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Colorado Avalanche center Brock Nelson reacts after a goal was called off against the Utah Mammoth (Rob Gray-Imagn Images)

3 Takeaways From Mammoth’s 4-2 Loss to Avalanche

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers
By Chase Beardsley | Last updated Feb 26, 2026 9:25 AM ET

Welcome back. The Olympic break is officially over, and the final couple of weeks of the NHL regular season are in full swing as the postseason looms. The Utah Mammoth now have 24 games left until their season is over, which means they have 24 games to earn enough points to clinch a spot in the playoffs.

Unfortunately for them, Game 58 will not get them closer to locking down a playoff spot as they fall to the top team in the NHL, the Colorado Avalanche. Playing the Avalanche right out of the gate isn’t easy, and while the Mammoth fell 4-2, it was a close game. Here are some takeaways from Wednesday night’s game.

Logan Cooley and Alex Kerfoot Return

Right before the Olympic break, Logan Cooley and Alex Kerfoot were beginning to practice on ice with the team again. It was welcome news with the Mammoth heading down the stretch, needing all the healthy bodies they could get.

For Cooley, it had been more than two months since he had played in an NHL game. Of course, many remember the incident that caused him to miss so much time in the Dec. 5 game against the Vancouver Canucks when he collided with the goal post. Up until that point, he had been one of the Mammoth’s best forwards, with 23 points in 29 games.

Without Cooley, the Mammoth’s center depth has really been an issue. Barrett Hayton has had to jump back up to being a top-six center, and Jack McBain was playing a bottom-six center role. With Cooley back, the Mammoth can move Hayton back to a more sheltered role and can also place McBain back on the wing.

It was a long road back for the young star. For more than two months, Cooley had to watch his team from the stands. While the Mammoth played pretty well in January, it didn’t help him stomach the feeling of being with his friends on the ice and taking control of a playoff spot. On Wednesday, it all paid off.

“Personally, it felt pretty good,” Cooley said. “It’s good to be back out there with the guys. It’s no fun sitting in the stands watching them, and it felt like a long journey. There’s a lot of hard work that went into it. Big thanks to the trainers and everyone, my family supported me coming back, and it felt good to be back, but now it kind of shifts to the team and how we need to be better.”

Cooley didn’t waste any time reacclimating to the lineup. He tallied an assist on the Mammoth’s second goal, bringing him up to 24 points in 30 games.

However, there was definitely some rust for Cooley, just like almost everyone on the Mammoth. His speed and decision making wasn’t all there on Wednesday. It will return as Cooley continues to settle back into the lineup, but it was something head coach André Tourigny pointed out.

“Like everybody else, I think I saw a lot of rust and tough decisions with the puck,” Tourigny said. “Not playing fast at all with and without the puck.”

Kerfoot, on the other hand, looked pretty good. While he wasn’t missed as much as Cooley was, thanks to the Mammoth’s good depth, there are a lot of things that the veteran forward brings to the team. Kerfoot looked energized, and he played a solid two-way game against the Avalanche.

Coming off a core muscle surgery earlier in the season, Kerfoot played on the fourth line with Kevin Stenlund and Brandon Tanev. The line was arguably one of the Mammoth’s best on Wednesday, delivering physical and hard-nosed play every shift they had. Kerfoot played such a noticeable game fresh off injury that Tourigny shouted him out as one of the best players in the game.

“I think Crouser (Lawson Crouse) and Kerf (Alex Kerfoot) were our best two players by far,” Tourigny said.

To get two important players for the most critical part of the season is huge for the Mammoth. It allows them to keep guys like Daniil But in the American Hockey League (AHL), to develop playing top minutes while icing the best team possible. It might take a second for Cooley in particular to get back to the level he was playing at before he got injured, but both he and Kerfoot being healthy will be important for the Mammoth’s postseason push.

Gunner Reloaded

So far in the new year, Dylan Guenther has been playing some of the best hockey he’s played. To kick off 2026, Guenther scored his first-ever hat trick against the New York Islanders. He scored a crucial power play goal to help fuel the comeback win against the Philadelphia Flyers. Right before the Olympic break, he had two points in his prior two games.

Sometimes when you don’t play for a while, it takes a game or two to get back to your usual self. For Guenther, it took a period and a half to get to scoring again. On the power play, after Mikhail Sergachev and Clayton Keller passed it to each other a couple of times, the puck was slid to Guenther on the top of the faceoff circle, who unleashed his usual shot, which got past Scott Wedgewood for the Mammoth’s first goal of the game.

