What are the Utah Mammoth’s biggest X-factors?
It’s been quite a start to the 2026-27 season for the Utah Mammoth, who are 10-6-1 and rank second in the Central Division going into Saturday’s slate of games.
Four Mammoth skaters have at least 20 points through their first 17 contests — Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley, Nick Schmaltz and Mikhail Sergachev — and their power play is the best in the NHL with a success rate of 38.3 per cent. Their success with the man advantage is a far cry from the 2025-26 campaign, where they finished 18th in the NHL with a rate of 20 per cent.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton are joined by KSL Sports’ reporter Cole Bagley to discuss where the Mammoth rank among the league’s best teams and what are the X-factors to helping them reach the playoffs.
Carter Hutton: When you look at this team and their power play and how good it’s been … is the power play always going to be that “X-factor”? How do you add your total depth to this team to win these big hockey games? How do you find ways to win on these four-game road trips?
Cole Bagley: I think the power play has been a huge X-factor for this team right now. It’s the best in the National Hockey League, the way that they’re able to break teams down. it’s crazy, because the power play was abysmal last year and was one of the worst in the NHL for the first three or four months of the season.
A lot of people are wondering what they’re doing differently, and to be honest, they’re just shooting the puck. They did a great job of playing “monkey in the middle,” if you will, for most of last year. They could possess the hell out of the puck. But they could not get shots. They were holding on to the puck, just kind of playing with it up at the top … but nobody would shoot it.
Now they’re getting production. Mikhail Sergachev has scored a couple goals on the power play, Dylan Guenther has five on the season, Nick Schmaltz has been phenomenal in that bumper spot and has seven on the season. Logan Cooley has been an absolute demon as of late; he is playing probably the best stretch of hockey we’ve seen in his young career.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…
