Our preview asked whether Montreal could stay out of the penalty box. It couldn't. Utah got five power plays, scored on three of them, and gave up one goal on Montreal's four. We'd guessed the power play was worth about one goal on the night. It was worth two. We picked Utah 3, Montreal 2, and Utah lost 5-4 in overtime anyway, on Cole Caufield's snap shot 30 seconds into three-on-three.
The pick missed on the half we called even. We had five-on-five at 2-2. Montreal won it 3-1 in goals and 23-13 in shots on goal, by our count of the NHL play-by-play. Logan Cooley's hat trick was spectacular, and it covered for a team that got outplayed at even strength for most of 60 minutes. The Mammoth said as much themselves afterward.
"PP merchants" was fair
After the final, a Habs fan wrote on X: "ETHICAL PUCK BEATS PP MERCHANTS." It's a dig, and on Thursday it was accurate. Three of Utah's four goals came on the power play: Cooley at 9:24 of the first (20 seconds into Josh Anderson's tripping minor) and 11:05 of the second, and Nick Schmaltz at 7:14 of the third, 54 seconds into Juraj Slafkovský's high-sticking minor, with Cooley setting him up. Utah put six shots on goal with the extra man and half of them went in. Jakub Dobes stopped 12 of 13 at five-on-five and 3 of 6 on the penalty kill, per the box score.
The only Utah goal at five-on-five was Cooley's first, a backhand at 1:42, on Utah's first shot of the game. After that, at five-on-five, Utah had 12 shots on goal and Montreal 23.
Utah's own read: odd-man rushes
Utah's room saw the same game. "I think as we got the lead, and throughout (the middle of the game), we just weren't reloading," Cooley said, in the Mammoth's game story on NHL.com by Catherine Bogart. "We were giving them too many odd man rushes."
André Tourigny went further. "I wasn't really happy about the odd man rushes we gave, and the way we approached," he said in the same story. "I didn't like the fact we didn't get above them more than that." In Chase Beardsley's recap for The Hockey News, he was blunter: "I didn't like our mindset. I think our guys worked. That's never the problem. But we need to be better away from the puck."
That's the five-on-five story in the coach's words. Even the winner fit it: The Hockey News called Caufield's goal a two-on-one.
Score effects don't explain it
Utah led for 33:12 of regulation by our count, and a team that leads usually gets outshot. But with the score tied at five-on-five, Montreal still outshot Utah 10-6. The gap opened when a defenseman left. Nate Schmidt played 3:59, all of it in the first period, and his last shift ended at 15:55. Up to then, five-on-five shots on goal were 4-4. After it, Montreal led 19-9. Utah's PR account said on X that he wouldn't return (upper body), and the team's game story says he didn't come back for the second period.
With John Marino already out (injured reserve, per ESPN's injury list), that left five defensemen. Mikhail Sergachev played 27:31, MacKenzie Weegar 24:54 and Andrew Peeke 23:16. Dmitri Simashev played 19:15 and Nick DeSimone 14:58, only 4:09 of it in the third. A short bench doesn't prove a shot gap on its own, but 19-9 is a big swing to pin on anything else. Utah fans saw it live. "Mannnn you can really feel the absence of Marino and Schmidt in this one," one wrote on X early in the third.
Tourigny's complaint and the injury fit together. Five defensemen can't cover for forwards who don't come back, and on Thursday the forwards didn't.
The penalties went both ways
Montreal took four minors before Utah took its first, and Canadiens fans on X blamed the referees for most of the night: dozens of posts, from the tripping call at 7:21 of the second until well after the final horn. Mitch Gallo, a TSN 690 host by his X profile, wrote after the game that Chris Kreider's trip on Simashev "wasn't a trip." We haven't seen a replay, so we won't rule on it. Kreider's penalty didn't produce a goal; Kaiden Guhle's puck over the glass during that kill gave Utah the power play Cooley scored the hat trick on.
