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Logan Cooley came home to Pittsburgh and turned the night into a horror movie for the Penguins.

A hat trick. A tying goal in the final second. Mikhail Sergachev finishing it in overtime. Austin makes the case for this being the most exciting win in Mammoth history—and explains why it felt like a glimpse of the player Cooley can become.

The Hidden Gem is the play before the chaos: Vincent Trocheck’s faceoff win that let Utah get possession, bring on the extra attacker and give Cooley one more chance.

Also in this episode: a traffic-cone costume, a badly timed nap, the road trip ahead and another round of superstar trade speculation around Utah.

Support the show at https://slcpuck.shop/ and explore The Next Shift Project at https://slcpuck.shop/collections/the-next-shift-project. Hidden Gem presented by Jonathan’s Jewelry.

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The Utah Mammoth lost 3-1 to Minnesota, but this wasn’t just about one bad night. Austin’s main takeaway is that the penalties absolutely buried Utah — 29 penalty minutes, seven Wild power plays, and two Minnesota power-play goals — while Utah’s own power play went 0-for-4.

But the bigger issue is what this game exposed: Utah keeps shuffling lines instead of letting real top-six chemistry build. Austin argues the Keller-Schmaltz and Cooley-Guenther duos are obvious, and now the Mammoth need to stop scrambling and commit to the right complementary piece.

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Austin brought in Adrian Denny for a very specific conversation: the Mammoth goaltending panic, the trade that never happened, and whether fans should actually be freaking out after the Seattle loss.

Adrian’s big argument is that Utah’s front office isn’t operating on impulse. Bill Armstrong is checking on everything, Utah can be in every rumor because it’s a destination and has assets, but that doesn’t mean the team should blow up its cap flexibility because people got spooked by a bad three-game save percentage stretch.

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Utah lost 5-3 in Seattle, and Austin’s whole point is that this team keeps making life harder than it has to be because it isn’t getting the best goaltending on the ice. Seattle got a .917 night from Philipp Grubauer, while Karel Vejmelka stopped 18 of 22 for an .818 save percentage, and that keeps fitting a bad trend.

Over Utah’s last three games, Austin says the Mammoth goalies have posted a combined .774 save percentage while opposing goalies are at .892. That’s why the Connor Hellebuyck conversation suddenly feels a lot less theoretical and a lot more urgent.

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Utah split the Edmonton set, which should feel pretty good on paper: a 4-2 win in Edmonton, then a 6-2 faceplant in Salt Lake City. But the real point of the episode is simpler than the scorelines: this team looks good enough to matter, and the goaltending still looks like the thing that could drag it back to earth.

Austin also gives Kailer Yamamoto his flowers after a goal, 3 assists, and instant-impact minutes since Michael Carcone went week-to-week, while asking the uncomfortable Karel Vejmelka question out loud. The power play is still humming at 35.3%, the 5-on-5 process looks strong, and Utah might be better than its raw goals say. But if the crease stays shaky, that’s the conversation.

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The Utah Mammoth are officially the top net-rated team in the NHL, which is both hilarious and very real. Austin digs into what’s driving it: a 5-2-0 start, 27 goals scored, a plus-8 goal differential, and a win over Toronto where Utah survived despite going 0-for-4 on the power play and watching Dylan Guenther live in the penalty box.

Then it turns into the real test: two straight against Edmonton. Connor McDavid has 17 points in 6 games, Evan Bouchard somehow has 14 points from the blue line, and the Oilers are averaging 4.8 goals per game. If Utah wants to keep this net-rating throne, the path is simple and terrifying: stay out of the box.

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The main thing from this episode: Utah coming home with 6 of 10 points on a five-game trip is good, but the bigger issue is Logan Cooley still not having a goal through six games. Austin’s case is pretty direct — Cooley himself admitted he hasn’t been enough of a shooting threat, and the Buffalo 2-on-1 was the clearest example yet.

Utah’s power play is humming at 10-for-25 and the overall process at 5-on-5 actually looks strong, but Cooley’s even-strength mindset has to change. He’s been a really useful distributor on the power play, yet if he wants to be in that top young-star tier, he has to start taking the shot when it’s there and burying chances like that one against Buffalo.

