The Utah Hockey Club beat the Winnipeg Jets 5-2 at home on Monday. On Friday, the Jets returned the favor with a 5-2 win over Utah HC in their own building.
In both cases, the games were much closer than the score suggested.
The Jets were certainly the better team on Friday, but it (quite literally) came down to bounces.
“I think we worked hard, we did the right things,” said head coach André Tourigny after the game. “We just maybe ran out of gas or played against a really good team that’s really good at defending.”
Just your average David Gustafsson bounce 😃 pic.twitter.com/XsZ3pSRu4d
It was Utah’s second game of a back-to-back set with an international flight in between.
The team was tired, but considering the circumstances, the players held their own quite well.
If Utah squeaks into the playoffs, it’s likely that they’ll face the Jets in the first round.
With what the two teams have shown against each other this season, that fact should not discourage the Club’s fans.
Utah Hockey for dummies
How this works
This is a three-part article geared toward three different audiences.
Feedback is welcome, so let me know what you think in the comments of this article or the comments section on “X.”
With a perfect deflection to begin the second period, Nick Schmaltz extended his point streak to eight games.
He probably hasn’t gotten enough credit for his steady production this season, so I’ll point out a few things he’s done well.
🚨 Tied up at one! Schmaltz with the deflection out front 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Rzy4PvXPSu
Some guys seem to only score when it doesn’t really matter. They’ll score, say, 20 goals a year, but 18 of them were either adding to leads or scoring too little too late. It’s still 20 goals, but how much did it benefit the team?
But that’s not what Schmaltz does.
Schmaltz’ past six goals have either tied the game or given Utah the lead (shoutout to the SEG Media broadcast team for pointing that out).
If that’s not a game breaker, I don’t know what is.
Utah Hockey for casual fans
Tourigny offered an interesting tidbit in his pre-game interview:
“Everybody wants to produce,” he said. “Don’t think Olli Määttä is not happy with what he’s producing. He knows it’s not his role, but all the pro athletes think, ‘Hey, I can chip in here and there.’ I’m not saying he expects 30 goals, but he thinks he can make plays, rightfully so, and same thing for everybody throughout the lineup.”
Of course, Tourigny was talking generally, using Määttä as the example.
But with the way Määttä has played in the offensive zone recently, there’s probably a reason his name was the one that his coach chose to use.
Määttä scored his first goal of the season on Monday against the Jets. Since then, the stay-at-home defenseman has seemed focused on scoring.
No quit in these guys 🔥 1-0 Utah! pic.twitter.com/OxBVMV1z5e
For example, at one point in the second period on Friday, he collected the puck just inside the Jets’ blue line. On a typical day, Määttä would have looked for a passing option or a shooting lane and taken the first viable opportunity that came his way. But this time, he took a few strides in and fired a high-danger shot on the backhand.
Near the end of the period, he walked in again — this time firing a full slap-pass. He didn’t score on either attempt, but he did seem determined to do more than just make the safe play.
Of course, Määttä becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer, so he’s playing not only for a playoff spot but also for his next contract.
It’s an unfortunate reality that defensive defensemen don’t get paid as much as the offensive ones do — even if they do as good of a job in their own zone as Määttä does.
Utah Hockey for nerds
Nothing is certain in life, other than death, taxes, Dylan Guenther’s Costco trips and goaltender interference calls when you enter the crease on your own and make contact with the goalie.
But, for whatever reason, the UHC coaching staff chose not to challenge Cole Perfetti’s second goal of the game, which put the Jets up 3-2 six minutes into the third period.
The decision of whether to challenge is usually left to the video coaches and there’s no telling what they saw, but from my comfy spot on my couch, it seemed like a sure overturned goal.
Had the call been overturned, Michael Kesselring likely wouldn’t have tried so aggressively to score and thus would have been in position to defend against the Nikolaj Ehlers breakaway. And, of course, it wouldn’t have opened the door for the empty-net goal.
In short, had Utah challenged, there’s a good chance the game would have gone to overtime.
To illustrate my point, I’m going to do something unconventional and show some comparable calls.
First, here’s the one where Utah opted not to challenge. It’s hard to see it from this camera angle, but Vladislav Namestnikov cut through the crease and bumped Connor Ingram just before Perfetti picked up the rebound. As you can tell by Ingram’s reaction, he thought it was goaltender interference.
PICKING UP THAT LOOSE CHANGE 🪙 pic.twitter.com/mNYM69TKjg
Next up is a disallowed goal from November. It’s nearly identical to the Jets’ goal: contact in the crease and a rebound goal within the next two seconds.
Cozens goal is called off for goaltender interference pic.twitter.com/pJFvimZbWL
This next one, which happened in the Eastern Conference Final last year, shows that any contact with the goalie in the blue paint is enough to call the goal back, as long as the player entered the crease on his own.
Get outta the crease!
Goalie interference. No goal. pic.twitter.com/CtVli18BSv
And finally, we have the infamous disallowed goal from the second round of last year’s playoffs. In this one, the player wasn’t even in the crease. Most hockey fans disagree with it, but it shows that the goalie almost always gets the benefit of the doubt.
If this is goalie interference just fold the league pic.twitter.com/bXiqsxONlV
I’ll let you come to your own conclusion. Should Utah HC have challenged the goal?
Utah gets a day to rest before visiting the Ottawa Senators on Sunday.
The last time the team played the Senators, Utah HC suffered its first-ever home loss. It was a 4-0 game, with all four goals coming in the first period. That’s a game UHC would love to have back.
As of Friday night, the Senators have been shut out two games in a row and in three of their last five games. They hope to change that when they host the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday.
The Utah-Ottawa game starts at 3 p.m. MST and will be available on Utah 16 and Utah HC+.
