Utah Mammoth Player Clayton Keller Abruptly Depart From Team Roster Due To His…

would be fitting for Clayton Keller to set a new career high for points in Utah Hockey Club’s final game of the season on Tuesday in St. Louis.

It was there that Keller’s dream of becoming an NHL star was hatched in the basement of his Swansea, Illinois home, just across the Mississippi River from the Blues’ arena where his dad, Bryan, exposed him to the NHL game.

“Our seats were great, six rows behind the goalie,” Bryan said. “He was so low that he couldn’t see or even hold the seat down so he sat in my lap.”

It was in St. Louis where Keller first met the Tkachuks — skating alongside Matthew and Brady while absorbing coaching lessons from Keith.

“He was really young, but this kid was determined,” Keith said. “We’d go to tournaments where we had a good team, but he always kind of rose above everybody else while people were saying he was too small.”

And it is in St. Louis where Keller has recorded 34 points in 31 games — his highest point total in any road NHL arena.

With two games left in the 2024-25 season, Keller sits at 85 points, one away from the career high he set two seasons ago in Arizona, tying Tkachuk’s Coyotes franchise record.

Much has changed since then. Keller has moved to Utah from the only NHL life he never knew in Arizona. He has donned the captain’s “C” that Tkachuk wore for five seasons before the Coyotes traded him to the Blues. Despite the immense pressure that those dueling challenges created for him in his eighth full NHL season, one thing hasn’t changed about Keller. He keeps taking his game to new heights.

He has already set a career high with 58 assists this season despite logging about a minute and a half less average ice time than he did in his career season of 2022-23, and he continues to be a model of durability, missing just one game this season.

Part of Keller’s improvement is clearly due to having better players around him. Part of his improvement is likely due to the maturation of young stars such as Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther. But ask Keller’s coach and he doesn’t mince words about who is most responsible for Keller’s continued ascension.

“He’s 100 percent the biggest part of it,” Tourigny said. “There’s no doubt he’s better this year than he was on both sides of the ice, but I say that all the time about him; how much he works at his craft.

“If you look at this game this season, he’s really competitive defensively, and offensively, with the way he competes to get inside. Kells is a student, so when you look at how the goals are scored in key situations in the NHL, there’s a lot of dirty goals, there’s a lot of tips, rebounds, deflections, but he really understands it’s not about just going inside. It’s about having the timing to arrive inside at the right time to get a stick on the puck or a rebound.”

Keller is well aware that he is approaching a career high in points, but when asked about its significance he brushed it off before turning his attention to greater aspirations.

“It’s not important at all,” he said. “Getting into the playoffs is obviously number one, and that’s the thing that sticks out the most to me. Until that happens, the rest is good, but it’s not what drives me.”