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Utah got drilled 6-1 in Boston, and the ugly part is how many different ways it went wrong at once. The power play came in running at 61.5% and went 0-for-7, while Boston went 3-for-4 and David Pastrnak basically turned the game into a personal project.

The weird part is Utah still outshot Boston 37-22 and generated 4.5 expected goals to Boston’s 2.33, which tells you this was part regression-to-the-mean, part Jeremy Swayman brick wall, and part a brutal night in net for Sebastian Cossa and Karel Vejmelka. Clayton Keller’s version is still the right one: flush the toilet and get ready for Buffalo.

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Utah beat New Jersey 5-3, but this one felt bigger than two road points. The Mammoth went 2-for-4 on the power play, got Clayton Keller’s first of the season 1:57 into the game, and saw Nick Schmaltz stay absurdly hot with a goal and two assists.

But the real story was the attitude. Utah out-hit the Devils 24-10, survived a late 6-on-4 after MacKenzie Weegar’s third penalty, and Jack McBain turned Brenden Dillon’s forehead into modern art. This team doesn’t just want to beat you anymore. It wants you to remember it.

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This one is a free SLC Puck Plus preview, and it is absolutely not for children. Austin digs into the NHL’s bizarre “Hot for Hockey” campaign, the hockey-smut boom around stuff like Heated Rivalry and Off Campus, and why the league’s 60-to-90 second romance-audio idea got yanked almost immediately.

The core take: the NHL didn’t fail because the campaign was too strange. It failed because it tried to wink at the bit instead of fully committing, then backtracked when players clearly hated seeing Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Trevor Zegras, Sebastian Aho and even Gritty dragged into it.

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Three games is absolutely enough time to overreact, so let’s do it responsibly: the Utah Mammoth look better than last year. Even after the 4-2 loss at Madison Square Garden, this team is controlling play, piling up shots, and turning the power play into an actual weapon instead of a tax audit.

Austin gets into the 93-55 shot differential through three games, the absurd 6-for-9 power play, the perfect 9-for-9 penalty kill, and the moment the whole team jumped in after Dylan Guenther got shoved dangerously from behind by Will Cuylle. Also: why Karel Vejmelka might be doing a little too much.

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Austin’s main takeaway heading into Columbus: Utah may have just played the best game in franchise history, and now we get the first real road test of what that actually means. The 6-0 win over Chicago wasn’t just loud on the scoreboard — Utah doubled Chicago in shots 32-15, owned nearly 76% of expected goals, took 80% of the high-danger chances, won 72.2% of faceoffs, and out-hit them 42-12.

But the real tension in this matchup is Logan Cooley. After Cooley’s crowd-hush game-winner in Columbus last year, Austin thinks the Blue Jackets — especially Mathieu Olivier — will be looking to make him uncomfortable. That puts a spotlight on Anders Lee, and maybe even Liam O'Brien, as Utah’s built-in answer if this turns nasty.

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Austin Facer argues that Utah’s 6-0 destruction of the Chicago Blackhawks on opening night may have been the best overall performance in Utah Mammoth history. This wasn’t just a win. It was a full-game mugging at Delta Center, with Utah controlling roughly 57 to 58 minutes, doubling Chicago in shots on goal, and allowing Karel Vejmelka to face just 15 total shots on the way to the first home shutout in franchise history.

The night started with the most familiar possible twist: Dylan Guenther scoring the team’s first goal of the season for the third straight year. He added another on the power play, finishing with 2 goals and 5 shots, while Michael Carcone scored 40 seconds after Guenther’s opener to turn the game into a runaway almost immediately.

Austin also digs into why this felt different from previous Mammoth teams: Utah won 72.2% of its faceoffs, went 2-for-3 on the power play after going 0-for-8 against Chicago last season, and got immediate impact from new faces like Anders Lee and Vincent Trocheck. Lee scored his first point in a Mammoth uniform, Trocheck won 11 of 14 draws and delivered 6 hits, and the whole thing somehow included Tusky repelling from the ceiling like that was a normal mammoth activity.

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Opening night in Salt Lake City is here, but the real point of this episode isn’t just vibes. It’s that Utah absolutely cannot let Chicago be the same weird boogeyman it was last season after going 0-2-2 against the Blackhawks and 0-for-8 on the power play in that season series.

