Our preview asked whether Utah could win a game at five-on-five when special teams didn't settle it. Saturday's answer was no, and the Mammoth won anyway. Each side went 1-for-3 on the power play. Five-on-five goals finished 3-3, and Tampa Bay had the better five-on-five looks, 26-20 in shots on goal and 13-8 from inside 25 feet, by our count from the NHL play-by-play. Utah led only in attempts, 48-43. The game was settled at three-on-three, 1:44 into overtime. We picked Utah 3, Tampa Bay 2: right winner, wrong score, and Utah never did win the five-on-five shots the pick was built on.
Dmitri Simashev scored the two goals that decided it, and he'll get the headlines. He should. The 21-year-old defenseman, the sixth pick in 2023, had gone 39 NHL games without a goal (28 last season, 11 this one) before he tied it late in the second and won it in overtime. Those goals were worth something only because the goalie a good part of X had given up on by 4-2 stopped the last 16 shots Tampa took. Karel Vejmelka's night was the case we made for him on Friday, played out in one game, and it helps that case more than it hurts it.
Four goals on 16 shots
The first 25 minutes were rough. Jake Guentzel scored 5:10 in. Kailer Yamamoto tied it at 7:02 with a wrist shot, and then Tampa scored twice in under three minutes: Pontus Holmberg at 10:06, and Brayden Point at 12:42 with a power-play backhand during Clayton Keller's interference minor. Nikita Kucherov's primary assist on Point's goal was his 1,138th regular-season point, all of them with Tampa Bay, which puts him one past Steven Stamkos's 1,137 for the franchise record by the NHL's stats. Dylan Guenther got one back on Utah's power play at 17:39, a slap shot for 3-2, and Conor Geekie made it 4-2 at 5:32 of the second.
That was four goals on Tampa's first 16 shots, by our count from the play-by-play. By then the case against Vejmelka was all over X, and at 4-2 a switch to Sebastian Cossa wouldn't have surprised us. André Tourigny left him in.
Tampa got 16 more shots on goal: six in the rest of the second, nine in the third and one in overtime. Vejmelka stopped all 16. Nine came from inside 25 feet, one of them right at the edge, and three of the close ones were Brandon Hagel's. Hagel, the five-on-five threat our preview worried about, finished with seven shots on goal, 11 attempts, no points and a minus-3.
How 4-2 went away
Utah's first goal back counted as five-on-five, barely. Kucherov went off for hooking at 12:33 of the second, the power play came up empty, and Anders Lee tipped one in at 14:39, six seconds after the penalty ended, from MacKenzie Weegar and Vincent Trocheck. At 17:02 Simashev beat Dennis Hildeby with a snap shot from about 38 feet, with assists to Andrew Peeke and Trocheck. From our seats, the building was up before the scoreboard knew.
Still 4-3 on the board, with 2:58 left in the second.
The third nearly turned on a goal that didn't count. The NHL play-by-play has no goal event there, only Lee's tip attempt at 9:35, logged as a miss, and a stoppage by the officials at 9:39, with no coach's challenge on record. Brogan Houston of the Deseret News posted on X that Barrett Hayton had banged in a rebound, and added: "Ref says no goal for goalie interference." Chase Beardsley, who covers the team for The Hockey News, posted on X: "The Mammoth will not challenge this one." It stayed 4-4. Hildeby stopped all nine Utah shots in the third, and Vejmelka stopped all nine of Tampa's.
Overtime nearly went the other way. Forty seconds in, Mikhail Sergachev gave the puck away in the neutral zone, and five seconds later J.J. Moser had a snap shot from about 23 feet. Vejmelka stopped it. Fifty-nine seconds after that, Simashev finished a wrist shot from about three feet, from Hayton and Vejmelka, who had the second assist.
Friday's case, in one night
On Friday we argued that Utah should keep Vejmelka because he takes the starts nobody else on this roster has shown he can, and that the thing to fix is the goalie behind him. Saturday ran through both halves of that. The first 16 shots are why people want him traded, or want Cossa in, and four goals on 16 goes on his line. The next 36 minutes are why we'd keep him: no goals against a team that had the better five-on-five chances, while Utah climbed out of a two-goal hole and then held a tie. Cossa came into the night at .820 in four games. Nobody behind Vejmelka has shown the second part yet, and until somebody does, we'd take the goalie who can still give you those 36 minutes after a bad 25.
What Saturday didn't fix is the five-on-five shot gap. Tampa won those shots on the second night of a back-to-back with its backup in net. Minnesota comes to the Delta Center on Tuesday (schedule), and if Utah wins those minutes, the goalie won't need to be perfect for 36 of them.
Tusks up.
Sources: NHL box score and play-by-play. Five-on-five counts, shots from inside 25 feet (distances approximate) and Vejmelka's save counts are our counts from the NHL play-by-play, with Guentzel's doubled shot at 5:09 and 5:10 of the first counted once. The box score lists Vejmelka at 29 saves on 32 shots with four goals against, which doesn't add up; the play-by-play gives 28 saves on 32. Kucherov's and Stamkos's Tampa Bay point totals from the NHL's player stats. Brogan Houston, Deseret News, on X; Chase Beardsley, The Hockey News, on X. Fan reaction from posts on X. Our preview and Vejmelka post.