When Logan Cooley was eligible for an extension this summer, as his entry-level contract was set to expire after 2025-26, the Utah Mammoth knew they wanted to sign the ascending superstar to a long-term deal. They were fixated on eight years, the max they could offer.
For Cooley, 21, that was a massive commitment.
"Just from knowing Logan's personality and the way that he processes decision-making, I knew that it was going to take a little bit of time for him to wrap his brain around it," GM Bill Armstrong said.
Cooley was methodical -- and patient.
"He is 21 years old, and [it's] the biggest decision that he's made in his entire life, not even close, " Mammoth owner Ryan Smith said. "You realize how much it can weigh, because if you think about eight years, I mean eight years ago he was 13 years old. That's the difference between the timeframe of what he's signing up for."
Negotiations between Cooley's agents, Brian and Scott Bartlett, and the Mammoth began in August. Armstrong categorized those talks as cordial but tough. The season began and no deal was in place. The sides stopped talking, then started talking again.
The NHL's salary cap was set to feature historic increases over the next three seasons, and everyone was grappling with new financial realities. Other contracts across the league came in, and each one represented a data point to shape the conversation. But what are the services of a young center -- an electric skater who is as dynamic offensively as he is responsible defensively -- worth these days, especially if he's willing to commit for nearly a decade?
The Mammoth started off 5-2-0. Cooley didn't necessarily have the production everyone expected of him, scoring two goals and one assist in those first seven games.
"Talks maybe weren't going as clear as we would've liked," Cooley said. "After we played the Avalanche the night before, Ryan [Smith] wanted to have a meeting."
They convened in Smith's suite at the Delta Center on Oct. 22, the day before a four-game road trip. By that point, a framework for a deal was in place -- eight years, $10 million per season, the third-largest contract ever for a player coming out of his entry-level contract -- but Cooley wasn't fully ready. Smith saw it as an opportunity for a reset.
"I said, 'Can we just call a quick timeout and say, congrats?'" Smith recalled. "I've just watched too many athletes reach all of their dreams. And then they get there and it's stressful and unhappy. ... So that was my first conversation with Logan: Just stop for a second. No matter where this ends up, if you go back to your 13-year-old self, you've been betting on yourself, and your family has been betting on everything your entire life. And you're a 21-year-old now with this option. You've won, bro."
For Cooley, the conversation unlocked something.
"He's an unbelievable owner because he cares about us as a team, and gives us every opportunity to succeed," Cooley said. "But the conversation wasn't just about hockey. He had my back and if I give back to him, we could do something exciting. It was a really good meeting. We all kind of agreed, but it wasn't really official yet ... we had a flight to catch."
COOLEY GREW UP in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, nestled alongside the Monongahela River, about 12 miles from the Pittsburgh city center. He's deeply competitive, with an innate desire to improve every day, but also known as humble and quiet. Cooley doesn't use curse words, even now. And he's very serious about hockey.
He was born in 2004, one year before Sidney Crosby's debut with the Penguins. Four years later, Crosby launched his "Little Penguin Program," designed to make hockey more accessible with free equipment and ice time. The inaugural year of Crosby's program featured 400 kids, aged 4-7. Cooley was one of them.
Cooley's passion for the sport took off from there. But as he forged his own name through hockey -- starring for the U.S. National Development Team Program for two years before one season at the University of Minnesota -- his biggest priority was always his family.
Cooley idolized his two older brothers, Eric and Riley, who played hockey before him. Their parents, Eric and Cathy, are part of the family business, running vending machines and arcade games in restaurants and bars across Pennsylvania
Cooley is proud of the community he's from. He was drafted No. 3 in 2022 by the organization (which was then the Arizona Coyotes). After Cooley's first season with the University of Minnesota, he intended to return for his sophomore season. Armstrong and his staff were eager to sign him.
