Winnipeg Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck (37) makes a save with his skate against Utah Hockey Club center Nick Schmaltz (8) in the first period at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City Sat Apr 5, 2025. Utah clobbered the Seattle Kraken at the Delta Center on Tue Apr 8, 2025. (AP News photo)
By Tom Walker
SALT LAKE CITY–Seven different players lit the lamp for Utah HC in a lopsided 7-1 victory over Seattle.
Nearing the end of their inaugural season in Salt Lake City, Utah Hockey Club entered Tuesday night’s showdown with the Seattle Kraken still mathematically surviving in the Wild Card race with five games remaining on the schedule.
Utah wasted no time opening up a first period lead when defenseman Mikhail Sergachev increased his career high in goals with his 15th of the season, assisted by Kevin Stenlund and Sean Durzi. At 12:54 of the first period, with Seattle’s Jamie Oleksiak and Brandon Montour in the penalty box, captain Clayton Keller recorded his 27th goal of the year with a wicked wrist shot which whizzed past Kraken netminder Joey Daccord on the 5-on-3 power play, assisted by Sergachev and Dylan Guenther.
With Oleksiak remaining in the sin bin due to a high-sticking double minor against Kailer Yamamoto, Yamamoto cashed it in with a slap shot with six seconds remaining on the power play to make it 3-0, his second goal of the season, assisted by Josh Doan and Logan Cooley. For his part, Karel Vejmelka stopped all four shots he faced in his 21st consecutive start in goal for Utah.
The second period began much as the first period ended. Just 16 seconds after the puck drop, Lawson Crouse fired the puck from almost the identical spot as Sergachev’s first period goal, the middle of the ice at the distance of the top of the faceoff circle, to beat Joey Daccord unassisted for his 12th goal of the season.
Before the period was halfway over, Logan Cooley harpooned the Kraken with his 23rd goal of the season, assisted by Guenther and Keller. If Ron Popeil were at Delta Center, one might hear him exclaim, “But wait, there’s more!” With Ryker Evans committing Seattle’s sixth penalty of the evening for holding against Lawson Crouse, the Utah power play scored for the third time in the game, on this occasion with Nick Schmaltz poking in a smooth pass from Guenther at the side of the net for his 18th of the season, with the additional assist going to Sergachev.
But Utah still wasn’t done slaying the Kraken. With less than two minutes remaining in the frame, Michael Carcone launched a shot at the hapless Seattle netminder which made its way into the back of the net for his seventh of the season, assisted by Michael Kesselring and Kevin Stenlund, sending both teams to the locker room with the scoreboard showing Utah up by a touchdown over sleepless Seattle. Vejmelka turned away all seven shots faced in the period.
The Kraken opened the third period on the power play due to an interference penalty against Ian Cole as time expired in the second. Seattle forward Jared McCann ended the shutout 23 seconds into the man advantage to make the score 7 -1, which was the final tally as the horn sounded at the end of the game. Vejmelka saved 18 of 19 shots overall.
In the Utah locker room, Mikhail Sergachev addressed his squad’s defense which held the Kraken to a single goal. “I think we defended well, at least in the first two periods. Everybody came back, we didn’t turn the puck over on the lines, and we just got it deep and always got it back, so that’s an improvement.” When asked whether they talked about continuing to hit the gas after taking a 3-0 lead in the first, Sergachev responded, “Yeah, whenever you have a three-nothing lead after the first, you still have 40 minutes to play. Especially if they’re going in, you want to go and pressure and try to get more shots and more pulls, but obviously, looking back, and not giving up goals. So I think that’s what guys did in the second.”
Forward Kailer Yamamoto was asked about scoring against his former teammates. “It’s awesome. Obviously, I owe them one. They didn’t want me, so I came in with a little bit of a vengeance, but it’s a good one for us, for sure.” When asked what he adds to the lineup looking toward his next contract, Yamamoto commented, “Just work ethic and trying to make plays. Obviously, my linemates are phenomenal players, so fitting in with them has been very easy. I’m just trying to work hard and make some plays.”
Head coach André Tourigny was so pleased with the team’s performance that he simply smiled at reporters and dispensed with his usual opening statement to take questions. The first had to do with seven different skaters registering a goal. “If you remember in training camp, we talked about our depth. A season has a lot of chapters, and we were in the trenches in January. It was a really tough situation, and we didn’t have that depth scoring and we knew our team was depending on that. Since then, we have had that depth scoring and you can see the result. In every game our offense can come from everywhere, like tonight. The power play was really good, but we also had scoring from other lines. That made a difference.” Tourigny praised Yamamoto who has split his season between Utah HC and the Tucson Roadrunners of the AHL. “He’s a really good player. His hockey IQ, his give-and-go game, and his experience as well, you can see the NHL is not new for him. It’s not like he’s a guy who is trying to break into the NHL, he’s already been here. His playmaking defensively and under pressure are really good.”
With four games remaining on the schedule, Utah is still mathematically in contention for the final Wild Card spot, albeit it would require a perfect storm of failure by Minnesota, Calgary, and Vancouver to pull off the miracle comeback. On Thursday the Nashville Predators which close out the final regular season homestand at Delta Center, after which Utah will finish out the season on the road in Dallas, Nashville, and St. Louis.
Sports Radio Service 