Lawson Crouse Returns After 2020 Playoff Wait
lawson crouse is back in the postseason with the Utah Mammoth after waiting six years to play another playoff game. He called the return “a nice feeling to finally get here,” a change from the muted bubble run that started his playoff life in 2020.
Lawson Crouse and the 2020 Bubble
Crouse first reached the playoffs with the Arizona Coyotes in 2020, when the team won its play-in round against the Nashville Predators in Canada with zero fans in the building. He said, “There was essentially no playoff atmosphere because we were in Canada with no fans,” and added, “It was nice to get that playoff experience back then in the NHL, but it was definitely a different year.”
That first run ended quickly. The Coyotes were steamrolled by the Colorado Avalanche in the first round, then hired Bill Armstrong as general manager and entered a five-year rebuild.
Utah Mammoth Rebuild Years
Crouse stayed through the churn while other players left. He could have requested a trade, but instead went through three seasons of losing under John Chayka and became one of the most important players in the Utah Mammoth locker room.
He is one of only two players on the current roster who were part of Chayka’s early rebuild years, alongside Clayton Keller. Only four players on the Mammoth’s roster were on the Coyotes’ 2020 playoff roster.
Crouse Leadership in Utah
The wait also runs through his workload and production. In his first pro season, Crouse played 72 games after logging only two American Hockey League games the year before, then spent the next six seasons exclusively with the Coyotes. In his final three seasons there, he scored 20 or more goals in each season and posted a career-best 45-point season.
That résumé helped turn him into a steady voice for a younger group that included Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther. Crouse said leadership and being the best person you can be were instilled in him as a kid, and he signed a five-year extension at 24. For Utah, his return to playoff hockey puts one of the franchise’s longest rebuild survivors back on the stage he had not reached since 2020.
