The Utah Mammoth had enough in them to make Saturday night interesting in Ottawa. They just didn’t have enough clean hockey at the end.
In the final game of a five-game road trip, Utah battled the Senators through nearly 58 minutes and kept answering every push. The Mammoth outshot Ottawa 32-21, won 55 percent of the faceoffs and looked sharp enough to leave with something. Instead, a few late lapses turned a tight game into a 4-2 loss.
Captain Clayton Keller summed up the night afterward: “We had lots of good pressure,” Keller said. “They’re a good team.
They play structure. They make you work for everything.
“We’re a good team as well. Lots of back and forth. Lots of chances both ways and just one shot was the difference.”
That one shot came after Ottawa won a defensive-zone faceoff and moved the puck up ice quickly. Nick Cousins slipped past Barrett Hayton and MacKenzie Weegar, then redirected the puck past Karel Vejmelka for the winner.
Head coach Andre Tourigny didn’t sugarcoat the sequence.
“It’s a bad read. It’s a bad decision,” Tourigny said.
“We give an odd-man rush, they put it in the back. We crawl back and then we miss an assignment on the faceoff.
“Those are the things…we’re better than that.”
That’s the frustrating part for Utah. The Mammoth were two minutes from at least grabbing a point and maybe heading back to Salt Lake City with a winning record from the trip. Instead, the final minutes exposed the kind of detail mistakes that can flip a game fast.
Even with the disappointment, the road swing wasn’t a total loss. Utah picked up five of a possible 10 points over the five-game Eastern Conference trip, a respectable haul from a tough stretch away from home.
There were also signs of life from Vejmelka, who had been sitting for nearly a week after a rough run of form. He wasn’t perfect, but he gave Utah a chance to hang around.
He stopped 17 of 20 shots for an .850 save percentage, and the numbers now show three straight losses and five defeats in his last six starts. Two of the goals against came after breakdowns in front of him, including a three-on-one rush and an Ottawa player left alone at the doorstep.
Still, the first goal is the one he’ll want back. It came on the power play, with Vincent Trocheck providing a partial screen, but Vejmelka had time to track it and make the save.
One bright spot did stand out: a strong stop that tracked through traffic and denied a one-timer with his right pad, the kind of save that can keep a team in the fight.
For now, though, Sebastian Cossa remains the better option in net for the Mammoth until either goalie proves otherwise.
Utah’s next stop is Vegas, where the Mammoth will face the Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena on Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. MT. The game will air on TNT, TruTV and HBO Max, and it will also be broadcast live on the KSL Sports Zone (97.5 FM/1280 AM).
In Other News...
Logan Cooley Gave Arizona Fans A Lot To Talk About Again
Logan Cooley was back in the spotlight Monday night, and Coyotes fans had every reason to keep one eye on what he was doing in Utah. In a 5-4 overtime loss to Montral, Cooley put together a four-point night that once again reminded people why his name still carries so much weight in Arizona circles, even after the franchises move. Sebastian Cossa turned aside 30 shots, but the Mammoth could not hold off the Canadiens in a game that stayed tight all the way to the finish.
For Arizona followers, Cooleys latest burst is the kind of development that keeps the old debate alive about what he can become and how quickly he is getting there. The night also came with a concern on the blue line, as Nate Schmidt left early with an upper-body injury and did not return, adding another layer of unease to a game that already had plenty of drama attached to it. [Read more 🡒]