Mammoth Playoff Preview: Knights Await First Time Playoff Team in Round 1 – The Hockey Writers – Previews and Predictions

After five seasons of losing, building, and learning, general manager Bill Armstrong’s rebuild that started in Arizona has finally hit its window of contention. After finishing the season with a 43-33-6 record and finishing fourth in the Central Division, the Utah Mammoth are heading to the playoffs.

In the team’s first-ever playoff series, they’ll go up against the Pacific Division champions, the Vegas Golden Knights, who finished the season with a 39-26-17 record. The Mammoth won the regular season series 2-1 and additionally beat the Knights in the most recent game 4-0. However, the playoffs are a different beast, and the battle of two of the newest franchises in the NHL could be a long one.

Experience Could Mean Everything

The Mammoth had the better regular-season record despite finishing in a wild card spot. They also looked like the better team in these two teams’ most recent outing. However, as mentioned, playoffs are a completely new season. Everything is taken up a level. That is something most players on the Mammoth have never experienced.

To understand the rebuild and why a lot of these players lack playoff experience, you have to go back to the final seasons of the Arizona Coyotes. The last time the Coyotes made the playoffs was in the 2019-20 season. If you remember, that was the campaign where COVID-19 forced the season to be cut short and playoffs to be played in isolated arenas with expanded brackets, months after the pause.

Nearly six years later, only four players remain on the Mammoth from that team: Clayton Keller, Barrett Hayton, Lawson Crouse, and Nick Schmaltz, who didn’t even play a game due to injury. The Coyotes won their play in round against the Nashville Predators thanks to a Brad Richardson overtime series clincher in Game 4. The team then proceeded to get steamrolled by the Colorado Avalanche in the first round, losing in five games, only squeaking out their one win due to an outstanding performance by Darcy Kuemper.

Each of those players will agree that the bubble playoff experience won’t be anything like they’re about to go through in two of the loudest arenas in the NHL. In a way, this will be their first-ever playoff experience.

Since then, Armstrong has rebuilt this team, but with that, a lot of players and staff have never played in the postseason. Dylan Guenther and Logan Cooley, two of the biggest young stars on the team, have never played an NHL playoff game. Karel Vejmelka, who will more than likely be the starting goaltender for the Mammoth, has never been in a playoff game. Even head coach André Tourigny has never coached an NHL postseason game.

That’s where guys like Mikhail Sergachev and Ian Cole, players who have won Stanley Cups, will need to come up big. Similar to what Cole saw the Pittsburgh Penguins do with Jake Guentzel in 2017, mentoring rookies and younger guys on the fly will be key.

On the flip side, this is a Knights team that has made the playoffs all but one season of their existence. Players like William Karlsson (who won’t play early in this series), Reilly Smith, Shea Theodore, and Brayden McNabb are still around from the 2017 Stanley Cup finals run and know what it takes, even from an underdog standpoint, to get to the very top.

Additionally, a lot of players from the team’s 2023 Stanley Cup championship are still X-factors for the team. Mark Stone and Ivan Barbashev are just two of the bigger names who were on that team.

Yet the Knights have continued to adapt and gamble on the biggest names. Since that championship, they’ve added Mitch Marner, Rasmus Andersson, Noah Hanifin, and Tomas Hertl. All of whom are expected to contribute in big ways this postseason. However, their newest addition could be the biggest decider of who wins this series.

Will a Late-Season Coaching Change Pay Off?

With eight games remaining in the season and the Knights struggling, management decided to make perhaps the biggest gamble in the franchise’s history. Bruce Cassidy, who coached the team to the Stanley Cup, was fired, making way for John Tortorella to take over.

Keep in mind, at that point, Tortorella hadn’t coached a game in a year, taking a job with the NHL on TNT after being fired by the Philadelphia Flyers. With a contract only for the remainder of this season, the Knights were now faced with two scenarios. Tortorella becomes the coach the team needed, or the experiment fails spectacularly and leaves a blemish on an impressive franchise history.

So far, the experiment has worked. Tortorella has yet to lose a game in regulation as coach of the Knights, going 7-0-1 in the eight games. That record, of course, got them to their fifth Pacific Division title. The Knights did have a weaker schedule to end the season, as the team mainly played bottom feeders like the Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks. However, there were some impressive wins against the Colorado Avalanche and Edmonton Oilers included in there.

One thing that might be overlooked in this series is the presence of Tortorella. He’s a coach who knows how to get everything out of his players, and it’s shown. Go back to his playoff appearances as coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. It wasn’t just the cockiness of the Tampa Bay Lightning that helped the Blue Jackets sweep that series.

He knows how to win, too. While it’s been a while, Tortorella won the Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Lightning. He took the New York Rangers to a conference finals in 2011-12. He knows how to coach underrated teams, as he’s done recently with the Blue Jackets. What can he do with a team with stockpiled talent like the Knights?

Questions in Net

This series might come down to the men in net. Both have question marks surrounding them heading into Game 1.