Austin argues this season starts with a real test: did Utah actually get more dangerous, or are we still waiting around for the Dylan Guenther one-timer? He predicts Utah wins 5-2, gets a power-play goal from the second unit, and says Daniel Bute might be the one to absolutely nuke one home.

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Year three of NHL hockey in Utah is here, and this episode is basically a live check-in on the collective fan brain. Nervous? Excited? Too emotionally compromised to answer? Same. Austin and Sam talk through what this season feels like after a playoff run, a six-game exit against Vegas, and another round of Delta Center upgrades that somehow keep making opening night feel bigger.

They get into the new-look roster, why the Blackhawks opener feels winnable, whether Vegas is officially Utah’s real rival now, and the specific players who could surprise people right away. There is also, naturally, an important discussion about Nate Schmidt, Dmitri Simashev, giant defensemen, and what Mammoth players might be eating during intermission.

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Three preseason games in, the biggest Utah Mammoth roster answer feels a lot less complicated than it did a week ago: Daniil But should be on the opening-night top line. Austin makes the case for But riding shotgun with Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz after his three-point breakout against Los Angeles, and lays out the full lineup he’d use for game one against Calgary at the Delta Center.

He also gets into the harder roster calls: why Tij Iginla and Caleb Desnoyers look AHL-bound for now, why Dmitri Simashev has won a defense spot, why Liam O’Brien forced his way into the conversation, and why Brandon Tanev may be the odd man out.

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The season is finally here, and Austin’s main point is pretty simple: yes, the home opener is going to be a blast, but the real story is how much pressure is baked into Utah’s start. The Mammoth open Thursday against Chicago, and even without Connor Bedard in the lineup, this is not some free square after Utah struggled badly against the Blackhawks last year.

Austin also zeroes in on the bigger problem: Utah plays 13 of its first 18 games on the road. That’s a real gut check for a team trying to prove last year’s playoff berth wasn’t the warm-up act. There’s real optimism here, but also a warning not to panic if the standings look weird by November.

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Eric Jensen jumped on the show and made the case Utah isn’t just a cute up-and-coming team anymore. His big swing: the Mammoth finish top three in the Central, with one of Colorado, Dallas, or Minnesota sliding back while Utah cashes in on better depth and fewer contract headaches.

We also got into why Colorado-Utah still isn’t a real blood-rivalry yet, why Minnesota feels weirdly fragile because of the Quinn Hughes situation, and why St. Louis might be the annoying team everybody is forgetting. If Utah is going to make real noise, this is the exact divisional conversation that matters.

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LATE UPLOAD: RECORDED SEPT. 22, 2026

Daniil But was the biggest thing Austin could not stop thinking about after Utah’s 6-3 preseason win over the Los Angeles Kings. But finished with a goal, an assist, a game-high plus-3, three shots, a block, a hit, and zero giveaways. More than the stat line, he looked decisive, physical, and smart on basically every shift next to Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz.

This episode is built around one argument: But may have forced Utah’s hand. Austin breaks down why that Keller-Schmaltz-But line looked so dangerous, why But’s net-front work and puck movement stood out, and why this suddenly feels like a real opening-night possibility instead of a training-camp experiment.

There’s also a little pushback even after a fun win. Karel Vejmelka allowed 3 goals on 22 shots, and Austin thought Utah’s odd-man rush coverage and Vejmelka’s left-to-right tracking still looked shaky. Plus: Liam O’Brien brought the usual chaos and scored, Anders Lee had two goals, and Tij Iginla flashed some swagger with a filthy postgame shootout finish.

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LATE UPLOAD: RECORDED SEPT. 27, 2026

Utah’s first preseason game in Denver felt exactly like preseason hockey is supposed to feel: rusty, weird, sloppy, and just useful enough to tell us something. In a 4-1 loss to Colorado, the biggest thing Austin kept coming back to was Maveric Lamoureux making life harder on himself, especially after the blind backhand turnover that led directly to Beckett Hamilton’s goal.

There were still real positives. Caleb Desnoyers won faceoffs, played physically, and didn’t look afraid of contact. Sebastian Cossa stopped 11 of 12 and looked like a backup you can live with. But if there was one guy whose night actually changed the conversation, it was Lamoureux — and not in the way he needed.

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