SANDY — Andre Tourigny’s teams have improved their record in each of his four years as head coach of the Arizona Coyotes and now the Utah Mammoth.

Can this year’s squad take yet another leap from the 38-31-13 year the Mammoth put up in their inaugural season in Utah?

“There’s a different maturity and confidence,” Tourigny said of this year’s group before a 3-2 preseason loss against the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday. “There’s a level of calm in what we’re doing, and there’s a purpose. The team has always been really focused and working really hard, but you could see right now there’s more confidence.”

Tourigny has been repeating a similar sentiment since the first day of training camp, when he said last year’s theme was “excitement with hope,” while this year it is “excitement with confidence.”

Where does that confidence come from? Another year in both the NHL and Tourigny’s system certainly helps, especially for the young players at the core of Utah’s long-term Stanley Cup plans.

Gabe Smith, a fourth-round pick in Utah’s first NHL draft in 2024, described Tourigny as “super structured,” requiring time and effort to “take in” all the things being taught about positioning and the team’s overall game plan.

The most important step a prospect like Smith can take to grow and mature within that system is asking questions, according to Tourigny.

“When everything is scrambling, you kind of don’t want to ask a question,” Tourigny said. “You wonder, ‘OK, I have so many questions, I will look bad if I start asking all those questions.’

“At this point, our team seems to really know what they have to do, what they want to do, how they want to do it,” Tourigny added. “There are really good questions and there’s less and less hesitation on what we’re trying to do.”

An openness to questions and opinions is one of alternate captain Mikhail Segachev’s favorite things about this team, and he’s been on a few. Sergachev started his NHL career with the Montreal Canadiens before spending seven years in Tampa Bay, where he won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021.

“We want everyone to be a leader,” Sergachev said. “You don’t have to be in the shadow. If you have something to say, say it. Everyone’s always open to an opinion and to get better.”

Tourigny wants his players to ask enough questions and get to the point where they know the game plan so well that they can “not think,” and “just play.”

“A big thing for me is when we hit Colorado, to know what I have to do in every situation,” Tourigny said about the season opener in Denver. “I don’t have to overthink and ask myself questions, ‘Should I go there? Should I go there?’ We should know. We want to get there, and that’s the race we’re in.”

The team’s situational certainty took a step forward on Wednesday with the narrowing down of the goaltender position to just two players: Karel Vejmelka and Vitek Vanecek.

Last year’s opening night goalie, Connor Ingram, was traded to the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday after returning from the NHL player assistance program, and Jaxson Stauber was placed on waivers, “with the purpose of being assigned to the Tucson Roadrunners.”

“I’m really happy for (Ingram), to see he’s healthy and ready to play and having an opportunity to have a fresh start,” Tourigny said. “He was great to be around. He’s a great teammate, so nothing but the best for him.”

Utah plays its final two preseason games at home in the newly renovated Delta Center on Thursday and Saturday against the Kings and San Jose Sharks, before opening the regular season on Thursday, Oct. 9, against the Colorado Avalanche on the road.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.