Despite the Utah Hockey Club’s slim chances of making the playoffs, the fans have packed the Delta Center every night. The team rewarded them on Tuesday with a 7-1 win.
It was an elimination game for Utah, in the sense that if they got anything less than two points, they would have had no possibility of making the playoffs. The dream stays alive at least one more day.
Utah Hockey for dummies
It’s been a whirlwind of a week for Kailer Yamamoto.
Minutes after Saturday’s game, he got sent down to the AHL to help the Tucson Roadrunners in their playoff push. He tallied two assists, despite the flight to Arizona and the 4 p.m. start.
The next day, it was back to the NHL, where he jumped right back into the lineup, scoring his second goal of the season with the big club.
Oh, and he scored a goal, drew a double-minor penalty and had a massive hit — all against his hometown team, which refused to re-sign him this summer.
“They didn’t want me, so I came in with a little bit of vengeance,” he said after the game.
It’s been a tough year for a few of Utah’s forwards, while Yamamoto has scored more than a point per game in the AHL. It begs the question why Yamamoto didn’t get a shot sooner.
“He’s a really good player, Tourigny said. ”His hockey sense, his IQ, his give-and-go game and his experience."
Yamamoto doesn’t currently have a contract past this season. He said after the game that he’s “absolutely” playing for a contract.
Utah Hockey for casual fans
It’s not often that a team gets seven goals, all from different goal scorers — but that was the case for UHC on Tuesday. They also had 12 different players with points.
Tourigny pointed out after the game that at certain points throughout the season, they didn’t have that depth scoring — everything came from a select few guys — and it showed in the “win” column.
“Since we have that depth scoring, you see the results,” he said. “Every game, our offense can come from everywhere.”
Lots of the depth scoring recently has come from defensive specialist Kevin Stenlund, who now has six points in his last five games, including two straight games with multiple points. He has now cleared his career high by 11 points, and there are still four games to go.
The only thing Utah’s management will regret about signing Stenlund is that they didn’t give him more term for his $2 million annual value.
Utah was also 3-for-6 on the power play after struggling the entire month of March to score with the man-advantage. Mikhail Sergachev, who had three points in the game, including a pair of power play assists, chalked the success up to simplicity.
“Keep it simple: get it on net and try to get the rebound,” he said. “Today, we got a lot of rebounds.”
Utah Hockey for nerds
Twice this season, Utah has secured a three-goal lead, gotten comfortable, and blown it. But when the scoreboard read 3-0 after the first period on Tuesday, they didn’t let up.
Sergachev says keeping their foot on the gas was an area of focus between periods.
“Especially if they’re going in, you want to pressure and try to get more shots and score more goals,” Sergachev said. “Looking back not giving up — I think that’s what guys did in the second."
Utah managed 41 shots in the game, but Sergachev said he still would have liked to see his team shoot the puck more, rather than looking for the perfect passing play.
That’s the kind of mentality that it takes to win the Stanley Cup — something Sergachev has done twice in his relatively young career.
Before the game, Michael Kesselring talked about the team’s maturation over the course of the season.
“I think we were too up-and-down at the start of the year,” he said. “I feel like, since (the 4 Nations Face-Off) break we’ve been pretty consistent. I think we’ve learned how to play in (close) games a little bit better than even the start of this year or last year.”
What’s next?
UHC hosts the Nashville Predators on Thursday for the final home game of the regular season.
It’s been a tough season for the Predators, whom most analysts predicted to have a good playoff run. They fell in the first round of the playoffs last season and then landed several major free agents over the summer.
This is the second of three meetings between the two teams this season. Utah HC lost 4-0 in Nashville in November. They play again in Nashville on Monday.
Thursday’s game starts at 7 p.m. MDT and will be broadcast on Utah HC+ and Utah 16.