Over the last two games, the Utah Mammoth have a goal differential of zero.
They lost 4-1 to the Boston Bruins on Tuesday and beat the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday. They managed a .667 points percentage during their eastern road trip and they’re now 3-1-0 in their last four games.
But the Mammoth are still just shy of a playoff spot, as both the San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings have multiple games in hand, despite the fact that all three teams are tied in terms of points.
Here’s the story of Utah’s win in Detroit.
Quick catchup
Utah Mammoth: 4
Detroit Red Wings: 1
Karel Vejmelka maintained a shutout for the first 50 minutes of the game, but Emmitt Finnie spoiled it with a power play goal.
That goal brought the score to 2-1, turning up the pressure for Utah. But with the increased pressure came an increase in motivation, and Dylan Guenther and Kevin Stenlund added a pair of insurance goals to make sure they didn’t let this one slip.
They’d struggled to generate offense in Boston, but they got everything they needed in Detroit.
“That group has a lot of pride,” head coach André Tourigny said of his team. “There’s a lot of pride, there’s a lot of character. There’s nobody perfect in the world, but those guys care a ton, and they want to be successful together. They showed it tonight in the character situation.”
Tidbits and takeaways
Battling in the tough areas
Both Keller and Tourigny credited the Mammoth’s win to their willingness to go to the tough areas.
“I think we just had to be better in the dirty areas, around their net, those 50-50 pucks, kind of all over the ice,” Keller said. “That’s something we had an emphasis on today ... having a guy inside at all times. We do that, the rest takes care of itself in the o-zone.”
All four of Utah’s goals came from the hash marks or lower, with two of them coming off rebounds. When you have guys like 6-foot-6 Simon Edvinsson and 6-foot-3 Ben Chiarot breathing down your neck, holding your ground in front of the net and battling for the puck in the corners is much easier said than done.
“For a lot of our guys, it’s not first nature,” Tourigny said. “So we need to stay on it. I’m not saying that in a negative way I’m saying that we just need to be aware: If we fall asleep, that will go away. So we cannot. We need to stay aware of it and make the commitment of playing that way, and when we do, we have success, so we have to keep going.”
The importance of good goaltending
As mentioned, the Mammoth benefitted greatly from good goaltending on Wednesday — and while their loss on Tuesday should be chalked up as a team loss rather than an individual one, their goaltending didn’t do them any favors that day.
There’s a magic number at play here: .900.
With the exception of three games, all of Utah’s wins this season have involved a save percentage of .900 or better. And with the exception of three games, all of their losses have had a sub-.900 save percentage.
If they hit that number, they can expect to win. If they don’t hit it, they should expect to lose. And their lineup decisions should reflect that.
“A lot of guys played well tonight, everywhere,” Tourigny said. “If you look at our D corps, we were rock-solid. Our goalie was rock-solid. I like our four lines. ... 4-0 at 5-on-5 against the second team in the Eastern Conference, we’ll take that.”
Clayton Keller’s big game
Criticism surfaced on social media Tuesday morning for Keller’s relative lack of production recently. He’s still on pace for 68 points, but he’s capable of much more than that.
Having unexpectedly lost his father a few weeks ago, it’s hard to blame him — but the team relies on him for offense all the same, and you know he wants to get back to the 1.5 point-per-game pace with which he began the season.
Wednesday’s game was a step in the right direction. He broke a three-game point drought, scoring a goal in the first period and adding an assist in the third.
“Kells, he competes,” said head coach André Tourigny. “I think, tonight, he wanted to make the difference, and he scored a big goal, made a great play on Stenny’s goal, but it’s more than that. It’s the fight he had. ... I felt like that about our team, and it started with our captain.”
Remember the name
The bulk of NHL fans weren’t familiar with Emmitt Finnie until October of this year. He was a seventh-round pick in the 2023 draft, so expectations of him were never particularly high. But he surprised a lot of people at training camp and he ended up making the team because of it.
And it didn’t stop there.
The 20-year-old scored again on Wednesday, giving him eight goals and 16 points in 35 games this season. That’s a great start to an NHL career, and if he keeps progressing the way he is, he’ll carve out a good living for himself.
It also doesn’t hurt to have Lucas Raymond and Dylan Larkin as your line mates, and averaging more than a minute and a half of power play time helps, too.
Goal of the game
Carcone to McBain
Jack McBain gets credit for scoring the goal, but it doesn’t happen in the first place without Michael Carcone’s perfect setup.
Carcone picked up a puck off the end boards and fed McBain a no-look, spin-o-rama pass — the type of play you’d expect to see from a superstar, not someone on a league-minimum contract.