It’s like looking into a distorted mirror. Rather than being identical, the 2026-27 Utah Mammoth currently (WARNING: extremely small sample size) are giving off similar vibes to those of the 2022-23 New Jersey Devils. The speed, the skill, the style of play – it’s eerily familiar. However, these Mammoth are far more physical than those Devils ever were.

Tuesday night at Prudential Center, the Devils hosted the Mammoth in just the third game of their season, but it was already an important one. After losing 6-0 to the New York Islanders on Saturday and looking very different from how they did in their season-opening win against the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday, it was important for New Jersey to wipe the slate clean. The final score, a 5-3 Devils loss, failed to quell the early restlessness around the Garden Staters. 

Luke Evangelista scored his first two goals as a member of the Devils and Jesper Boqvist scored his first since returning to the team in an off-season trade. But that was cancelled out by three-point nights from Nick Schmaltz (1G, 2A) and Mikhail Sergachev (3A). 

“We knew what their game plan was,” Evangelista explained. “Obviously, they’re a great rush team. They play with a ton of skill, a ton of speed, especially through the neutral zone and obviously their power-play’s pretty lethal. We knew their game plan. They just executed it better and it was unfortunate we didn’t get the result we wanted tonight.”

Jake Allen started in net and stopped 26 of the 31 shots he faced while being under pressure all night. Opposite Allen was Karel Vejmelka, who stopped 30 of the 33 shots he faced.

With the formalities out of the way, let’s get back to the mirror analogy. The 2022-23 Devils were a young, fast, highly skilled team who, after missing the playoffs the previous four seasons, were finally a team on the rise. The Garden Staters lost their first two games before reeling off three straight wins. They then dropped a 6-3 contest to the Washington Capitals before putting together a 13-game win streak. 

Utah actually won their first two games this season, by a combined 10-1 tally, before losing to the New York Rangers 4-2 on Sunday. They came into their game against the Devils with the best power-play in The League and play a more physical game than any Garden State team since the mid-90s. 

Before the game against the Devils, Utah’s Dylan Guenther told Mammoth Team Digital Reporter Catherine Bogart, “They’re a fast team too. Try not to get into a track meet. Play our game, be disciplined, patient and making sure that we’re keeping our speed through all three zones.”

The ironic thing is that Devils’ Head Coach Sheldon Keefe essentially said the same thing about the Mammoth before the game, telling New Jersey’s Team Digital Reporter Amanda Stein, “They’re a really good team. They’ve always been skillful. They’ve always been a fast, small, skilled team. Now they’ve gone out and added bigger pieces and grit to their lineup. They have a little bit of everything.”

“They’ve got good goaltending,” Keefe continued. “Good D-corps, guys that will put the puck in the net and guys that will muck it up in front of the net. That’s a really good team over there. They’re going to be dangerous this year. We’ve got to bring our ‘A’ Game if we want to compete tonight.”

Funny enough, both sides are also describing the 2022-23 iteration of the Devils, who ended up setting a franchise record with 112 points before bowing out to Carolina in the second round of the playoffs.

So, while the Mammoth and Devils are comparing this year’s squads to each other, Utah is also quite similar to the Garden Staters of four seasons ago; just with considerably more size and physicality. 

Tuesday morning, several hours before the game, Keefe told Stein, “Special teams are going to be huge. Ours hasn’t been great in the first two games. That’s the biggest challenge. First, stay out of the penalty box. Which we’ve done a pretty good job of. But we’ve got to find a way through the kill and managing that.”

Keefe’s words proved prophetic just 10 seconds into the game, when Timo Meier was penalized for high-sticking Jack McBain. With 13 seconds left in Utah’s power-play, Clayton Keller wired the puck past Allen from the right face-off circle, off a pass from the point by Mikhail Sergachev, to give the Mammoth a 1-0 lead. 

Then, at 11:37 of the first period, MacKenzie Weegar was called for roughing Timo Meier and at 12:05 of the first period, Lawson Crouse joined Weegar in the box for hooking Luke Evangelista. On New Jersey’s ensuing five-on-three power-play, Jack Hughes sent a shot towards Vejmelka from the point. Evangelista tipped the puck and deflected it past Utah’s netminder to tie the game 1-1, giving the Devils their first power-play goal of the season (they were previously 0-10 on the man-advantage). 

The Mammoth started the second period strongly, getting Allen to sprawl out without control of the puck. Weegar put the loose puck in the back of the net and the Devils trailed 2-1, 1:42 into the middle period. 

Continuing their tit-for-tat battle, Timo Meier’s no-look shot was deflected by Evangelista at 6:01 of the second period to tie the game 2-2. It was Evangelista’s second goal of the game and his second via a net-front deflection. 

“At the end of the day, I’m just trying to contribute to wins for this team,” Evangelista said. “It was nice, obviously, to get the first one there. Like I said, it sucks we didn’t get a win out of it. But yeah, you always wanna do your part, just help the team as much as you can.”

At 10:50 of the middle period, Meier was called for tripping former Devils defenseman John Marino, even though the latter tried telling the officials that he just fell. On the ensuing Utah power-play, a pretty passing sequence that showed off the Mammoth’s high skill level resulted in Nick Schmaltz getting the puck down low and beating Allen with a blocker-side shot to give his team a 3-2 lead at 12:05. 

Mirroring the start of the period, the Devils allowed the Mammoth to score again, this time with 56.2 seconds left in the second, to put New Jersey in a 4-2 hole. Crouse was credited with poking home the loose puck after Schmaltz’s shot hit the post and wasn’t cleared out of the crease. 

Boqvist brought the Devils within 4-3 at 9:49 of the third period with a wicked backhand shot, but a Vincent Trocheck redirect, at 16:52, off a backdoor pass from Schmaltz, gave the Mammoth a 5-3 lead, which ended up being the final score. 

“Jake battled hard,” Keefe said. “That’s not an easy team to play against. And I don’t know that we could have given him any worse of a start to a game and to face The League’s best power-play as your first shot or first sequence of the game. But he battled despite the challenges that we presented him.”

For the Devils, that’s two games in a row where the game got away from them in the second period and they were unable to recover. This was also their third straight game where the Devils and their opposition started the game with multiple first-period penalties, making it difficult for the Garden Staters to get into any sort of rhythm. 

In total, the Devils were 1-for-5 on the power-play and 2-for-4 on the penalty kill against Utah, bringing their season totals to 1-for-14 on the man-advantage and 5-for-8 on the PK. 

“We knew coming in that their power-play’s lethal,” Allen said. “They showed us tonight…they have the best power-play in The League right now and a lot of chemistry and they made us pay. We were just chasing after that a little bit and we were right there till the end. I thought we had some momentum going at 4-3 and unfortunately it turned back to bite us.”

New Jersey has the skill and the speed to compete with and beat most teams, but they’ve been taken out of their game by opponents who can match those traits and then add to them with size and physicality. So, for as much as Utah is similar to the Devils, there are plenty of things they do differently and that made all the difference on Tuesday. 

“Not the result we wanted,” Allen said. “Sometimes you give the effort and you don’t get the result. It was one of those games where I just think a little bit disconnected and from all of us out, I can include myself right in that. It’s definitely a wake-up call for sure. We knew this is a really good hockey team playing over here. This team is gonna give some teams fits this year. Obviously, we’re a good group too. We gotta regroup. We’re fortunate that we have, I think, three days off here before our next game, so really get back to the drawing board and dial things in.”