November 2, 2026
November 2, 2026
Utah Hockey Club 2024-25 Season: The Year the NHL Came to Salt Lake City
Utah Hockey Club’s 2024-25 season was a debut with no margin for a soft landing. The franchise arrived from Arizona in April 2024, inherited a young roster, and had barely six months to build a home in Salt Lake City. It answered with an 89-point campaign, a first-season road record, and a captain who played the best hockey of his career. The playoffs stayed just out of reach, yet the foundation for the team later renamed the Utah Mammoth was poured that winter.
New owners Ryan and Ashley Smith wanted a team that could compete immediately, not a placeholder. General manager Bill Armstrong moved aggressively on June 29. He acquired defenseman Mikhail Sergachev from Tampa Bay for Conor Geekie, J.J. Moser, and draft picks. On the same day, he landed John Marino from New Jersey for two second-round selections.
Those trades rebuilt the blue line in a single afternoon. Armstrong then added veteran defenseman Ian Cole and center Kevin Stenlund in free agency. At the draft, Utah selected Tij Iginla sixth overall. In September, Dylan Guenther signed an eight-year extension, a clear statement about who would carry the franchise forward.
Andre Tourigny returned as head coach, and Clayton Keller was named the first captain in franchise history. The Delta Center, built for basketball, was reconfigured with 11,131 unobstructed seats. Every one of them would be filled.
The franchise needed a first impression worth remembering, and it got one on October 8. Chicago arrived with Connor Bedard, and the building buzzed long before puck drop. Within the first five minutes, Guenther buried the first goal in franchise history.
Keller added a second goal about ten minutes later, and Barrett Hayton tipped in a Sergachev shot midway through the second period. Bedard set up two Chicago goals to make it tense. Guenther sealed it with an empty-netter, and Lawson Crouse closed a 5-2 victory. Connor Ingram made 26 saves, and the KSL recap of that historic night captured a crowd that had waited decades for NHL hockey.
Utah then clawed out overtime wins on Long Island and at Madison Square Garden. A 3-0-0 start matched the Vegas Golden Knights’ record for the best opening by a new franchise.
The rebuilt defense unraveled almost before it settled. Sean Durzi injured his right shoulder against New Jersey on October 14. Surgery followed, along with a projected absence of four to six months. Marino, meanwhile, needed surgery on his lower back before playing a game.
The TSN report on both surgeries confirmed the worst. Utah would lean on internal options, recalling Maveric Lamoureux from the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners. Armstrong also acquired Olli Maatta from Detroit on October 29 to steady the depth chart. Durzi eventually missed 52 games and Marino missed the first 42. Guenther lost 12 more, and the club surrendered more than 230 man-games to injury.
The cost showed. October ended at 5-4-2, and November produced only five wins. A team built around its blue line spent half the season without the defense it had designed.
December revealed the strangest split of the season. On the road, Utah turned into one of the league’s most stubborn opponents. In Salt Lake City, the wins dried up.
The road run built quietly and then demanded attention. A 4-3 win in San Jose in mid-December gave Utah six straight road victories. As The Hockey News detailed, that broke a first-season mark held by the 1967-68 Minnesota North Stars. Over the same stretch, Utah lost six straight home games after a November 13 win over Carolina.
Guenther scored twice in a 2-1 win over Minnesota on December 20, giving Utah four straight wins. It would be the longest winning streak of the season. That ceiling mattered. Utah finished December at 16-15-6 and January at 21-21-9, never able to string together the run that separates contenders from hopefuls.
February offered a real opening, and Utah seized it. A 6-3-0 month pushed the record to 27-24-9 and put the wild-card race within reach. A shootout win in Washington on February 9 typified the grit of that stretch.
Armstrong stayed disciplined at the deadline. On March 7, he moved Aku Raty, Victor Soderstrom, and the contract of Shea Weber to Chicago for a fifth-round pick. The roster stayed largely intact for the push.
The turning point arrived in late March in Tampa. Utah needed points badly and instead absorbed an 8-0 loss, the most lopsided defeat of the season. The team responded with five wins in April, but the damage had been done. Utah was eliminated on April 9, when Minnesota beat San Jose in overtime, as the NHL.com elimination breakdown explained.
Durzi returned for the stretch run, rejoining Marino, who had been back since midwinter. Tourigny finally had the defense he had planned around in July. The reinforcements came too late to erase the deficit. The season closed on April 15 with a 6-1 loss in St. Louis, against the very team that held the last playoff spot.
Utah Hockey Club’s 2024-25 season ended at 38-31-13 with 89 points. That placed the club sixth in the Central Division, seven points behind St. Louis for the final wild card. It also represented a 12-point improvement over the franchise’s last season in Arizona.
Keller carried the franchise from the first night to the last. The captain scored 30 goals and added 60 assists for 90 points in 81 games. That shattered his previous career high of 86, and it came while wearing the first “C” in team history.
Logan Cooley announced himself as a cornerstone center. He finished second on the team with 65 points and added 25 goals. Nick Schmaltz played all 82 games and produced 63 points. Guenther scored 27 goals in only 70 games, the most efficient goal pace on the roster.
Sergachev delivered exactly what Armstrong had paid for. He posted 15 goals and 53 points while absorbing heavy minutes on a battered defense. Hayton added 20 goals, giving Utah a genuine scoring threat down the middle. The complete individual numbers live on Hockey Reference.
The depth players earned their keep as well. Michael Kesselring dressed for all 82 games and contributed 29 points from the back end. Stenlund and Jack McBain each played every night in the bottom six. McBain finished with a team-best plus-8 rating, a quiet measure of how reliably his line handled tough assignments.
In goal, Karel Vejmelka seized the starting role. He appeared in 58 games and won a career-high 26, posting a 2.58 goals-against average. With the defense depleted for months, his consistency kept Utah relevant deep into spring.
Utah Hockey Club’s 2024-25 season proved that NHL hockey belonged in Salt Lake City. The Delta Center sold out its hockey configuration night after night. A market that had never hosted the league embraced it from the opening faceoff.
The shortcomings were just as clear. Utah ranked 25th in the league in home points percentage and never won more than four straight. Its 2.87 goals per game left too little room for error. Those weaknesses gave the front office a precise blueprint for the summer ahead.
The off-ice work was still unfinished, too. The franchise spent its debut year operating without a permanent practice facility, with that complex slated to open for the following training camp. About 90 percent of season-ticket members were expected to renew, a sign the honeymoon was turning into loyalty.
What was a first season supposed to deliver, if not a reason to believe? Keller, Cooley, and Guenther gave fans exactly that. The franchise became the Utah Mammoth the following spring, but the identity was forged here. Utah Hockey Club’s 2024-25 season was the first chapter, and it set the standard every later chapter would be measured against.
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