Utah Hockey Club’s loss to Toronto Maple Leafs may benefit them in the long run

In the second game of a back-to-back on Sunday, the Utah Hockey Club showed that it’s not to be pushed around — even against the league’s top teams, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs.
And, more importantly, they gained valuable experience that should stick with them.
Utah HC got on the board first, thanks to a power play goal from Logan Cooley. The game got away from them during a five-minute stint in the second period, but aside from that they looked really good.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but penalties were a big issue for Utah. They visited the box six times, as opposed to two from their opponents.
Despite that, they stayed in the game all the way until the final buzzer. Goalies don’t typically play both games in a back-to-back, but because of Connor Ingram’s injury that’s exactly what Karel Vejmelka did. He gave his team a chance to win and they almost did exactly that.
Here’s the full story.
Rookie defenseman Maveric Lamoureux took a pair of minor penalties on Sunday, increasing his total to five in the last two games and nine in the last five games.
Most of them aren’t egregious, and some of them are even necessary to keep the opposition from scoring, but he’s personally taking as many penalties as the team as a whole should be taking in a game. He needs to be just a little bit more disciplined, keep his stick to himself and be a little less aggressive in front of the net.
“It’s a big issue,” said head coach André Tourigny after the game. “You get on the road and repeat the same mistake, the same guys.”
In any other circumstance, I might suggest that Lamoureux should watch the next game from the press box to get a different perspective on the game, but that’s not going to happen because their next game is in his hometown of Montreal, Quebec. It’s his first NHL game there, so he will surely have a battalion of friends and family in attendance.
Tourigny respects his players too much to bench him on Tuesday.
Utah HC’s key to the game, per my preview article, was to keep the power play hot. They only got two power play opportunities on Sunday, but they capitalized once. Any NHL coach would give their right arm to have a 50% success rate on the power play.
Previous to Saturday, Utah had scored just one power play goal in the month of November. They now have five. Fixing it was an essential step to turn the tides in their favor.
It was Cooley who got credit for the power play goal, but Dylan Guenther should get a lot of credit for setting it up. He threw a slap pass from just above the faceoff circle, straight to Cooley on the far post.
Guenther’s playmaking skills were on full display on Saturday too, most notably setting up his house mate, Jack McBain, for a tap-in goal.
Had it not been for a frustrating five-minute stint in the second period, Utah HC would have walked away with the victory.
Mitch Marner’s goal five minutes into the second period seemed to infect Utah with a wave of doubt.
The Maple Leafs followed Marner’s goal up with a minute of sustained zone pressure, during which time Utah took a penalty. They killed that one off, but took another one shortly after, during which time Marner scored again. A minute later, William Nylander scored to give his team a 3-1 lead.
Utah had an excellent third period, which included a goal from red-hot Jack McBain, but it wasn’t enough to turn things around against a Maple Leafs team that has seen everything the regular season can throw at it.
Utah is one of the youngest teams in the league, and their lack of experience shows in moments like those. However, this is a great learning opportunity. They need to remember what went wrong and avoid those mistakes the next time they’re in a similar situation.
If they do this right, this loss will serve them well in the future.
Utah HC will get a day to lick its wounds before getting back to it against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday.
The Canadiens have also struggled this season — so much that they currently sit in 31st place in the NHL. They’ve allowed the third-most goals in the league this season, despite the fact that their penalty kill is the eighth-best.
Utah’s record against bottom teams this year isn’t great. They’ve beaten the Chicago Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins, but they’ve lost in decisive fashion to the San Jose Sharks, the Nashville Predators and the Ottawa Senators.
It will be important for Utah to not let things slip against the Canadiens the way they did against the Maple Leafs. Every point matters. If their goal is to make the playoff this year, they need to pick up points against the lower teams in the standings.
The game starts at 5 p.m. MDT and will be televised on Utah 16 and Utah HC+.