Gunner one timers are back. pic.twitter.com/KGzGD7TWxQ
— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) February 26, 2026

After Brock Nelson scored around two minutes later, Guenther struck again. Thanks to some great speed from Cooley to get into the Avalanche’s zone, he left it for McBain, who then left it to Guenther in front of the net for his second goal of the game.

Guenther now has three goals in his past two games and is up to 49 points in 56 games. With the second goal, he’s tied his career high in goals, which he set last season (27). It’s quite impressive considering Guenther is only 22 years old. If he continues to score at the pace he’s at, he’ll hit the 30-goal plateau for the first time in his career.

Gunner tallies his second of the night!

3-2, Avs. pic.twitter.com/Mktj35vh0G
— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) February 26, 2026

“He’s a pure goal scorer,” Cooley said. “He could score from anywhere. You just try to find him when you’re in the O-zone, and, like I said, he could score from anywhere. It’s so fun playing with him, so smart, and hopefully he can keep a few more coming here.”

Olympic Rust

It had been three weeks since the Mammoth last played a game. As previously mentioned, getting back into the grind of things can be hard sometimes. Starting things off after a long break against the Avalanche, who only have nine regulation losses, is pretty difficult.

Colorado Avalanche center Brock Nelson reacts after a goal was called off against the Utah Mammoth (Rob Gray-Imagn Images)

That being said, the Mammoth didn’t play badly against the Avalanche on Wednesday, all things considered. The third period was dominated by them as they outshot their opponents 13-3. The Mammoth played a pretty good physical game as well and had a lot of good chances. However, in the first two periods, the team did not play like they normally do. They need to make sure that tiredness and that brand of hockey stay in this game and do not repeat themselves.

“I think no matter the result, we want to make sure that we get back to our game as quick as possible,” Guenther said. “I just don’t think that was us. I think just the little intangibles, the battles and stuff like that, but we actually did a better job in the third, but I think just getting back to how hard we have to work to win games.”

This is a game Vejmelka will want to forget as fast as possible. Like many other players on the Mammoth, he did not play like himself. The Avalanche’s power play goal scored by Czechia teammate Martin Nečas was one in particular that he could’ve saved.

One thing that went against Vejmelka was that he didn’t play a single game in the Olympics for Czechia. On top of that, practices were only around 20 minutes long. So, Vejmelka travelled overseas to only practice 20 minutes per day. If anything, he was the player on the Mammoth who was the most out of it, especially after playing 44 games in the first half of the season.

The power play was once again atrocious. Going one-for-five is unacceptable when you have your top six completely healthy. Again, there are some excuses. Keller has been through it all in the past couple of days after winning gold with Team USA, and Cooley is coming back from a big injury. However, the Mammoth have been one of the worst teams on the man advantage all season long. This is just another nail in the coffin.

At the end of the day, it just wasn’t Mammoth hockey. The Avalanche, though missing Nathan MacKinnon and getting Nelson back around the same time Keller returned to Salt Lake City, shook off the rust early. It helped that Wedgewood had a great game, but as mentioned, the speed and intensity we saw from the Mammoth last in their game against the Detroit Red Wings at the beginning of the month wasn’t there for most of the game against the Avalanche.

“You could tell there was some rust out there, and I don’t think it was just small details,” Cooley said. “It was losing battles, not coming back quick enough, not defending in front, little things like that that are our identity and what makes us successful. And we didn’t do that tonight.”

You can’t say losing this game was acceptable. Losing, especially this late in the season with the standings as tight as they are, isn’t great. However, it is understandable. It’s not like the Mammoth were the only team with an Olympic hangover on Wednesday. Jake Guentzel missed an empty net goal, and the Anaheim Ducks-Edmonton Oilers game had a final score of 6-5.

That being said, the play in Friday’s game against the Minnesota Wild needs to be closer to what we saw in the third period and less of what we saw in the first two periods. The Mammoth need to stick to what makes them a good team, speed and being hard to play against, and get back to what they were doing before the break. It’s as simple as that, and when they find that level of play again, the winning should come back too.

“We played a good team, but I didn’t like our grind,” Tourigny said. “I didn’t like our physicality. I thought we didn’t have the pace we should have in our zone and on the forecheck. I don’t think we were the fastest team tonight, and that’s what makes us special. We need to realize that and be much better next game.”

The Mammoth’s next game is on Friday against the Wild. The Wild are 34-14-10 this season. Their last game before the Olympic break was against the Nashville Predators, which they won 6-5 in overtime. They will play the Avalanche on Thursday before their game in Utah. These two teams last met in October, where the Mammoth won 6-2.