When Ethan Belchetz fell outside the top 15 at the NHL draft, Utah Mammoth GM Bill Armstrong knew he had to grab him.
Perhaps it was cold feet, or maybe the Mammoth had intel that another team was about to nab Belchetz. Either way, Armstrong and his staff concluded it was in their best interest to move up from pick No. 19 to 17.
The Los Angeles Kings, who traded pick No. 17 to the Mammoth, posted a video of the trade call on social media Tuesday.
“Kenny?” answered Armstrong when he picked up Kings GM Ken Holland’s call.
“You want to do the deal?” Holland responded (they had discussed a portion of it over text or email beforehand).
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
“You give us pick 83 and we flip 17 and 19,” Holland said.
“We’re good,” Armstrong confirmed.
Moments later, the giant red “trade alert” flashed on the screen at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, accompanied by the rather jarring sound of a goal horn.
“The Los Angeles Kings trade pick No. 17 in this year’s draft to the Utah Mammoth in exchange for picks 19 and 83,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced at the podium in Buffalo.
The video goes on to show Holland and his staff landing on their decision for pick No. 19, Swedish winger Elton Hermansson.
The Kings went on to trade pick No. 83 to the Minnesota Wild for 89 and 153, which they used to select Yegor Rybkin and Giorgos Pantelas.
Holland, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2020, is a “friend of many in the (Mammoth) organization.” When he was between jobs in the fall of 2024, the then-Utah Hockey Club invited him to their training camp to check things out.
Eight months later, the Kings underwent a GM change, hiring Holland to replace Rob Blake.
Who is Ethan Belchetz and why did the Mammoth want him so badly?
At 6-foot-5 and having scored more than a point per game in the Ontario Hockey League last season, Belchetz fits Armstrong’s drafting MO perfectly.
“I just wanted to get a player that was kind of my size, so when we did the interview process, I looked thin and skinnier,” Armstrong said with a laugh as he sat next to Belchetz for a press conference two days after drafting him.
The fact that more than half of his points were goals shows that he can do the hardest thing in hockey, and size is the one thing that even the best coaches can’t teach.
Belchetz’s stature and OHL production are a bit better than Mammoth associate captain Lawson Crouse had in the same league when he was 18. It’s reasonable to wonder if he becomes an effective NHL power forward like “The Sheriff.”
He’s committed to Michigan State for next season — a program that’s loaded with 17 NHL-drafted players, including 2024 fourth-overall pick Cayden Lindstrom and 2026 seventh-overall pick Chase Reid.
“That’s the way our game is trending, with the big man around the net,” Armstrong said. “We’ve got some speed and skill. It’s nice to have that true power forward that’s coming into the game that can take that next step to help us win a championship at some point.”
