Copyright Salt Lake City Deseret News
Through the first month of the season, the Utah Mammoth will not lose a game at home. Their 4-3 overtime win over the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday guaranteed that. They’ve won four consecutive contests at the Delta Center, and they now hit the road until Nov. 2. Mammoth captain Clayton Keller said after morning skate that this game would be a measuring stick, of sorts. They were on a three-game winning streak, but none of those opponents made the playoffs last year. This game, against the current league leader in the standings, was a chance to show how good they really are. It didn’t come easily, but they got the job done in the end. Here’s the story. Quick catchup Utah Mammoth: 4 Colorado Avalanche: 3 Logan Cooley nearly opened the scoring 30 seconds into the game after he found the puck with a wide-open cage in front of him. Avalanche goalie Scott Wedgewood didn’t give up on the play, though, and it remained 0-0 for the time being. Six minutes later, a Cale Makar shot from the blue line bounced off of Brandon Tanev and in. The Mammoth remained cool, and contrary to their recent trends, showed up for a solid second period. Goals from Nick Schmaltz and Lawson Crouse put them ahead going into the third. A minute and 10 seconds into the third period, Jack Drury tied it up. Mikhail Sergachev scored on a long shot shortly thereafter, but the ping-pong match continued when Martin Nečas squeaked a perfect shot past Karel Vejmelka just as Wedgewood was heading off for the extra attacker. Overtime tends to favor the quick, dynamic players. Makar, Nečas and Nathan MacKinnon certainly fit that mold for the Avalanche, but so do the bulk of the players on Utah’s first two lines. It was the latter that prevailed in this one, as Dylan Guenther got a stick on a cross-crease pass from Keller to put this one to bed just 33 seconds into the extra frame. Takeaways GWG: Game-winning Guenther Carolina Hurricanes forward Seth Jarvis has been the talk of the league so far this season with four game-winning goals in six contests. Now Guenther is nipping at his heels with three game-winners in six games. “Those little moments, you want to play in (them),” Guenther said after the game. “I didn’t think I played well, throughout the whole game, just kind of fighting it all game, but (it’s) just next-shift mentality. What can I do to help this team, and then I think just continuous repetition on that.” As pointed out by Dmitri Filipovic on X, Guenther has now scored the game-winning goal in 12 of the 77 games he has played for Utah. Simashev getting experience in meaningful situations If you didn’t know it was only Dmitri Simashev’s seventh NHL game, you might have thought he was a 17-year veteran. The 20-year-old played a career-high 20 minutes, including four shifts during the last 10 minutes while Utah was defending its one-goal lead. Against a divisional opponent in a year that’s playoffs or bust, it takes trust for head coach André Tourigny to deploy him — but he had no problem doing it. “He earned the trust,” Tourigny said. “I understand for people, they look at the (stat) sheet and they look at their age all the time, but at some point, you look at the performance of the player and what he can bring for the team.” Tourigny also talked about the growth that comes from playing in big moments. “It’s important he plays in those situations to (get) the experience and to learn to swim in those situations.” Sergachev, who’s hosting Simashev at his house this season, also had high praise. “I think I got that in my third year, he gets it in his seventh game,” Sergachev said of the opportunities given to Simashev. “But he’s way ahead of me. He’s unreal defensively, he’s doing everything right.” Simashev already seems comfortable in the locker room, despite the barriers in language and culture. He even jumped into Dylan Guenther’s postgame media scrum to ask a couple questions. Notes Why were two goals disallowed? Every disallowed goal leaves one fan base relieved and the other upset. The Mammoth and the Avalanche each had one taken off the board, so emotions were everywhere on Tuesday. Here’s an unbiased rationale for each of them. First was the Avalanche’s goal in the first period, which would have made it 2-0. It was called back for offside after a Mammoth coach’s challenge pointed out that Nathan MacKinnon hadn’t completely entered the players’ bench, meaning he was still in the offensive zone. In this instance, the officials were paying close attention to two things: whether MacKinnon’s skates were still on the ice and whether it was Valeri Nichushkin or Dylan Guenther who had last touched the puck before it crossed the blue line. It’s an important but little-known rule that if the defending team brings the puck into the zone, it’s not offside. The linesmen determined that this wasn’t the case and was therefore offside. The Mammoth’s disallowed goal, a blast from John Marino, didn’t need a coach’s challenge because the call on the ice was no goal — but even if it had been called a goal on the ice, Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar would have made the simplest challenge of his career. The NHL rulebook states that “an attacking player’s position, whether inside or outside the crease, should not, by itself, determine whether a goal should be allowed or disallowed.” Several people have pointed out that when Liam O’Brien made contact with Wedgewood’s blocker, he wasn’t in the blue paint — but that’s not the determining factor. Wedgewood didn’t have a lane to get over and make the save because O’Brien was there. That’s all it takes to make that call. McBain leaves with injury During his first second-period shift, Jack McBain got caught up in an awkward collision in the neutral zone, which ended with the audible sound of his head slamming into the boards as he fell. He didn’t get up immediately, so the officials stopped play to give him a chance to get out of additional harm’s way. He ended up skating off without help, which is always a good sign, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely fine. McBain didn’t return to the game and Tourigny didn’t have an update afterwards. The team sent out a memo during the game saying he was being evaluated for an upper-body injury. Goal of the game Lawson Crouse’s one-timer Guenther’s OT winner was nice, but there was something commanding about the way Lawson Crouse put his entire 6-foot-4, 214-pound frame into his one-timer from close range. Wedgewood hardly stood a chance. That’s Crouse’s first goal of the season, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
