Teams that barely miss the playoffs tend to look back on wasted games with some regret. If the Utah Mammoth don’t hit the mark this year, their 3-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday will be one of those cases.
Here is the story.
Quick update
Chicago Blackhawks: 3
Utah Mammoth: 1
Both teams failed to score until almost halfway through the game. That’s not what you expect when two of the youngest teams in the league face off.
Blackhawks forward Ilya Mikheyev broke the ice with a greasy goal, something Mammoth head coach André Tourigny said his team needs to have more of.
JJ Peterka tied the score a minute into the third period with his first goal as a Mammoth, but André Burakovsky found the puck on his stick in a prime location to put the Hawks back in the lead less than eight minutes later.
Just as the Mammoth were starting to think about bringing out the goalkeeper for an extra attacker, John Marino took an accidental (but costly) high stick penalty, making it much more difficult for his team to push for the tying goal.
When they finally managed to bench Vítek Vaněček, Mikheyev scored with an empty net to seal the win for Chicago.
“We did a lot of good things,” Tourigny said. “To get over the hump and win those games, we have to be tougher inside, we have to be tougher at the net. We need to score those greasy goals.”
Takeaway meals
Sacrifice offense in favor of defense?
In three games, the Mammoth has scored just four goals in regulation time. That seems counterintuitive, considering the firepower they added during the offseason.
On the other hand, they have done a great job suppressing the gunshots. They have yet to allow 30 in a game, and on Monday they limited the Blackhawks to just 14 offerings.
It seems like Mammoth is sacrificing offense for the sake of defensive responsibility. As frustrating as struggling to score can be for both players and fans, it shows a type of maturity that everyone should be proud of.
Stanley Cup winning teams know how to shut down their opponents like the Mammoths have, and once they find their footing, they should be able to add scoring to the mix.
Getting too fancy
Remember Michael Scott’s advice to Dwight Schrute? “Keep it simple, stupid.”
That’s what the Mammoth should do when they have scoring opportunities. On too many occasions on Monday, their best players had the puck in prime spots to shoot, but chose to hand it off to their teammates, adding an unnecessary level of risk to the play.
In one case, for example, Clayton Keller put the puck in the slot without anyone getting between him and Blackhawks goalie Spencer Knight. But instead of shooting it, he tried to pass it to Nick Schmaltz, who wasn’t quite ready, resulting in a broken play.
Elsewhere in the game, Mikhail Sergachev had a clear shot on net from the point with a lot of traffic blocking Knight. However, instead of shooting, he passed it to the right winger, who didn’t have much to shoot at.
As skilled as these guys are, it shouldn’t always be a competition to see who can make the most elegant play. An accidental goal that shoots three guys and counts as much as a coast-to-coast goal.
“We’ve just been on the perimeter too much, and when we’ve gone around the net, we haven’t been tough enough. We have to fight out there,” said Barrett Hayton, who played his first game of the season after missing the first two with an injury.
Dmitri Simashev seems to belong
In his third NHL game, Dmitri Simashev played a career-high 17:28, including his first 40 seconds of reduced time.
Aside from a bad pass during his first shift of the game, Simashev was brilliant. It takes up space, making it difficult for opponents to pass anything through it. In fact, he has yet to allow a goal while on the ice.
Towards the end of the game, he was paired with his housemate, Sergachev. Although both guys shoot from the left, Simashev has played much of his career on the right side. The Mammoth (and the NHL as a whole) have a surplus of left-handed defensemen, so now that Sean Durzi will be out for a while, Simashev playing on the right side could make a lot of sense.
Game objective
JJ Peterka’s first goal as a Utah Mammoth
Although the season hasn’t started exactly how Mammoth wanted, the line of Peterka, Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther is a great success story so far.
They have been involved in four of Utah’s five goals this season and Guenther is on a three-point streak. He had a big influence on Peterka’s goal in Chicago.
“Just putting pressure on them. I think that was the key,” Peterka said of his goal. “To take opportunities from the front and take advantage of them, that’s how the goal went in.”