Utah Mammoth ready to take next big step after franchise's first playoff run

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Utah Mammoth ready to take next big step after franchise's first playoff run

2026-05-06 18:00 Last Updated At：18:10

When general manager Bill Armstrong realized adding pieces here and there wasn't working for the Arizona Coyotes, he blew up most of the roster.

Armstrong kept the core young players to serve as the foundation for the future and amassed a stockpile of draft picks, hoping to rebuild a franchise that had been mired in mediocrity.

The incremental climb continued after the franchise moved to Utah, landing a big step with the Mammoth's playoff berth this season.

A six-game loss to Vegas in the first round was not the ending the Mammoth wanted. They hope it's just the beginning of something bigger.

“There’s a fine line in our sport between winning and losing,” Armstrong said on Tuesday. “For the growth of our team, we have to suffer a little bit of pain, learn to walk that line a little bit better. If we can do that in the big moments moving forward with this group, we’re going to have a chance of making a run as far as we can to the Stanley Cup. That’s the goal of this organization."

The goal had been to reach the postseason. The Coyotes did it once since 2012, in the 2020 NHL bubble.

The Mammoth reached that goal in their first season since moving to Utah, using a five-game winning streak to clinch in early April.

Utah took away Vegas' home-ice advantage with a win in Game 2 and took the next one in their first home playoff game to take a 2-1 series lead. The Mammoth couldn't sustain it, losing in overtime and double overtime before the Golden Knights clinched the series with a 5-1 win on Friday.

The disappointment lingered over the weekend as they lamented what could have been, but turned to pride as they reflected on what they had done. It also hardened their resolve to not only do it again, but go on deeper runs in the future.

“We had objectives and hit all of them — sometimes a little tighter than we would have wished — but we hit them all,” Mammoth coach André Tourigny said. “We were able to have the consistency we have been looking for a few years, in a sense. That was important for us.”

The Mammoth have the pieces to keep it going.

Keller is part of the core from Arizona and has scored at least 76 points in four straight seasons. Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther have transformed from up-and-comers to dynamic players. Crafty Nick Schmaltz is coming off his career-best season, as is goalie Karel Vejmelka. Forward Lawson Crouse has been a veteran presence on and off the ice since the Arizona days.

The franchise also has made key additions in recent years: forward JJ Peterka, defensemen Mikhail Sergachev, John Marino, Nate Schmidt and MacKenzie Weegar. Veteran forward Kailer Yamamoto also finished the season strong after dealing with injuries.

“Looking at the guys we can add and some of the tweaks we can possibly make — maybe it’s a guy from the minor leagues, maybe it’s a prospect — it’s a good spot to be in,” Armstrong said. “You’re not reinventing the board — the board’s there.”

And more pieces could be on the way.

The store of draft picks Armstrong collected have turned into a loaded prospect pipeline.

The Mammoth used their first draft pick — sixth overall — on forward Tij Iginla, the son of NHL hockey Hall of Famer Jarome Iginla who had 41 goals and 49 assists in the WHL this season. Center Caleb Desnoyers was Utah's top pick last year — fourth overall — and also thrived in the minors with 33 goals and 55 assists in the OHL.

It doesn't stop there; Utah has seven first-round draft picks in their system and Armstrong is willing to give them a shot to prove they can play in the NHL.

“We want to encourage our prospects to try to come in and make our club,” he said. “You don't ever want to take a dream away from a prospect and you don't know. Sometimes they can show up and earn their way in. We want our prospects who are probably watching this press conference to know: Come up, come be fighting for a job. There's opportunity there.”

The Mammoth rebuild hit one big goal. Now they want to reach higher.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Hantavirus strain capable of human transmission found in cruise ship passengers

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak and which is stuck of the coast of Cape Verde with nearly 150 people on board was waiting Wednesday to head to Spain’s Canary Islands. Meanwhile, health authorities in South Africa and Switzerland identified a strain of the virus that can be transmitted between humans in rare cases in three cases.

Authorities in Switzerland announced Wednesday that a man who returned from South America and traveled on the cruise ship has tested positive for the virus and is receiving treatment.

Three passengers have died and at least five people have been sickened by hantavirus on board the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius cruise ship. Hantavirus usually spreads by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings. There have been three laboratory-confirmed cases.

The ship left Argentina on April 1 on an Atlantic cruise and was scheduled to include stops in Antarctica, the Falkland Islands and other locations. However, the itinerary may have changed because of the situation on board.

Spain’s Health Ministry said in a statement late Tuesday that it would receive the MV Hondius vessel in the Canary Islands after a request from the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

But for now it remains marooned off the coast of Cape Verde, an island nation off West Africa in the Atlantic. The World Health Organization said passengers are isolating in their cabins.

South African health authorities said they identified the Andes strain of hantavirus in two passengers who were on the ship.

The World Health Organization says the Andes virus, a specific species of hantavirus, is found in South America, primarily in Argentina and Chile.

The Andes virus can be spread between people, though this is rare and the spread of the disease is typically contained because it would spread only through close contact, such as by sharing a bed or sharing food, experts say.

The South African Department of Health said in a report that the information came from tests performed on the passengers after they were removed from the ship and flown to South Africa.

One of the passengers, a British man, is in intensive care in a South African hospital. Tests were performed on the other passenger posthumously after she died in South Africa.

A statement from the Federal Office of Public Health said that the man “returned to Switzerland after traveling on the cruise ship on which there were a number of hantavirus cases.” It said his case also involved the Andes virus.

It said he had returned from a trip to South America with his wife at the end of April. After noticing symptoms, he went to the University Hospital Zurich after consulting with his doctor and was immediately placed in isolation.

The patient’s wife hasn’t shown any symptoms but is self-isolating as a precaution, the statement said.

The public health office said that “there is currently no risk to the Swiss public.”

The WHO said in a social media post that the man responded to “an email from the ship’s operator informing the passengers of the health event” and went to the hospital.

The cruise ship will be welcomed to Spain’s Canary Islands, according to Spanish authorities, as the vessel waited off the coast of West Africa for a third day Wednesday for sick passengers to be evacuated.

However, the regional president of Spain’s Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, said Wednesday that he was worried the arrival of the ship could put the local population at risk and demanded an urgent meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

“Neither the populace nor the government of the Canary Islands can rest assured because it is clear that the danger to the population is real,” Clavijo told Onda Cero radio.

Medical evacuation teams were on standby Wednesday morning in the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde.

Associated Press journalists nearby saw a boat approach the ship on Tuesday night before turning back soon after. It was not clear what happened, or whether that was the evacuation team.