Utah Is Underpriced at 96.5. Guenther at 50 Goals Is Not.

Utah has played two games and won them 6-0 and 4-1, at home to Chicago and then in Columbus. Dylan Guenther scored twice on the power play in the opener, Karel Vejmelka made 15 saves for the ninth shutout of his career, and the conversation has jumped straight to two claims: the Mammoth are being undervalued, and Guenther is a 50-goal scorer.

Two games is nothing, and neither claim should rest on them. But both can be tested against last season, and they come out very differently. The first holds up. The second is a long way from the numbers.

Was Utah better than its 92 points?

Yes, and by a fair margin. Utah finished 43-33-6 with 268 goals for and 240 against, a differential of plus-28. That was the fourth-best differential in the Western Conference, behind Colorado, Dallas and Minnesota, but Utah finished tied for sixth in the West on points.

The cleaner comparison is with every team across the league that finished between plus-23 and plus-37.

Every other team in that band finished between 95 and 106 points. Utah finished on 92. Part of the gap is loser points: Utah had only six overtime losses, among the fewest in the league, so its 33 regulation losses earned nothing. It went 16-17 in one-goal games, close enough to even that bad luck in tight games does not explain it. It simply lost a lot of games outright while winning others comfortably.

Its five-on-five expected goals share was 52 per cent, tied for sixth in the league, and its PDO of 100.3 was dead average. There is nothing in those numbers that needs luck to repeat.

So is 96.5 too low?

VSIN listed Utah's point total at 96.5 in July. Take last season's goal differential, give Utah points at the rate the rest of that band earned them, and you get something close to 100 over 82 games, with two extra games on top this season. That points to the over, before accounting for any improvement from a young core. Logan Cooley scored 24 goals in 54 games and is 22.

The roster did change, and not entirely for the better. JJ Peterka, who scored 25 goals, is now in Boston. Utah added Vincent Trocheck, who had 53 points in 67 games for the Rangers, and Anders Lee, who scored in his Mammoth debut. Trocheck's five-on-five on-ice expected goals share last season was 43.1 per cent, in the bottom seven per cent of forwards with 500 minutes, though on a Rangers team that finished below average in that measure. That is the one addition that could cost Utah at even strength.

We have made the broader case for this group before, in August's pieces on Clayton Keller as a star nobody is watching and on Guenther as the reason people are picking Utah. The goal-differential case is the strongest version of it.

Can Guenther score 50?

Here the numbers push back hard. Guenther's goal totals have climbed every year, and last season's jump was enormous.

The problem is where last season's 40 came from. Guenther scored 40 goals on 27.6 expected goals, 12.4 more than his chances predicted. Most of that was at five-on-five, where he scored 28 on 17.6 expected. On the power play he was close to normal, eight goals on 7.3 expected. He shot 16.5 per cent on 242 shots.

To score 50 in 84 games at last season's shooting percentage, he would need about 303 shots, roughly 3.6 a game, up from 3.1. To score 50 if his finishing drifted even halfway back toward his chances, he would need far more than that. Both paths ask a 23-year-old to repeat finishing well above his chances and add a large jump in volume on top.

Could he be the exception?

Some shooters do sustain conversion well above expected goals, and Guenther may be one of them. The fair reading of three seasons is that he is a genuinely good finisher who had a hot year. A good finisher with his shot volume is a 35 to 40 goal player, which is an excellent player. Fifty is a different tier, and nothing in his chance generation yet puts him in it.

The case for 50, stated fairly

The best version of both claims goes like this. Utah's goal differential was the fourth best in the West and every team with a similar differential earned at least 95 points, so 96.5 looks low before any growth from Cooley and Guenther. Guenther's goal total has risen every season, he plays heavy power-play minutes on a team that scores, and the 84-game schedule adds two more chances. Elite shooters do convert above expected year after year.

The other side is harder to wave away. Utah lost a 25-goal scorer in Peterka and added a centre whose 5-on-5 numbers sat in the bottom seven per cent of forwards. Guenther scored 12.4 goals above his expected total last season, most of it at 5-on-5, and needs about 303 shots to reach 50 even if he converts at the same rate.

Utah over 96.5 is the stronger bet of the two. Guenther at 40 again would be a very good season. At 50 the numbers are selling a story.

What it means

The Mammoth's start is loud, and the 10-1 aggregate will get them talked about as a contender. The goal differential from last season is the quieter and better argument: Utah was already a 95 to 100 point team in everything except the standings, and the standings tend to catch up.

Guenther is the opposite case. His start will feed the 50-goal talk, and it will be fun while it lasts. Watch his shots per game rather than his goals. If he is above 3.5 a game by Christmas, the conversation gets interesting. If he is around 3, he is on course for another very good season and nowhere near 50. Both are trackable on his player page and the league stats board.