\u201cHe\u2019s another fantastic human, and another captain to boot,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cYou add a teammate like that to your team, it makes a big difference.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Adding Trocheck, \u201cfresh off a gold medal\u201d with the U.S. men\u2019s hockey team in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, brings another veteran presence to Utah, Schmidt said. Trocheck has played 13 seasons in the NHL and had 53 points (16 goals, 37 assists) in 67 games last season, his fourth with the Rangers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think he can play anywhere,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cA Swiss army knife and go anywhere in the lineup and do anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can never have too many guys that could do that in your lineup that can give you so much value in other places.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schmidt said he’s looking forward to watching continual growth from the Mammoth’s youthful players, including 23-year-old center Dylan Guenther, who had an NHL-high 73 points (40 goals, 33 assists) in 79 games last season, and 22-year-old center Logan Cooley, who had his third straight season with at least 20 goals (43 points; 24 goals, 19 assists in 54 games).<\/p>\n
\u201cFor them to be able to experience not only the playoffs and the intensity that comes in, but how their game has elevated over the last year, it\u2019s my job just to steer,” Schmidt said. “They\u2019re going to take off. That\u2019s pretty much all you ever want as a teammate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mammoth fans have something else to anticipate this season: Hosting the 2027 NHL Winter Classic against the Colorado Avalanche on New Year’s Eve at Rice-Eccles Stadium, on the campus of the University of Utah.<\/p>\n
Schmidt said he’s \u201cfired up\u201d about playing in his first Winter Classic, which he said should make for \u201ca good mountain-range rivalry.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wouldn\u2019t mind a little falling snow, either.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it\u2019s adverse conditions,” he said. “It\u2019s almost more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe\u2019s another fantastic human, and another captain to boot,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cYou add a teammate like that to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-767908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}