Yankees send Anthony Volpe to minors in favor of SS José Caballero
Yankees option Anthony Volpe to Triple-A, favoring José Caballero as SS.
The Utah Mammoth players reflect on their playoff exit and express confidence in their potential to win the Stanley Cup next season. Veteran defenseman MacKenzie Weegar emphasized the team's promise and the expectation to compete for the championship.
Utah Mammoth left wing Lawson Crouse (67) celebrates with defenseman MacKenzie Weegar (52), right wing Clayton Keller (9), defenseman Mikhail Sergachev (98) and center Nick Schmaltz (8) after scoring his second goal of the game during the second period of game 3 of a first-round NHL Stanley Cup playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knights at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, April 24, 2026. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News
After bidding their playoff beards adieu, each Utah Mammoth player met with the media Sunday, one by one, to evaluate the season and give a glimpse of what the future holds.
History suggests that although everyone on an expiring contract stated a desire to return next season, not all of them will — that’s the business side of the game. But a common theme among virtually everyone is how much promise the team has.
MacKenzie Weegar stated that there is no reason not to believe the team can win the Stanley Cup next season.
The Utah Mammoth played against the Vegas Golden Knights on April 24, 2026, during a first-round NHL Stanley Cup playoff series.
The playoff exit highlights the team's need to evaluate their performance and make decisions regarding player contracts for the upcoming season.
Players mentioned include Lawson Crouse, MacKenzie Weegar, Clayton Keller, Mikhail Sergachev, and Nick Schmaltz.
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“The potential for this group is — right now, there’s just no reason not for us to think that we can win the (Stanley) Cup," said MacKenzie Weegar, a veteran defenseman whom the team acquired at the trade deadline.
“I think the belief for the group at the beginning of the year was to make the playoffs and to kind of see what could happen. Now, I believe that we have the potential to win the Cup.”
After a quarterfinal exit in the group’s first playoff appearance since the pandemic as Arizona Coyotes and first since the inception of the new franchise in Utah, there’s still plenty of work to be done. But with how close each playoff game was except perhaps the last, combined with the constant improvement of the team’s young core, it’s not unrealistic to expect the Mammoth’s Cup-contention window to open soon.
“The standard’s obviously high. The expectations are really high. We’ve got to know that it’s really hard. ... But we’re going to get better,” Weegar said.
Mikhail Sergachev, who is only 27 years old but already has two Stanley Cup rings to his name, hesitated to draw direct comparisons to the Tampa Bay Lightning, where he gained the bulk of his experience, but he does think the team is heading in a positive direction.
“I think we have the right pedigree on the team and the leadership group and the core, the whole team,” he said. “You know, starting with our owner and going down, I think everybody wants to win here.”
Ian Cole, another two-time Stanley Cup champion and a veteran who has made the playoffs with all nine of his NHL teams to date, agreed with Sergachev that building a contender is not as simple as drawing lines from his 2016 and 2017 Cup-winning Pittsburgh Penguins teams to this one.
But he agrees that the bar needs to be set higher.
“I think we’re beyond the point of like, ‘Hey, we’re just going to try to make playoffs,’” he said. ”No. We need to make playoffs, put ourselves in a good position to win the Stanley Cup. That being said, there’s a lot of things that go into winning the Stanley Cup.”
Only one team gets to win the Cup in a given season, and as Cole said, there are plenty of uncontrollable factors that can sway the final result of a series. But the Mammoth’s goal is to put themselves in the best possible position for success.
Step 1 was to make the playoffs, which Sergachev says helped them in terms of both development and evaluation.
“It meant a lot to us to see where we’re at and how we’ve developed into a playoff team,” he said. “Now, we’ve just got to go from from there and stack series after series and try to win them all.”
The amount of responsibility, both offensively and defensively, that Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther took in the playoffs should encourage Mammoth fans. It’s not a given that young stars will be difference makers in their first playoff runs, but those guys lived up to the challenge.
“It was great getting in the playoffs, get that taste definitely could build off it going into next year,” Cooley said.
The next step needs to involve making a deep playoff run. It doesn’t necessarily need to happen next year — teams often have to lose in the first round a few times before having ultimate success — but giving the kids a taste of what it takes to win would be highly beneficial.
“The expectation needs to be to win the Cup here,” Weegar said. “That needs to be the belief, and I believe that the guys in the room believe that as well. It’s not just playoffs now, it’s to hoist that Cup here.”
Utah Mammoth center Logan Cooley (92) and Vegas Golden Knights right wing Pavel Dorofeyev (16) fight for the puck during Game 6 of a first-round NHL Stanley Cup playoff series at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, May 2, 2026. | Tess Crowley, Deseret News