It’s never easy to win in the NHL — and that’s doubly true when facing the defending Stanley Cup champions.
All things considered, though, the Utah Hockey Club performed at an elite level on Wednesday, despite losing 4-1 to the Florida Panthers (It was a 2-1 game with two empty-net goals). Utah kept up on both ends of the ice, and they held their own when things got chippy.
“We can be better in certain areas offensively, but defensively I think we were solid,” said head coach André Tourigny after the game.
By Tourigny’s calculation, the Utah Hockey Club allowed just one shot from the slot in the first two periods.
Here’s the full story.
Utah Hockey for dummies
Hockey is becoming more creative every year, and young players like Logan Cooley are at the forefront of it.
The 20-year-old showcased his creativity on Wednesday with a previously un-thought-of maneuver: a spin-o-rama, through-the-legs backhand shot — against arguably the best defensive forward in the world, no less.
Cooley missed the net, but the attempt is a nod to how far hockey has come. If a player were to have tried that move 15 years ago, he would have left the ice with a black eye and his coach wouldn’t have let him play the rest of the period. It would have been seen as showboating, not playing hockey.
In the current era, players are encouraged to try new things. If it doesn’t work, so be it. But if that’s the move that you believe gives you the best chance at scoring, you try it.
Cooley made up for it later in the game by scoring a power play goal on a wicked no-look shot.
“To be able to do what he’s doing at that age is pretty impressive,” said Cooley’s teammate, Jack McBain, after the game. “It’s not always the big play or the crazy move or anything. (It’s) the little things that he’s able to do with the puck and the speed that he’s moving, the way he thinks the game. He’s a good player.”
Utah Hockey for casual fans
The Panthers have a way of physically grinding their opponents down. That’s the type of thing you get good at when you play seven playoff series over two seasons, as they have. They have a lot of big bodies and nobody is afraid to get their hands dirty.
But Utah HC is not a team of pushovers.
“You look where we were last year in that kind of a game against them, we got pushed around a little bit,” Tourigny said before clarifying that he meant emotionally, rather than physically. “Not this time. We stayed level — we went toe-to-toe with them in that sense — but I liked where we were mentally in that emotion.”
The play stayed physical but clean throughout the entire first two periods, but both teams took a few extra liberties in the final frame. Every time, they would be met by an entire line of scrappers, resulting in big scrums, multiple penalties and ruptured ear drums from the excitement of the crowd.
“I thought we handled things pretty well,” McBain said, adding that his team ended up with a power play goal out of all those exchanges.
Utah Hockey for nerds
We spent a ton of time talking about Alex Barkov and Kevin Stenlund as elite defensive forwards before the game, but we overlooked the key player on Wednesday: Sam Reinhart.
In addition to scoring his power play goal, which pulled him into a tie for fourth place in league scoring, Reinhart prevented a number of surefire Utah HC goals.
In the second period alone, he prevented high-danger scoring chances from both Clayton Keller and Barrett Hayton. In the first instance, Keller received a cross-crease centering pass from Hayton. He had the entire net to tap it in, but Reinhart tied up his stick and the puck went through the crease and harmlessly out the other side.
On the same shift, Keller returned the favor to Hayton, setting him up with a great shot from in tight. Again, though, Reinhart was there to prevent him from doing anything.
“Him and Barkov together, their sticks are so good,” Tourigny said when asked about Reinhart. “The other thing is their puck management. They don’t allow you to recover a turnover or to create a turnover or to create a second chance and a third chance.”
Players like Reinhart make the grind of the season much less of a grind. He doesn’t necessarily play a physical or fast game, but he’s in the right places at the right times and he does a lot more good for his team than harm. He gets overshadowed when it comes to the Selke conversation because of his linemate, but I might put him on my ballot at the end of the season.
Next Utah Hockey Club game
The San Jose Sharks may be in 31st place in the league, but every game between them and Utah HC has been a battle so far.
It started with the Sharks’ first win of the season, which came through a three-goal comeback in the last five minutes of regulation.
A few weeks later, Utah HC held on to secure a 4-3 win in one of the bloodiest games of the season.
The two teams play again at the Delta Center on Friday.
The game will be streamed on Utah HC+ and Utah 16. It starts at 7 p.m. MST.