Lee settling in with Mammoth, already making impact on young roster

NEW YORK -- Anders Lee never thought he’d be in this position, arriving in the New York metropolitan area as visiting NHL player -- not after 13 seasons with the New York Islanders and the past eight as captain. 

But business is business, and when the forward’s contract with the Islanders expired after last season, the sides couldn’t reach an agreement on a new deal.

“You’re saying goodbye to the group that you did it with, and that was very difficult,” Lee told NHL.com at the NHL offices on Monday. “Very difficult.” 

Lee, his wife, Grace and their three young children -- daughters Ruby, 6, and Josephine, 4, and son Augie, 2, have since found a new home with Lee signing a three-year, $16.2 million contract with the Utah Mammoth on July 1.

After being in one spot for so long -- Lee was a sixth-round pick (No. 152) by the Islanders at the 2009 NHL Draft -- he sought advice from those who gone through the process before, including Brock Nelson, a former Islanders center who has been with the Colorado Avalanche since being traded there on March 9, 2025. 

“I talked to everybody,” Lee said. “Guys that I played with, like Marty Reasoner, I met with him just to see what he had gone through years before. All these guys, I talked to ‘Nelly.’  It’s such a big thing. All of a sudden, you kind of have to start to think about that, and I wasn’t prepared to think about that. I had to do a deep dive, like, ‘OK, if this isn’t going to work, how does it look doing something else? How is going to look like for my kids, for my family?’

“Moving, changing teams … there was a big influx of personal research and gathering information. Our kids’ ages, they’ll be fine and they can adapt, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. We had a lot of long conversations. To be honest, I’m proud of how we handled it and worked through it together. We did what was best for us with something that maybe we weren’t totally prepared for.” 

Lee has since become close with now-teammate Vincent Trocheck, who also signed with Utah on July 1 and was welcomed back by his former team, the New York Rangers, at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. 

“It’s been so nice, honestly,” Lee said. “We’re coming from the same area. What we were doing was the same thing that they were doing. They’ve got kids, so we’ve been hanging out a lot, making dinner, having each other over with the kids. Our daughters are in the same class at school. Little things like that, it’s been huge.

“Getting the kids settled was priority No. 1. I think for us as parents, we knew we’d be fine no matter where we went. We could handle all that stuff; you just worry about your kids and want to make sure that they’re settled.”

It’s soothing for Lee, who turned 36 on July 3 and departed fifth all-time in Islanders history in games played (923), fourth in goals (308) and 10th in points (549). His new team has been with him every step of the way to get the entire family acclimated.

On the ice, Lee has already scored his first goal with Utah, doing so in his third game, a 6-0 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Oct. 1. He had an assist during a 4-2 loss to the Rangers for his second point, quickly finding chemistry with new, younger linemates Logan Cooley, 22, and Dylan Guenther, 23.

“It was incredible that we signed a captain. He calms our group,” Mammoth general manager Bill Armstrong said Monday. “He’s a calm guy, and you can see that. There’s no panic in his game. He gives us a lot of leadership. I think he’s going to help our group.

“We’ve got a great captain in (Clayton) Keller and (Lawson) Crouse and ‘Schmaltzy’ (Nick Schmaltz) and those guys, and they’ve done a good job. I feel like now it’s Anders’ turn to kind of push that group and help them become better leaders. He’s going to have a huge impact on our leadership group, being in those meetings, helping them and guiding them and being a mentor to them. It’s going to really help our group.

“He is exactly what we needed as a player. We have a lot of skill, so when you put him with Cooley and Guenther, he anchors the net, he gets first to the forecheck, he does the dirty work in the corners. We needed that.” 

The Mammoth are the New York area during a five-game road trip that continues at the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; Utah16, MSGSN), but Lee won’t see the Islanders just yet. Utah hosts them Dec. 15, exactly two months before Lee makes his return to UBS Arena. 

"There’s going to be a lot of emotions for sure," Lee said. “We play the day before too (at the Washington Capitals on Feb. 14). I’d love to have been able to catch the boys. Even when they come to town, we’re on the road (at Colorado on Dec. 14), we have a back-to-back. Nothing you can do about the schedule, but it’s going to be an emotional game for sure.

"I feel like guys never even really play well in that game because there’s just too much on your mind. You’re just trying to get through it."

That day will come and go, but Lee's hunger to win a Stanley Cup championship will remain. He missed the 2016 postseason after breaking his left leg during a game against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden just days before the playoffs began. He helped the Islanders reach the Eastern Conference Second Round in 2019, then the conference final in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. He missed the Islanders’ return to the conference final the following year due to a torn ACL sustained in March of 2021.

He’s pumped about the amount of talented youth on the Mammoth, a franchise also hungry to win after getting a taste of playoff hockey last season, when they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference First Round in six games. 

“So many things have to go right,” Lee said. “I wouldn’t even know how to handle that accomplishment, to be honest. I can’t imagine guys who have done it, like how they feel. There’s a reason why they win one, and they can’t wait to do it again, because it’s that amazing. So, I’d love to feel that feeling.

“The hockey side here has been great; that was never a worry from the get-go, to be honest,” Lee said. “Talking will Bill through the process and understanding the fit that they had for me and their vision for me as a player, it made the most sense and was really comforting and put me in a place to make a comfortable decision.”