The Utah Mammoth are set to host their second playoff game in Salt Lake City, but something more peculiar is happening just north of the state capital.
Sources to BGS learned that the College of Life Sciences at BYU in Provo has been working to de-extinct the wooly mammoth with eyes set on having the Mammoth club sign it for the 2027-2028 NHL season.
Paul Frandsen, a professor in genetics, genomics, and biotechnology, said that while the program started as a pie-in-the-sky idea, it has snowballed into something more.
“I mean, who wouldn’t want to do something like this? The growth in genetic technologies is so much more advanced than when the ibex was de-extincted 23 years ago,” Frandsen said. “And bit by bit, we think we can make this work. We’re already in embryo & DNA testing”
Despite folks in the program regularly studying plants, grains, and insects, the rise in the program isn’t too far fetched when you think of the Mormon’s long history with genealogy and genetic collecting.
The LDS Church owns and operates Family Search, one of the largest repositories of genealogical information on earth. Detractors have said it would be a matter of time before something like this would occur. Add in longtime allegations that the church posthumously baptizes dead people into the faith against the wishes of families, and mammoths for hockey purposes seems quaint.
The team claimed no involvement in any of this when reached for comment.
“No. We are not involved in science class nonsense,” Mammoth director of hockey operations David Griffiths said. “We have a series to win over Vegas and a goal to bring a Stanley Cup to this city. That is the only thing we are talking about in the building.”
However, if the process were to succeed, there is no rule saying the mammoth can’t play hockey. The NHL rulebook allows for teams to have 50 signed players and does not designate specific species that are allowed to play. The only rule that disqualifies someone from playing is if they are blind in one or both eyes.
Messages sent to the LDS Church’s First Counselor Henry Eyring were not returned as of time of publication.
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