Utah has won every game this season in which it scored four goals and lost every game in which it didn't. By final score, that's 9-0-0 at four or more and 0-6-0 at three or fewer. So Tuesday in Toronto comes down to whether Utah can get four past Sergei Bobrovsky. We think it can, just not the usual way. Toronto's penalty kill is second in the NHL, and Utah's top line does most of its scoring on the power play. The goals will have to come at five-on-five, and that's where Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz have been losing.
A loss would cost Utah more than two points. It's the only team in the league that hasn't lost two games in a row this season, as Brogan Houston of the Deseret News pointed out Sunday and as the NHL's results for all 32 teams confirm. A Toronto win would also be Bobrovsky's 460th. He's tied with Henrik Lundqvist at 459, and passing him would put Bobrovsky sixth all time and give him the most wins by a goalie born outside North America, per NHL.com.
Utah's numbers are through Sunday's 6-3 loss at Philadelphia. Toronto's are through its 4-2 win at Vancouver on Oct. 31, and Toronto doesn't play again before Tuesday.
- When and where: Tuesday, 5:00 PM MT (7:00 PM ET), at Scotiabank Arena. TV is Mammoth+ and Utah16, with TSN4 in Canada per the NHL; radio is KSL Sports Zone (97.5 and 102.7 HD2), per the Mammoth's week-ahead story. Full schedule and the NHL.com game center.
- Records: Utah is 9-6-0 with 18 points, third in the Central in the NHL's standings after Colorado passed it Monday, and 5-4-0 on the road. Toronto is 8-6-2, also with 18 points but in 16 games, sixth in the Atlantic, and 4-3-1 at home.
- Series: Second and last meeting. Utah won the first 5-4 at the Delta Center on Oct. 13 (our recap).
- Trip: Game three of six on the road for Utah, two days after Philadelphia. Toronto has had two days off since finishing a four-game western trip, and Tuesday starts a six-game homestand.
Four is the number
The split is cleaner than it deserves to be, since two of those fourth goals came in overtime or into an empty net. Still, four is where Utah's season has broken, and Bobrovsky is the goalie in the way. He's 3-5-2 with an .885 save percentage (255 saves on 288 shots) and has allowed three or more in nine of his 10 starts. Four or more is rarer: three of 10, the last of them five goals on 17 shots at Seattle on Oct. 28. Anthony Stolarz has been the better Toronto goalie, 5-1-0 at .910 (162 of 178), and he started both Saturday and the Oct. 13 game, when Utah scored five on him.
Toronto's kill pushes this to five-on-five
Utah's power play is first in the league at 34.6 percent (18 for 52). Toronto's kill is second at 91.1 percent (51 of 56), and it has kept 11 of 16 opponents off the board on the power play, Utah among them: Utah went 0-for-4 on Oct. 13 and scored five anyway. When Utah doesn't get a power-play goal it's 2-3-0. The opening is recent. Toronto's kill was 38-for-39 in its first 12 games and 13-for-17 on the western trip, with a goal against in each of the four games, which the Leafs' own notes after Vancouver pointed out.
The other half of the special teams favors Toronto. Its power play is sixth at 30.0 percent, and Utah's kill is 28th at 68.8 percent (33 of 48). Toronto's goal difference comes from special teams: at five-on-five it has been outshot 334-352 and outscored 39-36, by our count of the NHL play-by-play. Utah is the reverse: it outshoots teams 347-283 at five-on-five and is 30-31 in goals there, winning the shot count without getting paid for it.
The top line's five-on-five problem
Keller leads Utah with 18 points and Schmaltz has 16, but seven of their 11 goals came on the power play: five of Schmaltz's seven and two of Keller's four. Both are minus-9.
We have the NHL's shift charts for 11 of Utah's 15 games (none were posted for Oct. 13, 19, 22 or 24). In those 11, Keller and Schmaltz played about 125 of Keller's 149 five-on-five minutes together. With Keller on the ice at five-on-five, Utah outshot opponents 77-67 and was outscored 11-4. With him off it, Utah outscored them 14-12 and outshot them 173-146. Utah was 18-23 at five-on-five in those games, so the top line's minutes account for all of that deficit and a bit more.
