Our preview asked whether Ottawa was more than Linus Ullmark. Ullmark didn't dress, Samuel Ersson stopped 30 of 32, and the Senators won 4-2. So on Saturday, yes. We picked Utah 4, Ottawa 3 in overtime and got the winner wrong. The half we had nailed was five-on-five. We'd projected about 2.0 goals for Utah and 2.1 for Ottawa there. It finished 2-2.
The miss was the power play, the edge we were surest of. Utah came in first in the NHL at 38.3 percent and Ottawa 31st at 12.1. Ottawa scored on its first chance and Utah went 0 for 2. Take out the special teams and the empty netter, and this was 2-2. The morning-after coverage went to fatigue and the goalie. None of the three recaps we read, from the Deseret News, the Canadian Press and the Mammoth's own game story, mentioned Utah's 0 for 2, and that's where this one was lost.
Five-on-five was a draw
At five-on-five Utah had more on goal, 25 shots to 18, and 9 to 7 from inside 25 feet, by our count of the NHL play-by-play. Ottawa had more attempts, 55 to 51. Call it even, which is what we expected from two 10-6-1 teams.
Both Utah goals had Clayton Keller on them. At 9:54 of the first, four seconds after a Tim Stützle giveaway, he shot from about 26 feet, then followed it and scored on the rebound at 9:57 to tie it 1-1. At 9:53 of the third, Barrett Hayton tipped a Keller shot to tie it 2-2, with MacKenzie Weegar on the second assist. Keller finished with a goal, an assist and six shots on goal, a team high. It was his first goal since Oct. 19, and he has a point in all five games of the trip, one goal and eight assists, by the NHL's game logs.
Ottawa's two even-strength goals came from right on top of Karel Vejmelka, and both started with a Utah decision. Michael Amadio scored from about 10 feet at 6:29 of the third on what the Deseret News' Brogan Houston described as a 3-on-1 that came from "an ill-timed pinch." The winner came 11 seconds after Andrew Peeke was charged with a giveaway in Utah's end. A blocked shot and a faceoff later, Shane Pinto won the draw and Nick Cousins tipped Thomas Chabot's shot from about 8 feet with 2:18 left.
"There's a few management (things) where we need to be able to take better decisions when we're tired," André Tourigny said, in the Mammoth's game story. We'd agree with the decisions part. The legs part doesn't show up in the shots: Utah's flat stretch was the second period, when Ottawa outshot it 9-7, and Utah won the third 11-5 on goal.
The power play lost it
Both teams got the same 2:23 of power-play time, by the penalty clock. Ottawa used its first two minutes. Logan Cooley went off for high-sticking at 3:27 of the first, and Fabian Zetterlund scored from about 37 feet at 5:27, the last second of the minor. It was Ottawa's first power-play goal in four games. Its other 23 seconds came late in the first, when Weegar's slashing call and Stützle's trip 23 seconds later overlapped.
Utah's chances were thinner than the 0 for 2 suggests. Stützle's minor was mostly four-on-four, so Utah got 23 seconds of a real power play out of it. Sammy Blais's interference call at 11:07 of the second gave Utah its only full two minutes. That's the whole night for the league's best power play: two shots on goal in 2:23. The preview said Ottawa is shorthanded 3.6 times a game, fourth most in the league, and our pick counted on that. Utah drew two penalties.
Two nights earlier in Montreal it went the other way: the power play went 3 for 5 and covered for a five-on-five game Utah lost. On Saturday five-on-five held, and the power play had nothing.
Vejmelka was Vejmelka
The r/Utah_Hockey postgame thread split on Vejmelka. One camp pointed at his save percentage and wondered how much longer anyone could defend him; the other said he made some big saves and was left out to dry. The box score gives the first camp something: 17 saves on 20, an .850 save percentage, next to Ersson's .938.
The goal they can fairly pin on him is the first one. Houston called it "a highly save-able goal," and the Canadian Press recap had Zetterlund alone at the top of the faceoff circle, a clean look from about 37 feet. After that, Houston wrote, "Vejmelka shook it off and dialed in," and the two later goals "can hardly be placed on him." One came from about 10 feet on an odd-man rush, the other on a tip from about 8, and we agree.
The shot locations favor him too. Utah's 32 averaged about 37 feet out, and 13 came from 40 feet or more. Ottawa's 21 averaged about 29. At five-on-five Vejmelka stopped 16 of 18, an .889. Going into the game he was at .892 at five-on-five, by our count in the preview, so this was an ordinary night for him. Ersson stopped 23 of 25 at five-on-five, .920, well above the .893 he brought in. Had Ersson stopped Utah's 25 five-on-five shots at Vejmelka's .889 rate, he'd have allowed about 2.8 goals. He allowed 2, so less than one goal separates the two goalies' nights.
Ersson is the goalie story, and our preview warned about it. We wrote that we'd be wrong if his good week was real, because Utah was 0-4-0 when it scored two or fewer. It's 0-5-0 now. Add Saturday to his last three appearances and he has stopped 96 of 102, a .941. Ottawa is 4-5-1 in the games Ullmark hasn't started.
Two in a row, for the first time
Utah is 10-7-1. Houston pointed out that the Senators were "the NHL's 31st team to suffer two consecutive losses this season — everyone but the Utah Mammoth." Utah's "win/loss rotation" had "held for 10 games," he wrote, a pattern that "has helped them maintain a top-three spot in the mighty Central Division." The first of Utah's two straight was Thursday's 5-4 overtime loss in Montreal, which still earned a point; until then Utah had never gone two games in a row without a win. A fan in the postgame thread put the pattern well: "it would be nice to string together some wins instead of this constant W/L/W/L cycle." For once the cycle broke the wrong way.
Utah finished the five-game trip 2-2-1, and has one more road game, at Vegas on Wednesday (7:30 PM MT), before it comes home to host St. Louis on Thursday at the Delta Center, the second half of a back-to-back. Tourigny said "we need to make sure we're not overreacting here," per Houston. That's right about the goalie. The power play, which drew two penalties and got two shots, is the thing to fix in Vegas.
Tusks up.
Sources: NHL.com game center and box score, the NHL's play-by-play and game logs, and the NHL game summary. Five-on-five shots and attempts, shot distances and power-play time are our counts from the NHL's play-by-play; distances come from the NHL's rounded coordinates and are approximate. Brogan Houston, Deseret News; Lisa Wallace, The Canadian Press, via The Globe and Mail; Catherine Bogart, Mammoth game story; r/Utah_Hockey postgame thread; our preview; our Montreal recap; schedule.