a demotion that ended with him winning the WHL championship.

What did Utah achieve for the first time in the 2025–26 season?

A playoff berth, clinched in April 2026, made Utah only the third team in 45 years to reach the postseason within two years of starting play; it then lost a six-game first-round series.

Which 1996 Utah Grizzlies game drew 17,381 fans, then a minor-league hockey attendance record?

The Turner Cup clincher went to overtime, where Marc Rodgers' rebound goal beat Orlando 3-2 and sealed a second straight title in front of the biggest crowd minor-league hockey had seen.