© 2025 ALLCITY Network Inc.
All rights reserved.
Utah's Logan Cooley has taken a major step forward in Year 2 of his NHL career
When Bill Armstrong and the amateur scouts were interviewing draft prospects at the 2022 Scouting Combine in Buffalo, they took Logan Cooley to a pizza joint.
“I don’t know how the conversation came up, but he asked where we took the other prospects,” Armstrong, the Utah Hockey Club GM said. “We said: ‘To a steak place’ and he asks, ‘Then why am I at a pizza place?'”
Armstrong still chuckles when he recalls that anecdote.
“The truth is, you can only eat steak so many times, but he had this look in his eye; this competitiveness that I just loved,” Armstrong said.
Thirty games into the Utah chapter of Cooley’s NHL career, everybody in Salt Lake City has probably seen that look. It’s an attitude that borders on, but never strays into cockiness. It’s a deep-seated belief that he is already an elite player who just needs to learn the nuances of the NHL game before ascending to the level he expects from himself.
It’s that “f-you attitude” that prospect analyst Chris Peters saw in him at the USA NTDP, and again at the University of Minnesota — an attitude that convinced Peters that Cooley was the best player in the 2022 NHL Draft even though he dropped to the Coyotes at No. 3. It’s an inner drive that has allowed Cooley to take a major step forward in his second NHL season.
“I’m still not exactly where I want to be in the future,” Cooley said. “I don’t think I’ve even come close to scratching the surface, but I think it’s important to always have confidence in yourself and never set a limit on what you can do.”
Through 30 games, Cooley is approaching point-per-game player status with seven goals and 26 points. He has developed a special chemistry with linemate Dylan Guenther (13 goals, 29 points) that should give Utah fans sweet dreams when they ponder the next decade of this duo’s career. To cap off that dream, they have brought Guenther’s roommate, Jack McBain, into the fold to create a line of well suited pieces.
“Jack’s a nice fit for those guys where they’ve got a big power forward that can score beside them, but he also gives them a little bit of room because he plays the game the right way,” Armstrong said. “He gets in there and bangs. He has a physical component and I think they feed off that. He clears a lot of space for them in different areas down low so I really like the chemistry with those three guys together.”
Guenther leads the team in points, Cooley is third (Clayton Keller is second at 28), and McBain leads the team in 5-on-5 goals with nine. But it’s not just the offensive end where the line is excelling, even though it is generating a lot of offensive zone time and shot attempts as its possession metrics suggest.
If you look at the trio’s plus-minus statistics in conjunction with those possession metrics and expected goals for, the line has taken a quantum leap in the defensive zone. All three players are a plus-12, tying them for the team lead.
Coach André Tourigny has been praising Guenther’s 200-foot game for more than a year, and McBain knows that in order to maintain a permanent role in the NHL, he has to be strong in that area of the game. It’s Cooley’s progression that is the most dramatic, but it’s not a matter of success by association.
Tourigny took a tough-love approach with Cooley early last season while hammering home the importance of that 200-foot game. When Cooley was not playing it, Tourigny slashed his minutes or dropped him down the lineup, and Cooley got the message.
“If you look at the guys who win the Stanley Cup, that’s a big part of their game,” Cooley said. “Jack Eichel really committed to being a two-way player, a guy that’s reliable, and he ended up winning a championship. You can’t just be offensive minded. You’ve got to be able to play both sides of the puck and that’s something that I worked on in the summer.
“It’s just bearing down on faceoffs, or having my stick in the right spots, or reading other players and being positioned to pick off a pass and get your transition game started. I’m just trying to play as quick as possible in the D-zone.”
Improving that part of his game has allowed Cooley to do what he does best: create at the offensive end. It’s his calling card; one that has wowed everyone at every level who has worked with him.
“He certainly can break you down one on one, but when he’s playing his best, it’s his ability to make the players around him better and use them and give and go and dart to ice — to me, that’s the dynamic side,” said Cooley’s NTDP coach Adam Nightingale, who is now the coach at Michigan State. “He’s got a creative mind, too. He’s not just trying things because it’s a trick play. He actually processes things super fast. He’s able to chip it up over a stick or let a puck go through his skates to get through to a teammate.”
Quick processing is the area that Cooley cites above all else when examining his overall growth.
“The biggest thing for me is how much the game has slowed down,” he said. “I’m seeing things faster, but another part of that is just knowing your next play. Last year, I kind of hesitated a little bit in knowing where my linemate was, or being confident enough to make a play.
“This year, there’s not much hesitating. I just know I’m going to make that play. I know where the open ice is and I think that allows you to process the game a little bit quicker; it allows you to make the next play quicker. My reads have just gotten better.”
When the season began, one of the biggest questions surrounding this team was whether Cooley would be able to take the next step in his development and become a legitimate top-six center. Just as Guenther did last season when the Coyotes recalled him from the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners, Cooley has silenced those concerns.
“It’s a hard growth process for guys like Logan at the start because their whole life, wherever they’ve gone, they’ve had success, and then all of the sudden they’re at the highest level and a coach is telling them, ‘Hey, you’re not good at this. You need to do that. You need to do this to be better,'” Armstrong said.
“But I think our development team helped groom him while he was having huge success at the University of Minnesota, and that’s what André does so well is get them to grow in more areas. It’s about raising your prospects the right way so you don’t give them too much too soon and spoil them. Then all of the sudden, you come back to them two years later and say, ‘Yeah, just because you get points, that’s not going to work here any longer.’ André has done a nice job of helping Logan grow his overall game.”
(Getty Images)
Cooley is close to his 20-goal pace from last season, but goal scoring is one area where he’d like to up his offensive game a little as the season progresses.
“It’s not that I’m not getting looks,” he said. “It’s just that there have been times where I should probably shoot the puck and I’m looking to pass. I want to continue to work on that because teams are so good that they start to realize if you’re just a passer and they’ll just defend that. You’ve got to be able to do both.”
Cooley will get a short break to ponder those changes. After Wednesday’s game against the Vancouver Canucks, Utah has three games remaining before the Christmas break. Cooley’s mom, Cathy, was already in town because she took part in the team’s recent mentor trip, but the rest of the family arrived Tuesday to spend the holidays together at Cooley’s townhouse.
There won’t be any need for last-minute holiday decorating, however. Cathy and Logan took care of that earlier. A lot earlier.
“My mom was out here a little bit after Halloween and I knew she wasn’t coming again until Christmas time so we got a tree and some Christmas stuff up right when Halloween was over,” Cooley said, laughing. “It’s been up for a while.”
Top photo of Utah Hockey Club center Logan Cooley via Imagn Images
Scroll to next article
