Make that three wins in a row for the Utah Mammoth — not a bad way to begin a five-game road trip.
Their 5-4 overtime win over the Columbus Blue Jackets Saturday improves the Mammoth’s cushion to seven points over the best non-playoff team in the NHL’s Western Conference, but the job is not done yet. They have 19 more games to show why they deserve a spot in pro hockey’s biggest tournament.
Newly acquired defenseman MacKenzie Weegar was the big story in this one. He got his work visa in the morning — a day earlier than the team’s estimate — and jumped on a plane as soon as he could.
He missed morning skate, but that didn’t stop him from suiting up in the evening. In fact, he played more minutes than any other Mammoth skater.
“I’m having a blast,” Weegar said after the game. “That was really fun.”
During his 23:21 of ice time, Weegar tallied an assist for his first point as a Mammoth, as well as three blocks, three takeaways and a shot on goal.
“He played really good,” said Utah head coach André Tourigny. “I like the way he moved the puck, blocked a few shots. Strong in his battles. We like him.”
Mikhail Sergachev typically leads the Mammoth defensively, but after participating in warmups and the team announcing that he’d play, he was deemed not good to go.
In his stead, Nick DeSimone, who did not warm up, had to quickly throw his gear on and play, and Mammoth fans are glad he did.
Halfway through the second period, DeSimone sent a stretch pass from the top of the defensive-zone face-off circles all the way to the offensive-zone blue line to send Clayton Keller and Dylan Guenther on a 2-on-0.
If you’re an opposing goalie, that scene must invoke nightmares.
The two stars played ping-pong with the puck for a second, sending Elvis Merzlikins this way and that, before Guenther tapped it into the net.
Two firsts and a hundredth
Alexander Kerfoot has played 620 games in the NHL. That’s the number of games it took him to score career goal No. 100, as the official scorers retroactively determined that Kevin Stenlund did not get a piece of his shot-pass early in the third period.
But Kerfoot also did something for the very first time: fight.
It wasn’t preplanned — he likely thought he’d never drop the gloves in the NHL — but a post-whistle kerfuffle escalated to the point where he had to do it.
Kerfoot did take a couple of solid punches from his dance partner, Damon Severson, but he survived.
Kerfoot also tallied an assist, meaning he recorded his first-ever Gordie Howe hat trick, which is when a player records a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game.
Want to know a random fact?
Utah and Columbus have now played each other four times. All four games have gone to overtime, and the visiting team has won each one.
Saturday was, however, the first time it didn’t end with a 3-2 score.
First, the then-Utah Hockey Club lost on a Zach Werenski overtime winner. Two weeks later, they got their revenge in Columbus on Connor Ingram’s iconic pass to Guenther off the glass.
This season, the Blue Jackets escaped Utah with a Dmitri Voronkov game-winner, and Logan Cooley played hero in Ohio on Saturday.