The NHL's off-season rolls on, and every day brings with it more hockey talk. And in this ongoing THN.com series, we here at the Sabres site are focusing on the Buffalo Sabres' 2025-26 regular-season schedule — and specifically, Sabres opponents who could get in the way of Buffalo's Stanley Cup playoff aspirations.
We started this series looking at the Sabres' Atlantic Division rivals, followed by the Metropolitan Division's teams. In recent days, we've been breaking down Buffalo's Central Division rivals. And today, we're focused on the Utah Mammoth.
BUFFALO SABRES VS. UTAH MAMMOTH
NEW MAMMOTH PLAYERS: J.J. Peterka, LW; Brandon Tanev, LW; Nate Schmidt, D; Vitek Vanecek, G
2024-25 SERIES: Sabres 0-2-0, Utah 2-0-0
2025-26 GAMES AGAINST EACH OTHER: November 4 at Buffalo; November 12 at Utah
CAN THE SABRES BEAT THIS TEAM? For a few reasons, the Sabres/Mammoth rivalry has the potential for some good times, as both teams are connected to each other for different reasons. For starters, Utah's logo is rather similar to one of Buffalo's old logos. More importantly, one of the biggest trades of the summer saw Utah acquire Peterka from Buffalo — and Peterka is just what the Mammoth need to get to that next competitive level.
If that trade had been all of what Utah GM Bill Armstrong did this summer, you'd still say the Mammoth had a solid off-season. But he also signed former Winnipeg Jets winger Tanev to improve his team's fourth line, and he signed Stanley Cup-winner Schmidt away from the Florida Panthers to bolster Utah's third defense pairing.
(Armstrong also signed veteran goalie Vanecek, who will begin the year as Utah's third goalie. If he's needed, something has gone horribly awry for the Mammoth.)
All-in-all, the Mammoth have to be considered a better team than they were last season. And that's bad news if Buffalo doesn't have its ducks in a row when the two teams square off against each other twice in little more than a single week in early November.
Indeed, if Utah comes out of the gate and stuns the Sabres in their first game November 4 in Buffalo, the Sabres will have only have eight days to figure out how to fight back for Round 2, as the Mammoth get a home game against Buffalo to finish up the series. That's somewhat of a shame, as it would've been fun to have at least one game between them near the end of the season, when it's likely that both Utah and the Sabres will be fighting for a wild card berth in their respective conferences.
Still, it's going to be intriguing to see how that first game plays out. Last season, Utah won both games handily against the Sabres, beating Buffalo by a 5-2 score in both games. And the second game in the series came March 20, when both teams should've been in hot pursuit of a playoff spot. Instead, the Sabres were well out of playoff contention by then, and Utah wound up missing a playoff berth by eight standings points. So it was more misery for franchises accustomed to it.
It hasn't been easy for either of these teams to put memorable seasons together, and that's another reason why we see a link between the Mammoth and Sabres. They've languished and labored time and again, but as is custom at this time of year, hope springs eternal, and who knows — there might be a world in which both Buffalo and Utah are both playing playoff games in the same season.
The Sabres can't afford to lose both games to the Mammoth this year. A split would be acceptable, and anything more than that would be a positive. But if Buffalo plays with an urgency to their game, they have the manpower to answer back for last season's failures and shock the Mammoth into submission.