Then Utah gave it back. Right after the hat trick, it took three minors in 8:06: Peeke for holding the stick at 11:29 of the second, Cooley for high-sticking at 14:43, and Sergachev for putting the puck over the glass at 19:35. The third one carried into the third period, and Kirby Dach tied it 3-3 at 1:09 from about two feet. The Hockey News' recap said Utah "took way too many penalties that put Cossa to work," and that late-second stretch is where it happened.
Cooley's line lost its minutes too
Cooley scored three goals on three shots, added an assist and played 19:31. He has 11 goals in 17 games and his second hat trick of the season, after Oct. 29 in Pittsburgh. Three goals is also one more than Slafkovský has all season, and the Deseret News' Brogan Houston used the night to reopen the 2022 draft argument. In his story, Nick Suzuki stuck up for Slafkovský, then added: "Obviously, Cooley's a talented player, too."
At five-on-five, though, Montreal outshot Utah 10-2 with Cooley on the ice and out-attempted it 13-6, and it outscored Utah 2-1. In the third period, at five-on-five with him on, Montreal had all six shot attempts. Schmaltz's five-on-five minutes went the same way: 6-2 in shots against, 0-2 in goals. The two of them were in on all three power-play goals, and both were underwater at five-on-five. Cooley's "weren't reloading" covers his own shifts too.
Clayton Keller's new line held up better. Our Toronto recap called Montreal the real test of moving Keller to Barrett Hayton and Anders Lee. They stayed together, about 12 minutes of it at five-on-five, and nobody scored with Keller on at five-on-five. Montreal still outshot Utah 5-2 in those minutes, so call it a draw rather than the win it was on Tuesday.
Cossa didn't lose this one
Sebastian Cossa, in his second straight start, stopped 30 of 35. At five-on-five he stopped 20 of 23, and on the penalty kill 8 of 9. "He was good," Tourigny said in the Mammoth's game story. "Especially in the second period, made a few big saves, allowed us to be in the game. Big reason why we got the point." The Hockey News argued he should get the next start, Saturday at Ottawa or Wednesday at Vegas.
Two of the three five-on-five goals he allowed came from defensemen shooting from distance: Arber Xhekaj's slap shot from about 50 feet at 17:10 of the first, four seconds before he fought Liam O'Brien, and Adam Engstrom's snap shot from about 43 feet with 5:06 left in regulation, his first of the season. A goalie wants those back, though Gallo, again on X, gave Oliver Kapanen credit for a screen on Xhekaj's and Dach for one on Engstrom's.
At all strengths, overtime included, Montreal put 13 shots on goal from inside 25 feet, and Cossa stopped 10 of them. If you want a reason Utah lost a 4-3 lead with five minutes left, start with the 23 five-on-five shots against.
What it changes
Utah took a point and is 10-6-1 with 21 points, second in the Central, four behind Minnesota with the same 17 games played. Dallas is one point back with a game in hand. Utah still hasn't won two in a row since Oct. 13 and 15. And for the second game running, the power play did most of the scoring: two of three goals in Tuesday's 3-2 win in Toronto, three of four here. Against Toronto, that was enough. Against a Montreal team that, per our preview, wins at five-on-five, it wasn't.
Saturday at Ottawa (5:00 PM MT, game five of six on the road, schedule) is the next test. If Schmidt is out and Marino isn't back until mid-November, as ESPN's list projects, Utah needs a sixth defenseman. The bigger fix is the one Cooley named: forwards getting back above the puck, so five-on-five stops leaking and the power play doesn't have to score everything.
Tusks up.
Sources: NHL box score, play-by-play, shift charts, standings and schedule. Shots on goal and attempts by strength and score, shot distances (approximate, from the NHL's coordinates), on-ice splits, and the time Utah led are our counts from the NHL's data. Cooley's season totals are from his NHL game log plus this game; Slafkovský's from his game log. Marino's status from ESPN's injury list. Schmidt's injury from the Utah Mammoth PR account on X and the Mammoth's game story on NHL.com. Cooley's and Tourigny's quotes from that story and from The Hockey News; Suzuki's from the Deseret News. Mitch Gallo's notes from his post on X. Fan posts from X during and after the game. Our preview and Toronto recap.