SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Mammoth started training camp with 66 players, but have whittled it down to 23 ahead of the start of the NHL season on Thursday.
Several draft prospects looking to make their NHL debuts were featured among that initial 66, and one will officially get his big league opportunity with 2023 sixth overall pick Dmitri Simashev making the opening night roster as one of just eight defensemen.
“He’s doing a really good job in terms of his focus, skating and his one-on-one battles,” head coach Andre Tourigny said. “He showed he had pro hockey inside of him in the past, so it helped a lot.”
His longtime teammate and Russian countryman, Daniil But, was taken six picks later in the same draft and will start the season with the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners after making it all the way to the final day of training camp roster cuts on Monday.
Simashev and But helped Lokomotiv Yaroslavl capture its first championship, known as the Gagarin Cup, last season in Russia’s KHL, considered the best professional hockey league outside the NHL.
The other remaining prospect, 2024 sixth overall draft pick Tij Iginla, will return to his hometown club in Kelowna, British Columbia, for the third year.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 34-year-old forward Andrew Agozzino will start the season with the Mammoth after playing all of last season with the Roadrunners and not appearing in an NHL game since 2023 with the San Jose Sharks.
Agozzino filled in for Utah’s bevy of injured forwards during the preseason and scored a goal in the Mammoth’s 6-4 win over his former team. With Alexander Kerfoot and Liam O’Brien still injured to start the regular season, Agozzino will remain with the team to provide some depth in the attack.
Rising star Logan Cooley was injured for the majority of the preseason after taking a hard hit in his first game, but he is not on the injured list to start the season and is expected to be available for the season opener against the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday.
The 2022 third overall pick is eligible for a contract extension in the final year of his rookie deal, and his camp reportedly turned down an eight-year deal worth nearly $77 million with a yearly average of $9.6 million, according to NHL insider Frank Seravalli on Monday.
“We’ve had great conversations with Logan and his side, and they’ve been tremendously helpful and professional,” general manager Bill Armstrong said last month at the start of training camp. “And Logan, as a young man, has been nothing but great. There’s no rush, you know, it’s one of those things that’ll happen.”
Cooley said he is not focused at all on the contract discussions entering his third NHL season, instead setting his sights solely on helping Utah achieve its goal of making the Stanley Cup playoffs.
That journey begins Thursday as the Mammoth travel to Denver to take on the Avalanche at Ball Arena on Mammoth+ at 7 p.m. MDT.
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