For a while it looked like bad luck. Through the first eight of those games, Utah outshot opponents 56-40 with Keller on the ice and was outscored only 6-4. In the last three, against Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, it was outshot 27-21 and outscored 5-0 with him out there, including three of the four Flyers goals in the two period starts that decided Sunday (our recap). Toronto has the last change at home, so if Jim Hiller wants Auston Matthews (11 goals, 24 points) against that pair, he can have it.
So the fourth goal probably comes from somewhere else. Logan Cooley leads Utah with eight goals, six of them without a power play, and has scored in three straight games and seven times in his last four road games, per the Mammoth's week-ahead story.
Goalies and lineup
Bobrovsky will start, NHL.com's Dave McCarthy reported Monday, and Daily Faceoff lists him as confirmed, citing Terry Koshan. Utah hadn't named a starter as of Tuesday morning, and the Mammoth PR game notes for Tuesday weren't posted yet. Daily Faceoff now lists Sebastian Cossa as unconfirmed, with no source cited; on Monday night it had Karel Vejmelka. Cossa is 3-1-0 with a 3.20 goals-against average and an .855 save percentage (71 of 83), and he stopped 30 of 33 in Thursday's overtime win at Pittsburgh. Vejmelka is 6-5-0, 3.31 and .868 by the shots and goals the NHL lists (244 of 281; NHL.com shows .872), and he stopped 15 of 20 Sunday.
Utah placed John Marino (upper body) on injured reserve retroactive to Oct. 17, Kailer Yamamoto is day-to-day with an upper-body injury after missing Sunday, and Michael Carcone came off IR and played Sunday, all per the week-ahead story.
Toronto is missing two forwards. Kirill Marchenko, who has 14 points in 14 games and a team-high four power-play goals, is week to week with a lower-body injury from the Oct. 26 game at Calgary, per NHL.com. "It's a guy you can't really replace," Jack Roslovic said of him, per the same NHL.com story. John Tavares was ruled week to week (lower body) on Oct. 28 and hasn't played since he was hurt Oct. 15 against Buffalo, per TSN. He skated Monday morning but didn't join the main group for practice, TSN's Mark Masters reported. Chris Tanev was back in the lineup Saturday. Roslovic has points in six straight games, and William Nylander has 10 goals and 21 points behind Matthews. At Monday's practice, per Masters, Matthews centered Easton Cowan and Roslovic, and Nylander skated with Dakota Joshua and Nick Paul.
Our pick
Utah 4, Toronto 3. The power play gets one, because Toronto's kill has allowed a goal in four straight games. The other three come at five-on-five from somewhere other than the top line, the way 14 of Utah's 18 five-on-five goals in the charted games did. Bobrovsky has allowed three or more in nine of 10 starts, so four is there to be had. The recap will count Utah's goals, how many came at five-on-five, and who was on the ice for them.
We're wrong if Utah stops at three, because it's 0-6-0 this season when it does. The likeliest way there is Toronto's kill holding, as it has in 11 of 16 games, while the Keller-Schmaltz minutes go the way of the last three games. If Utah scores four and loses anyway, it would be the first time all season, and it would probably mean a Toronto power-play night against the 28th-ranked kill.
Tusks up.
Sources: NHL.com standings, team, club and goalie stats, game-by-game power-play and penalty-kill numbers, box scores, play-by-play, and shift charts (we have them for 11 of Utah's 15 games). Records by goals scored, goals by strength, five-on-five shot and goal counts, and on-ice splits are our counts from the NHL's data; goalie save totals are shots minus goals. NHL.com game center; Catherine Bogart, Utah Mammoth: the week ahead, Nov. 2-8; Dave McCarthy, NHL.com: Bobrovsky can become winningest NHL goalie born outside North America; NHL.com: Marchenko week to week; TSN: Marchenko ruled week-to-week; Mark Masters, TSN: Leafs go back to Bobrovsky for Tuesday's tilt against Mammoth; Maple Leafs recap, Oct. 31; Daily Faceoff starting goalies; Brogan Houston, Deseret News; our Oct. 13 recap and our Flyers recap.