The Utah Mammoth have hired two-time Stanley Cup champion Adam Foote as an assistant coach.
They have also signed head coach André Tourigny to a multi-year contract extension and, as previously reported by the Deseret News, they have signed assistant coach Blaine Forsythe to a multi-year extension.
Exact terms of coaching contracts in the NHL are not released publicly.
Mario Duhamel, who has spent five years as an assistant coach with both the Mammoth and the Arizona Coyotes, remains under contract with the organization, but he will not be behind the bench next season. He and the organization are working to determine his role going forward.
Who is Adam Foote?
Foote, 54, spent the 2025-26 season as the head coach of the last-place Vancouver Canucks. He served as an assistant coach with the Canucks the prior two and a half seasons — including 2024, when they fell a goal shy of a Western Conference Final appearance.
Foote draws on 19 seasons’ worth of playing experience, where he was one of the league’s premier shutdown defensemen. He played major roles in the Colorado Avalanche’s Stanley Cup wins in 1996 and 2001, as well as Team Canada’s gold medal in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
He worked alongside Tourigny and Duhamel with the Colorado Avalanche from 2013-15. Foote was a development consultant, while Tourigny was an assistant coach and Duhamel was a video coach.
As an assistant in Vancouver, Foote’s primary responsibility was to work with the defensemen. He will take on the same role in Utah.
It was under his watch that Quinn Hughes blossomed into an all-out superstar, rather than just a good defenseman. That culminated in Hughes’ 2024 Norris Trophy win as the NHL’s best defenseman, scoring 92 points in 82 games and allowing just 66 goals against at even strength.
With the Mammoth, there’s potential for Foote to elevate Mikhail Sergachev in a similar way. Perhaps he’s not a 90-point guy, but he probably has the potential to jump into the league’s upper echelon of defensemen.
GM Bill Armstrong said in a press release that Foote will “bring a fresh perspective to our room backed by years of experience as both a player and coach.”
He also led the Canucks’ penalty kill when he was an assistant coach there. The Canucks were the 11th-best PK team in the league during Foote’s tenure in that position, and they finished third in the league in that category in his last year in the role.
The Mammoth finished 19th on the penalty kill last season, so there’s plenty of room for improvement with Foote running the PK meetings.
How much should Mammoth fans read into Adam Foote’s head coaching tenure with the Canucks?
A one-and-done season as a head coach is generally not seen favorably, and finishing in last place makes it even worse. But Mammoth fans shouldn’t worry about that too much.
The transition from assistant to head coach on the same team can be difficult because you go from being the good cop to the bad cop. That difference in dynamic with your players can put strain on relationships, making it hard to do the job effectively.
Additionally, Foote was handed a roster full of players who were probably better suited for AHL action, rather than NHL. A combination of injuries and internal issues made that necessary.
“It was a challenging year on several fronts and truthfully, Adam and his staff were dealt a very difficult hand,” said new Canucks GM Ryan Johnson.
With a “good cop” role and much more talent at his disposal, the deck should favor Foote more than it did last season.
Why did the Mammoth extend André Tourigny?
Including his time in Arizona, Tourigny is the fourth-longest-tenured head coach in the NHL. The three ahead of him — Jon Cooper, Jared Bednar and Rod Brind’Amour — are all first-time head coaches, just like Tourigny, and they have all won the Stanley Cup during their respective tenures.
Tourigny joined current Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice as the only coaches in NHL history to improve their win totals in each of their first five seasons. Interestingly, both Tourigny and Maurice went through franchise relocations during those first five seasons.
“I am grateful to the organization and feel fortunate to work alongside such an exceptional coaching staff and dedicated group of players,” Tourigny said in a press release. … My family and I love being in Utah and look forward to deepening our roots here.”
After coaching 14 seasons of major-junior hockey, the Coyotes hired Tourigny to come in and shepherd its young core. It was under his watch that Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz broke out as top offensive players, and he has since helped Dylan Guenther and Logan Cooley to similar heights.
This season, the Mammoth are anticipated to have another wave of young players join the organization, and Tourigny has the chance to help each of them become productive NHLers as well.
Tourigny made his Stanley Cup Playoffs debut last season, falling in the first round to the eventual Western Conference champions, the Vegas Golden Knights. His job going forward will include not just developing players, but helping the team succeed as a whole.
All of Tourigny’s team success as a coach thus far has come at the international level. In his exit interview, he described how much different it is to win in the NHL compared to internationally: you see the same opponent night after night in the playoffs, rather than getting a fresh start every game when hunting for a gold medal.
This is his chance to prove himself as not just a development coach, but a winning coach.
What is Blaine Forsythe’s role with the Utah Mammoth?
Forsythe’s primary responsibility with the Mammoth is to run the power play. While his group finished 10th in the league in that area in 2024-25, it fell to 18th in 2025-26.
During the playoffs, the Mammoth went 1 for 16 on the power play. Had they cashed in on just a few more man-advantages, they likely would have moved on to the second round — and the Golden Knights showed that anything could happen from there.
Over his 14 seasons as an assistant coach with the Washington Capitals (2009-2023), his group had the eighth-best power play in the NHL. Having Alex Ovechkin at your disposal is a major advantage, but it was Forsythe who put the pieces in place for the “Great 8″ to succeed.