{"id":244907,"date":"2025-10-27T21:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T21:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/244907\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T21:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T21:12:07","slug":"nick-schmaltz-is-off-to-an-incredible-start-with-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/244907\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Schmaltz is off to an incredible start with Utah\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Utah Mammoth<\/a> came into the season with higher expectations in their second season in Salt Lake City, and it\u2019s \u201cso far, so good,\u201d for the team 10 games into the campaign.<\/p>\n

While the Central Division has often been dominated by the Colorado Avalanche<\/a>, Winnipeg Jets,<\/a> and Dallas Stars <\/a>in recent seasons, the Mammoth have taken control in the early parts of 2025-26.<\/p>\n

As much as young stars have been a key to their success, one of the standouts has been veteran Nick Schmaltz, who scored two goals and an assist against the Minnesota Wild<\/a> and Winnipeg Jets<\/a> over the weekend, bringing him to seven goals and 16 points in 10 games this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Monday\u2019s episode of Daily Faceoff Live<\/a>, Irfann Gaffar and Carter Hutton tipped their \u201cMan of the Weekend,\u201d honors, with Hutton choosing the 29-year-old as his pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gaffar: There were a lot of performances that left people kind of scratching their head a little bit, but we\u2019ll start with the Man of the Weekend. I\u2019ll turn it over to you: Who impressed you the most and why this weekend?<\/p>\n

Hutton: I mentioned Nick Schmaltz last weekend, just where he was at and he\u2019s a guy for this Utah Mammoth who doesn\u2019t really fall in line. His contract is going to expire, he\u2019s a veteran player with over 500 games, and he\u2019s been very good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s versatile, he can score shootouts, he can penalty kill, and he is having a run right now with 16 points in 10 games, and this weekend he was rock solid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They had back to back games in the Central Division against the Minnesota Wild, and then on the road against the Winnipeg Jets. These are huge games for this Utah Mammoth team, a team that still gets a bit of a leash.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Expectations are higher this season. I think Bill Armstrong has done a great job of building this team and stockpiling picks and, you know, making that Mikhail Sergachev deal, the JJ Peterka deal, and then they kind of fell into Karel Vejmelka, who\u2019s been a rock-solid goalie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For me, he\u2019s my Man of the Weekend, and I look for him to stay hot. It\u2019s a contract year. He\u2019s got to get it done. I don\u2019t know where they go with him if they resign him, or if he is a guy that just almost becomes a rental for them. He is a guy in the room that can demand success, and it\u2019s nice to see him off to such a good start.<\/p>\n

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here\u2026<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Utah Mammoth came into the season with higher expectations in their second season in Salt Lake City,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-244907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}