Utah Mammoth has turned a piece of hockey machinery into a mascot-sized spectacle. The team unveiled the Zammoth, a mammoth-themed Zamboni refit that will carry up to eight fans at a time and make laps before every game and at the end of each period before the regular ice resurfacers take over.
The Zammoth will be on display at the arena starting with Tuesday's matchup against the Edmonton Oilers and will remain there for the next several games. Its base came from an ice resurfacer used at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, a 24-year-old machine the team found already sitting inside the Delta Center when it began looking for a Zamboni.
Chris Barney said the goal is to give fans a way to get closer to the action. “It’s an opportunity for our fans to engage with the crowd,” he said, adding that it “puts them down on the ice where their heroes are playing.” He said, “A lot of people don’t get the opportunity to be down there on the ice,” and called it “one more example of us trying to do that.”
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The twist is that the Zammoth no longer works as a normal Zamboni. It has been refitted to look like a mammoth and now serves as a fan ride rather than an ice-cleaning machine, part of the final stretch of the 2025-26 NHL season and another way for the team to turn the building into a show before the puck drops. The fan Zamboni idea has been used before in other NHL markets, including by the Florida Panthers and Columbus Blue Jackets, while other clubs have let people ride on regular, non-fitted vehicles.
For the Utah Mammoth, the appeal is simple: make the arena feel less like a rink and more like a place where supporters can step briefly into the game itself. For a team that found its Zamboni base buried in plain sight inside its own building, the Zammoth is a fittingly odd way to invite fans onto the ice and keep them there long enough to remember it.
