What does the Utah Hockey Club need to learn from its loss to the Washington Capitals?

The Utah Hockey Club’s 6-2 loss to the Washington Capitals on Monday night had a striking resemblance to their 4-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Friday.

In both games, Utah HC scored early and it looked like they were going to dominate the whole night, but just when they got comfortable, the other team’s scorers took advantage of the opening.

Jack McBain scored three minutes into the game against Washington, but it only took four minutes for Dylan Strome to answer for the Capitals.

Then, 10 seconds later, Nic Dowd capitalized (pun intended) to put the road team up by one. Before the end of the period, it was 3-1 — a deficit from which Utah would not recover.

After the Capitals’ fourth goal, Karel Vejmelka came in to relieve Connor Ingram of his duties.

Utah Hockey for dummies

Three things in life are guaranteed: death, taxes and Alex Ovechkin scoring one-time goals on the power play.

Ovechkin is now 27 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record. As much as fans hate seeing their team get scored on, everyone in attendance should be glad to have been able to witness one of the game’s greatest players of all time do the thing he does so well.

If he breaks the record this season, just remember that I called it before the season started (just don’t look at my other predictions).

Unbeknownst to most, Ovechkin actually tied an NHL record on Monday. He has now scored on 178 different goaltenders in the NHL, and is now tied with legendary forward Jaromir Jagr in that category.

Unfortunately, with about 10 minutes left in the game, Ovechkin collided with Jack McBain at center ice. He went down and would leave the game. Head coach Spencer Carbery did not have an update after the contest.

McBain would later oblige to a fight with Capitals tough guy Tom Wilson to answer for the incident. It wasn’t explicitly McBain’s fault, but he’s not one to back down from a tilt.

Utah Hockey for casual fans

Utah HC’s power play struggled immensely against the Capitals. They failed to score despite getting seven chances with the man advantage — including 25 seconds of 5-on-3 time.

“It’s easy to sit here and say we hit crossbars, but that’s no excuse,” Lawson Crouse said after the game. “We’ve got to find a way to put the puck in the back of the net. ... We were 0 for 7 — That’s not good enough.”

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Head coach André Tourigny agreed.

“We could not score the big goals,” Tourigny said.

Utah now has the fifth-worst power play percentage in the league at 13.7%.

That being said, they had some good looks on the power play. It seemed like every time you blinked, either Dylan Guenther or Clayton Keller was blasting another one-timer from the faceoff circle. But the only ones that count are the ones that cross that pesky little goal line.

Utah Hockey for nerds

Where does Utah HC go from here?

“We’ve got a tendency (that) when things start to slip, they slip big,” said Ian Cole after the game. “We’ve kind of got the weight of the world on our shoulders. We need to do a way better job of grabbing that before it snowballs into a two, three, four-goal lead.”

It’s likely a result of lack of experience throughout the lineup. Utah is the fifth-youngest team in the league. They have veteran voices in the locker room, but most of them aren’t the players who are logging the big minutes.

“We need to have character in those situations,” Tourigny said. “We need to be mentally tough and I think we need to bounce back.”

In addition to a change in mentality, a change or two to the roster might play to Utah’s advantage. Kailer Yamamoto has a point per game in the AHL, and although Josh Doan only has two goals in his seven game, fans have seen what he can do when he gets hot.

Guys like Crouse, Barrett Hayton and Michael Carcone are contributing so little to the team that it may be worth it to give someone else a chance — at least for a game or two.

What’s next?

The Utah HC team plane will rack up a lot of miles this week. By this time next week, they’ll be in their fifth city, spanning three American states and two Canadian provinces.

First up are the Boston Bruins. Fans might remember the last time these teams met. A late goal from Vladislav Kolyachonok sent it to overtime, allowing Michael Kesselring to score the game winner for Utah.

That game marked the beginning of the Bruins’ frustrations. Head coach Jim Montgomery went viral for berating his captain, Brad Marchand, after Marchand’s turnover led to a Yamamoto goal (which would later be disallowed due to an offside).

The Bruins would go on to lose four of their next five games. They currently sit in the second wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference — a big step down from being the second-place team in the Atlantic Division last season.

Monday was not any better for the Bruins. They lost 5-1 on home ice to the Columbus Blue Jackets, who have also struggled immensely this year.

It’s bound to be an intense game, full of emotion on both sides.

The game starts at 5 p.m. MDT and will be streamed on both Utah HC+ and Utah 16.