All eyes on Utah Mammoth’s No. 4 NHL Draft pick: Trade, star prospect, or surprise?

Everyone is waiting to see what the Utah Mammoth will do come June 27.

While the team has six picks in the 2025 NHL Draft (one in each of the opening six rounds), the fourth overall selection that it lucked into in May has drawn the most eyes, questions, hypotheses and rumors.

Mammoth general manager Bill Armstrong and his staff were in Buffalo, New York, earlier this month for the NHL Scouting Combine which spanned from June 2-7. It featured 57 forwards, 27 defensemen and five goaltenders from North America and Europe, all of whom are draft-eligible. The players underwent physical and medical exams, interviews with organizations and fitness testing.

On Friday, Armstrong caught up with The Salt Lake Tribune to discuss where the team stands as the final countdown to the draft begins.

The Mammoth’s scouts have been collecting data on these players for nearly two years, so the most useful piece of the combine is getting to know the human away from the rink.

“You get a great feeling about them from their presence in the room and just a greater understanding of their background — their families and their playing careers,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong — who is in his fifth year at the helm of this rebuild operation — recognizes that his team is in a unique position: Utah was just seven points out of playoff positioning in its inaugural season and can still get a top-5 prospect. The Mammoth are looking to turn a corner in their second year in Salt Lake City — because of this, all options are on the table. It’s why Utah got to know a wide range of players at the combine.

It was reported that the Mammoth dined with Michael Misa, James Hagens, Jake O’Brien, Brady Martin and Porter Martone in Buffalo. Armstrong also said that “anybody in that range” had extra time with the team.

Martin’s name was closely tied to Utah following his meal with the organization. Some found it surprising given that NHL’s Central Scouting had him ranked at No. 11 for North American skaters. Others said they could see Martin going in the top-7. The Mammoth, evidently, wanted to learn more about the physical, goal-scoring center, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he is automatically at the top of their list.

“In this day and age, bloggers want to really write about that we teed in on one guy and, you know, it’s not the truth. You go there to meet the entire range of where you’re picking,” Armstrong said. “We just had somebody tweet it was a certain player, but the truth is, with the range that we’re picking in — we’re gonna search out and find as many players to have extra time with. Especially with the importance of that pick.”

Armstrong stuck to his philosophy of picking the best player available on the draft board by the time the No. 4 selection rolls around.

“That’s the biggest thing for us. So that’s our whole thought process,” Armstrong said. “Take the best player available.”

That could mean landing someone like Caleb Desnoyers, Anton Frondell or Hagens, who all may have a pure offensive ceiling that is arguably higher than Martin’s. All three players are centers who had strong showings in their respective leagues and got to know the Mammoth better in New York.

Utah talked to around 50 players at the combine, where each team uses the time differently. The Montreal Canadiens, for one, asked the athletes what kind of animal they were on and off the ice. The New York Rangers presented prospects with a 10x10 board and asked them to find three random numbers on it as quickly as possible.

How did the Mammoth handle it?

“I think we adapt every year. Those kids are pretty smart. They work in tandem,” Armstrong said. “Try to get as much out of the player as you can and you don’t do that normally — I think sometimes if you come at them too hard or spray the questions all over the place — I think there’s a formula in there. For us, we change every year. Sometimes we do ask outlandish questions and then sometimes we don’t.”

Armstrong and Utah’s front office gathered as much information as they could from the combine and are starting to piece it together into their organization’s bigger picture. The Mammoth have the No. 4 pick, but they also have over $20 million in cap space for the free agency market and assets they could bundle in a trade to bring in legitimate personnel.

It sounds like the team will have a hand in everything this summer. Does that mean signing a big free agent, trading for a top-six player and scoring with the perfect prospect in the draft? Probably not. But it does mean the Mammoth are going to leave no rock (or boulder?) unturned when it comes to the way they can improve the group.

“We’re the type of team — whether we’re picking at 22 or we’re picking at four — we’re going to explore everything. From moving back to moving up to trading. And we’re going to work on and find out everything that we can in that area to make us the best team,” Armstrong said. “We’re a little bit of an oddball in the sense that there’s not many teams that are in the free agent market, that have cap space, that have assets and are picking at four.”

When projecting what the Mammoth could do this summer, past behavior might predict future behavior.

Armstrong spent 16 years with the St. Louis Blues — first as an amateur scout, then director of amateur scouting, and finally the assistant general manager — and helped build the 2019 Stanley Cup team. The Blues’ core then (guys like Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, Alex Pietrangelo, Jordan Binnington) were not shiny free-agent signings. Rather, they were either drafted to the organization or traded for.

The Mammoth have followed a similar model since Armstrong took over in 2020. Many of Utah’s foundational pieces — Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley, Dylan Guenther, Josh Doan — were drafted by the team. Armstrong then went out and traded for the majority of his backend; Mikhail Sergachev, Sean Durzi, John Marino, Olli Määttä and Michael Kesselring were all acquired through trade.

It has put Utah in a position where it is one, two or three players away from being a real, consistent contender. This team has not built through free agency in the past so it likely will not be its sole focus this offseason. The right price, term and talent, though? The Mammoth no doubt have the means to bring some complementary firepower in.

Armstrong has said it all along: Utah is leading with a balanced approach. The Nashville Predators stole the headlines during last year’s free agency window with the signings of Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, Brady Skjei and Scott Wedgewood. They finished 30th in a 32-team league the ensuing season.

Learning from the teams around them, the Mammoth have all avenues — the draft, trade and free agency — open to level up for year two in Utah. It has kept Armstrong’s summer schedule booked and busy.

“A lot of video. A lot of meetings. I always say good scouts are paranoid — double and triple-check. A lot of due diligence here and really just going through all the little extra things that you came up with in your meetings that you want to double-check,” Armstrong said. “It’s just going through and preparing for every single situation.”

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