‘Tough pill to swallow’: Last-minute goal rips game away from Mammoth

How many times has Utah Mammoth head coach André Tourigny talked recently about one-goal games?

He has a point. Of Utah’s 32 games this season, 20 have been decided by just one goal (empty-netters excluded). Unfortunately for Mammoth fans, though, they’ve been on the losing side of 14 of them.

The most recent was their 4-3 loss to the Florida Panthers Wednesday evening.

Here’s the story.

Quick catchup

Florida Panthers: 4

Utah Mammoth: 3

When the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions have a two-goal lead on you, any form of a comeback should be seen as a success. The Mammoth managed to claw their way back from 3-1 to 3-3, but their celebration was dampened by Eetu Luostarinen’s last-minute game-winning goal.

“Obviously a tough pill to swallow, the way it happened,” Tourigny said. “... I think we showed a lot of character, being down by two goals and coming back in the game (to) give ourselves a chance. Like I said, (it’s) really frustrating to lose in that fashion.”

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Sam Bennett and Dylan Guenther both logged their first two-goal games of the season. Guenther’s goals were nearly identical: breakaways where he went five-hole. The only difference is that the first one was on the forehand and the second was on the backhand.

“I thought maybe he’d see that coming, so I just went to the backhand,” Guenther said. “It happens so fast, but (it’s about) just reps and the pre-scout, too.”

The Panthers’ win came on the 33rd anniversary of their announcement as an NHL franchise. They improve to 9-7-1 all-time on their birthday, and they’re 3-0-0 on that date in the last three seasons.

Tidbits and takeaways

Save of the year?

It’s not often that you hear the home crowd cheer after a visiting goaltender’s save. Of course, Mammoth Nation didn’t mean to cheer for him — they just assumed it had gone in because of how little of a chance the goalie stood.

After a few seconds, though, everyone realized the only mesh the puck had hit was that on the inside of Sergei Bobrovsky’s glove.

“That’s a good save,” said Mammoth forward Jack McBain after the game. “He’s a good goalie. Obviously, he’s been doing it for a long time, but it’s too bad it didn’t go in.”

Bobrovsky, of course, is on the fast track to the Hockey Hall of Fame. He’s got two Vezina Trophies, two Stanley Cup rings, he’s a two-time first-team all-star and he’s got one of each color of medal at the World Championship.

The goalie at the other end of the ice was solid, too. He made one particularly important save on Luostarinen to keep the game knotted — at least for a moment — late in the third.

As Utah’s broadcast team put it, “That’s (a) mini-sticks in your basement kind of save from Karel Vejmelka. Unbelievable.”

Luostarinen would, of course, still get the last laugh, scoring the aforementioned game-winner.

One improvement

Before Monday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings, one Mammoth veteran emphasized to the Deseret News that his team needed to get do a better job at getting to the inside of the ice. Particularly in Saturday’s game against the Calgary Flames, he said, they were just playing “too perimeter.”

In Tourigny’s postgame interview on Monday, he agreed that the problem had persisted for his team. But they solved that problem against the Panthers.

Natural Stat Trick’s shot chart shows that the Mammoth had more than five shots from the low slot, as well as a bunch more from the high slot and the face-off circles. By comparison, the LA and Calgary games each had about three shots from the inner slot area.

That afforded them more goals than they’d scored in those previous games — and they would have been enough to force overtime had regulation ended at 59 minutes instead of 60.

What’s the difference between a champion and a building team?

The game was tied nearly the entire third period, yet the Panthers outshot the Mammoth 19-4. Yes, they had four minutes of power play time, but even at 5-on-5, the shots were 8-5.

It was easy to see difference between a championship team and a building team. In the most important period of the game, the Panthers forced the Mammoth to play on their heels — and they walked away with the win for that reason.

Tourigny saw it as a teaching opportunity.

“Today, we had a lot of teaching moments for a lot of young and not-so-young players,” he said. “... When you play against Stanley Cup champions, or when you play in front of your fans after being on the road for a long time, those are key moments. You need to be able to (rise) to the occasion and play in those key situations.”

He didn’t automatically blame it on age, either. He mentioned 22-year-old Guenther as an example of someone who gets better in the big moments — as evidenced by the fact that he’s scored the game-winner in precisely 10% of his NHL games.

“It’s not just age. It’s a mindset to have,” Tourigny said. “Some have it early, some has to be built. ... We need to be better as a team at being able to stay composed and being able to bounce back or regain the momentum.”

Goal of the game

Dylan Guenther’s first goal

Utah has struggled in first periods recently, so Guenther opening the scoring was a breath of fresh air. And breakaway goals are always exciting.