Karel Vejmelka has been the number one guy for the Mammoth for a while now. He started 63 games this season, the most out of any goaltender in the NHL. His 38 wins place him second in the NHL, right behind Andrei Vasilevskiy. Success in the regular season has been consistent since he took over the starting role last year. 

However, the playoffs are an unknown for Vejmelka. He’s never played in an NHL playoff game. On top of that, will the lack of rest plague him? Outside of a select few games, Vejmelka has started every season game for the Mammoth, especially down the stretch. Can he handle starting his first playoff games after having such a heavy workload?

For Carter Hart, who was announced as the starter for Game 1, he has some playoff experience. He was a big part of the Philadelphia Flyers’ run to the second round in the 2020 bubble, albeit that was a playoff run with no fans in the building.

However, similar to Vejmelka, Hart’s main question comes down to what’s been happening recently. Before sustaining an injury in early January, the goaltender looked shaky. That’s understandable since he hadn’t played hockey in quite some time before his Knights debut in December.

Since returning in April, Hart has won all six of his starts and recorded a save percentage above .900 in all but one of those games. Can he continue his recent dominating performance? It’s a tale of two goaltenders, and if these teams want to go far, those questions need to be answered.

X-Factors

There’s an obvious choice for the Mammoth’s main X-factor. It’s got to be Keller. Riding a 10-game point streak heading into the playoffs and leading the team in points (88), if the Mammoth want to do anything in this series, the captain has to lead them. Keller is a game-changer and one of the best players in the NHL. Even in a weird playoff environment in 2020 with the Coyotes being outplayed in nearly every game, he had seven points in nine games, four of which were goals.

An underrated choice for another X-factor for the Mammoth is Kailer Yamamoto. When everyone thinks about the second line, they think of Guenther (who led the team in goals with 40) and Cooley, who will certainly play a big role in deciding if the Mammoth win this series. However, Yamamoto was a big addition to that line starting in the late March game against the Los Angeles Kings. Since then, he’s had five points in nine games.

His speed allows him to keep up with Guenther and Cooley, and his skill with his hands allows him to cut to the net or get the puck away from opponents. Not to mention, Yamamoto is the only player on that line with playoff experience. All of that could lead to helping Guenther and Cooley learn how to play in the postseason as the series goes on.

On the Knights’ side of things, look to their whole defense being an X-factor. The Mammoth are a high-flying team that uses speed to their advantage. You can point to players across the top three lines for being some of the fastest players in the Central Division. To shut down that offense, the Knights have to deploy a strong defense to neutralize the Mammoth’s offense.

Yes, guys like Theodore, McNabb, and Hanafin have been good at defending this season, but it’s Andersson who people will have eyes on. After coming over from the Calgary Flames, Andersson hasn’t necessarily been bad, but everyone knows he can do better. This will be a good test to see if he can take his game to another level.

There’s also the question on everyone’s minds. Can Marner perform in the playoffs? With the Toronto Maple Leafs, there were times when his play was heavily criticized, especially in big games. This will provide the answer to whether it was a Leafs issue or a Marner issue. Points leader Eichel (90) and goals leader Pavel Dorofeyev (37) can’t be the only producers.

One last X-factor in this series is the special teams. The Knights have had a really good power play (sixth in the league) and penalty kill (seventh in the league). Meanwhile, the Mammoth’s special teams have struggled this season. Before the Olympic break, their power play was near the bottom of the league. Since then, it’s improved rapidly, becoming a big part of their wins down the stretch. It’s shown on paper as it now ranks 18th in the league.

It’s a mirrored story for their penalty kill. What was once a top 10 penalty kill in the league has now slipped to 19th in the NHL. That needs to be better in the playoffs, especially against a lethal Knights power play; otherwise, this could be a quick series.

Final Thoughts

This is going to be an interesting series. One that might go the distance. On one side, you have an up-and-coming Mammoth team that has fast and skilled young talent but lacks postseason experience as well. On the other side, you have a seasoned Knights team that won a Stanley Cup recently but has struggled this season, forcing a big coaching change just with eight games left in the season.

If the Mammoth want to win this series, they’ll have to quickly adapt to playing in a postseason game. Tourigny, especially as being outcoached in a playoff series, can quickly derail a season. Adding onto that, getting Vejmelka settled in early will be critical, as he could single-handedly win or lose the Mammoth a game.

If the Knights want to win this series, it’s simple. Play like the more experienced team and contain the Mammoth’s speed. Keep the great special teams rolling and catch Vejmelka off guard early. They know how to win series, and they know how to turn it on in the playoffs, even before Tortorella took over. 

This is a series that can go the distance, but if the Mammoth aren’t careful, this can also be a series that can end quickly. Only time will tell if the two teams can play up their potential, but whoever comes out of this series has the opportunity to make a deep run into the Western Conference Finals, thanks to two teams (the Anaheim Ducks and Oilers) with many questions surrounding them that could stumble into the second round. Game 1 between the Knights and the Mammoth is on Sunday night.