"I kind of had talked him into coming to join us, to sign him originally out of college. And he said, 'Under one stipulation,'" Armstrong recalled. "I said, 'Okay, whatever it is, it doesn't matter where you get this contract signed.' He goes, 'You got to come to Pittsburgh.' So I packed up a whole team, media guys and everything, and I think our flights got delayed. We ended up canceling [the flights]. We ended up driving in from Cleveland. It literally took us two days to get there."
Cooley looked like he belonged from his 19-year-old rookie season, playing all 82 games in 2023-24 for the Coyotes while scoring 20 goals.
However, off the ice, the franchise was in peril. The Coyotes had cycled through a revolving door of ownership groups. The most recent owners had the team playing at a 4,600-seat college arena on Arizona State's campus; but after failed promises, substandard treatment and financial mismanagement, the NHL had enough. The league brokered a deal in April 2024 that featured Smith -- a self-made billionaire through tech, who also owns the NBA's Jazz -- buying the franchise for $1.2 billion and immediately moving them to Utah.
Since then, Smith has followed through on every promise.
The Delta Center wasn't fully optimized for hockey right away, with sections closed off during the 2024-25 season. But in the span of just one offseason, Smith helped engineer a massive renovation to the lower bowl, adding capacity and sightlines conducive to the sport.
Last season, the team trained at the old Olympic oval in Salt Lake City. It would have been perfectly adequate. Once again, in one offseason, Smith spearheaded and opened a 146,000-square-foot practice complex dedicated just to the Mammoth, which is now considered best in class across the league.
"If you look at what we've done, the branding was definitely a moonshot. The facility was definitely a moonshot in that timeframe. Getting an NHL team here was a moonshot. Our org works super hard, and these guys go all-in," Smith said.
"Did I think we were going to be in this spot this soon? I mean, it would be an optimistic way to look at it, but sometimes things just align. ... I'm glad we set a culture that Cools wanted to be here, because at the end of the day, I can talk to Cools, the organization, he's got to want to be here to sign that deal."
COOLEY HOPPED ON the plane for the four-game road trip knowing he would sign the deal. But for a week, it would have to be kept under wraps.
"I told my parents, my siblings but said, 'We gotta keep it quiet,'" Cooley said. "A lot of the time it was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept it in. I did tell [Clayton] Keller and [Mikhail] Sergachev, guys who should know first."
But just knowing the news himself was the biggest thing.
"It allowed me to be free," Cooley said. "Maybe earlier in the season it was on the back of my mind. But now I felt like my mind was free and I could do the things I love to do."
The very next night, Cooley assisted on Ian Cole's goal three minutes and 18 seconds into a game against the St. Louis Blues. Cooley then went on to score a natural hat trick -- in the first period, with all three goals in the span of 10 minutes.
"It starts off pretty hot," Smith said. "I was like yeah, I think he's in a good headspace."
Two nights later, against the Minnesota Wild, Cooley scored two more goals -- in the first three and a half minutes of the game.
It all dates back to the handshake in the owner's suite.
"I think he was really comfortable leaving that meeting. I think a lot of his questions got answered. You could see it in him," Armstrong said. "I think the way the world came off his shoulders and he went out and tore it up on the road trip."
The Mammoth are trending toward being a playoff team, and one with an exceedingly bright future. Cooley is the team's new highest-paid player, but he's part of a core that features Keller, Sergachev, Karel Vejmelka, Dylan Guenther and JJ Peterka, who are all signed through at least 2027-28.
"We're playing the game with a lot of confidence. We're playing the game we know how to play," Cooley said. "There's still a lot of games left, but we're seeing a lot more maturity this year, guys have a lot more confidence and we know we can be a top team in the league."
As Smith said getting the young players on board is "massive."
"We're starting a franchise. I'm learning from them and they're learning from me," Smith said. "Arguing over a little bit of money here or there, that's probably not what this one was for either of us.
"It was more like, 'Hey, how do you see me? And are you ready to go all-in?'"
