It might be time to move the Hockey Hall of Fame from Toronto to Florida.
For the sixth season in a row, one of the Florida-based teams is competing in the Stanley Cup Final. They won it on three of those occasions and they have the chance to do it for a fourth time this month.
But it wasn’t always like this in the Sunshine State.
For decades Florida was nothing more than a retirement destination for NHL players. Their rosters in the 2000s featured plenty of big names — Ed Belfour, Gary Roberts, Joe Nieuwendyk, Mark Recchi Mike Vernon, the list goes on. But it was the twilight of each of their careers, and having a good time probably mattered more than winning or making money.
It’s not like that anymore.
They’ve finally figured out how to leverage their market advantages — sunny weather and no state income taxes — to attract the league’s premier players in their prime, rather than their pre-retirement eras.
And they’ve gotten rid of the country club mentality.
“It’s nice playing in Florida — you get to enjoy the weather and everything that comes with it, but when we’re at the rink, it’s nothing but business," said Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues at Stanley Cup Final media day. “I think we’ve (done) a really good job of controlling that.”
What are the Utah Mammoth doing to attract players?
Teams that wish to replicate the Florida teams’ success have to act with introspection. They have to ask themselves why players would want to play for them, and then they have to make it even better.
That’s been the Utah Mammoth’s outlook since the beginning. The team can’t offer Florida’s weather or New York’s nightlife, but there are plenty of reasons why people want to live in the Salt Lake Valley: the scenery, the family-friendly environment, the convenience of a big city without the traffic. That’s what they’re emphasizing.
Building state-of-the-art facilities
Part of the Florida teams’ problem in their early days was that the owners didn’t make enough money. They couldn’t pay big-name players the type of dough that other teams could, and their leftover cash wasn’t enough to build state-of-the-art facilities to which many players were accustomed. When ownership changed, they started winning.
The Mammoth have spared no expense to make Utah attractive to NHL players.
It started with renovations in the summer of 2024. The team could have joined the Vancouver Canucks as the only teams in the league without a practice rink, but it didn’t. Instead, Utah management thought outside the box and installed NHL-caliber facilities at the Utah Olympic Oval.
They simultaneously altered the Delta Center to accommodate the NHL — a process that will be ongoing for at least the next three offseasons. It started by adding home and visiting locker rooms, complete with all the bells and whistles. They also updated the Jazz’ locker room so as to not leave anyone out.
Visiting NHL players have consistently noted that Utah has some of the best facilities in the league.
“This is probably nicer than what we have in Minnesota for our home rink,” said Minnesota Wild forward Marcus Foligno after a morning skate at the Delta Center in February. “We have no complaints there.”
Next up is the permanent practice facility, which is set to open in September. Smith Entertainment Group involved the players as much as possible in the planning process to ensure that no detail would be overlooked. The goal is to have the best facility in the league.
Of course, they’ll have to compete with the Panthers in that regard, whose new practice facility has golf cart parking for the players, most of whom live within golf-cart driving distance of it.
Developing a winning culture
Everyone wants to play for teams where they think they can win. Part of general manager Bill Armstrong’s strategy has been to acquire champions.
By my count, 17 of the 31 guys that played for Utah last year won championships before they got to the NHL. The roster also boasted five Stanley Cup champions and 11 players who have won gold medals at international tournaments (though three of them had never won gold until this spring).
Those who have won before know what it takes to get the job done. They’re also not content with average play.
That was evident when Ian Cole, who previous to last year had made the playoffs in 16 of his 17 NHL seasons, declared how unhappy he was to not be playing in the postseason.
“Ultimately, our season is judged by whether we make the playoffs, whether we play into the summer — and that’s not going to be the case,“ he said before Utah’s final home game of the year. “We could have put ourselves in a much better spot. We didn’t handle some of the pressure as well or as maturely as I probably would have hoped.”
Maintaining internal pressure and expectations like that can be good, especially for a young group like this one.
Is it working?
Impressions have been great so far. Every chance they get, the players rave about how the Smiths have treated them, how much they love the state, how great the facilities are, how loud the fans get and how excited they are for the new practice rink.
Mikhail Sergachev, who played in three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals with the Lightning, winning the Stanley Cup two of those years, was traded to Utah the day before his no-trade clause kicked in. Fans probably expected him to resent his new city, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Utah is my home now,” he said in his exit interview. “I could live here after I’m retired. I love this place. People are very nice. It’s great.”
Karel Vejmelka echoed a similar sentiment.
“I love nature here. “I love Utah as a country. It’s really, really easy to live here and I really like to spend some time outside when I have some days off,” he said through his Czech accent.
Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. If players speak of Utah in private the same way they do in public, it won’t be long before big-name free agents are choosing to play in the rocky mountains.
Time will tell, but if Utah finds itself as a perennial contender a few years down the road, don’t overlook these steps as reasons why they got there.
