“What just happened?”
That’s the question the Utah Mammoth are left asking themselves after they let the game slip Thursday evening against the Carolina Hurricanes.
With two minutes to go, they had a two-goal lead — and somehow, they ended up losing in regulation.
Here’s the story.
Quick catchup
Carolina Hurricanes: 5
Utah Mammoth: 4
This game began like many of Utah’s others — with the opponent scoring within the first five minutes.
But the Mammoth have learned that an early setback does not equate to defeat, and they came up with a strong second period, led by a two-goal effort from Kailer Yamamoto, to command a 3-2 lead by the end of the middle frame.
Midway through the third, Yamamoto contributed to yet another goal, earning his third point of the night and extending his team’s lead even further.
When you have a two-goal lead late in the game, the worst that can happen is that the opponent forces overtime, right? Apparently not.
With a little more than five minutes to go, Barrett Hayton took a four-minute penalty for high-sticking Nikolaj Ehlers. That’s not exactly the position the Mammoth wanted to be in at that stage of the game, but their penalty killers faced the task at hand.
They killed off the first penalty with gusto, at one point forcing an offensive-zone face-off and hemming the puck on the other side of the ice for half a minute.
But the Hurricanes eventually got free, allowing Andrei Svechnikov to capitalize on a rebound and pull them within one.
With the penalty over and a one-goal lead to defend, the Mammoth intended to shrug it off, kill the clock and get on the plane.
Shayne Gostisbehere, who played with many of the Mammoth as an Arizona Coyote, had other plans, scoring with the extra attacker.
The two teams aren’t in the same conference, so it’s no skin off either of their backs if it goes to overtime. That’s where the Mammoth thought it would end up, but the Hurricanes never stopped pushing.
Carolina captain Jordan Staal scored the go-ahead goal with 30 seconds left on the clock to win it in regulation, sending the Mammoth home without even a consolation point.
Utah head coach André Tourigny blamed the loss on pace.
“We had the lead with five minutes to go, by two goals, and we lost the game. We cannot accept that,” he said.
Tidbits and takeaways
The sound of the police
Just two months ago, the Mammoth came a day shy of an entire month without allowing a 5-on-4 goal. In the last five games, they’ve allowed seven of them.
Staying out of the box is half the battle — Utah averaged 4.4 penalties per game over the aforementioned stretch. To the extent that penalties are inevitable, the Mammoth need to be able to kill them off, too.
The difference between a perfect road trip and going .500, in this instance, was a handful of penalties and the inability to prevent them from turning into goals.
Any future success will be difficult if Utah doesn’t correct this problem.
‘The Bus’ stops here
Brandon Bussi has been one of the greatest stories of this NHL season.
He signed with the Florida Panthers in July, but with Sergei Bobrovsky and Daniil Tarasov already there, his chances of making the team out of camp were slim. Sure enough, he got cut two days before the season began.
As Bussi recounted on Spittin’ Chiclets in December, he and his fiancée packed up the car and headed to North Carolina, where the Panthers’ AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, are located.
When they were about two hours away, Bussi got a call telling him to reroute himself to Raleigh. The Hurricanes had claimed him off waivers.
“We immediately parked the car at a gas station and tried to figure everything out,” he said.
Everything since then has been positive for the 27-year-old. Among goalies who have played 20 games or more this season, he ranks second in goals-against average, behind only the great Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Bussi is also ninth in wins and 15th in save percentage.
Thursday’s contest wasn’t the best of his 24-game NHL career, but he stopped enough pucks to give his team a chance to win. That’s all you can ever ask of a goalie.
Unfortunately, he’s too old to be considered for the Calder Trophy as the rookie of the year.
Throwback Thursday
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. The Hurricanes did, in fact, wear Hartford Whalers jerseys for this game.
The Hurricanes, of course, are the relocated version of the Whalers, having moved there in 1997. While much of the Hartford situation wasn’t favorable (they played in a literal shopping mall, for Pete’s sake), their jerseys have always been accepted as one of the best of all time.
The move to Carolina included entirely new branding, from name to colors and everything in between, but they’ve paid homage to their roots a handful of times throughout the current decade by wearing the classic jerseys.
Goal of the game
Kailer Yamamoto’s laser beam
Mammoth fans have come to expect shots like this from Dylan Guenther and JJ Peterka. Yamamoto added his name to the list with this one.