Tampa Bay Lightning left wing Brandon Hagel (38) moves the puck against the Utah Mammoth right win Nick Schmaltz (8) in the first period at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Sun Nov 2, 2025 (AP News photo)
By Tom Walker
SALT LAKE CITY–Tampa Bay’s Jake Guentzel breaks the tie with under eight minutes remaining beating Utah 4-2 at the Delta Center on Sunday night.
The Utah Mammoth took a four-game winning streak on the road with them following a 4-3 overtime win against the Colorado Avalanche on October 21. Since then the Mammoth have remained hot, winning three of four away from Delta Center, while locking up another key member of their young core for eight years.
It all began on October 23 in St. Louis with a 7-4 routing of the Blues. After assisting on an early first period goal by defenseman Ian Cole, Utah forward Logan Cooley scored his first natural hat trick in a four minute 48 second span as the Mammoth never looked back while extending their winning streak to five.
Two days later in Minnesota, Cooley lit the lamp twice in the first three and a half minutes as Utah defeated the Wild 6-2 while upping their streak to six. The next day Utah would make it seven, cooling the Jets in Winnipeg with a 3-2 victory over last season’s Presidents’ Trophy winners. The Mammoth wrapped up their four-game road trip in Edmonton where the Oilers halted the streak, defeating Utah 6-3.
Upon returning to Salt Lake City, Logan Cooley and the Mammoth agreed on an eight year, $80 million contract extension which will keep the team’s dynamic young core together for the next several years.
After four days off to recover from the road trip, Utah (8-3-0) welcomed the Tampa Bay Lightning (5-4-2) to Delta Center on Sunday afternoon for a one-game homestand.
It is still difficult to look at the Lightning lineup without Steven Stamkos who is now in his second season with the Nashville Predators after 16 seasons in Tampa Bay. It was a milestone game for two Utah players as Nick Schmaltz played his 600th career game while Kevin Stenlund appeared in his 300th.
Mammoth forward Lawson Crouse gave Utah the first lead of the game at 5:55 of the first period when defenseman Ian Cole fed him the puck on a breakaway for his second goal of the season. Lightning netminder Jonas Johansson had no chance as Crouse fired a perfect top shelf corner strike over Johannson’s right shoulder.
At 15:17 of the frame, just seconds after killing off a bench minor for too many men on the ice, Tampa Bay forward Yanni Gourde evened the score at 1-1 with his third goal of the season, assisted by Emil Lilleberg and Zemgus Girgensons who had just emerged from the box after serving the penalty. Utah netminder Karel Vejmelka would finish the period turning away 8 of 9 shots while Johansson stopped 5 of 6 for the Lightning.
Tampa Bay forward Anthony Cirelli gave the Lightning their first lead of the game at 2:47 of the second period, his 7th of the season, assisted by Jake Guentzel and Victor Hedman. Other than that, the two goalies held their respective ground in the frame with Johansson turning away all 9 shots faced in the period and Vejmelka stopping 9 of 10.
At 2:21 of the third period, Utah forward Kailer Yamamoto tied things up again with his first goal of the season, with defenseman Ian Cole picking up his 2nd assist of the night. Coming less than 24 hours after another Yamamoto – Yoshinobu Yamamoto of Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers – picked up his 3rd World Series victory against the Toronto Blue Jays along with series MVP honors, one could wonder whether a Mammoth comeback was in store with Yamamoto figuring in the headline, but it wasn’t to be.
With just under 8 minutes remaining in the period, Jake Guentzel put the puck past Vejmelka for his fifth of the season, unassisted. With Vejmelka pulled for the extra attacker, Lightning forward knocked his fourth goal of the season into the empty net to secure the victory and to end the Mammoth home win streak at four. Utah could never get its power play going, falling to 8-for-41 (19.5%) on the season.
In the home locker room, Ian Cole was asked about the team’s poor start in the second period. “Yeah, I think you could argue it was probably average all the way through. They’re a good hockey team, and we did too many things to shoot ourselves in the foot today. We’ll have to obviously look at the game and assess it and hopefully bring a better game against Buffalo.” Cole didn’t think where were any particular takeaways from the game. “I don’t think there’s one glaring thing necessarily,” Cole said, “but there are little things all over the ice. There’s puck battles for one, and I think reloads for two. They’re beating guys up the ice, and our neutral zone wasn’t great. There’s a lot of things where we can improve. Nothing was glaringly horrible, but not good enough to beat a very skilled, very good hockey team.” Commenting on Tampa Bay’s aggressive play, Cole added, “They have played the same way for maybe 10 years now. So nothing they did was shocking, and there was nothing they did that we were unprepared for, or shouldn’t have been prepared for. This wasn’t our best game, and we know that. Now we have to respond. We can’t let two (losses) turn into three, turn to four, turn to five. That’s how you find yourself out of a playoff spot. So we have to fix this right away.”
Utah Mammoth Head Coach André Tourigny tried to put things in perspective. “I think it was a good game. I think Tampa is a really good team. If you look at their metrics, they are number one offensively in the league, number three defensively in every underlying number. We knew it would be a good test. I think we were toe-to-toe with them. They scored with seven to go, but we were pretty close. Just would love to have us going in the other direction. I think we can be a little bit more physical in our forecheck and a little bit better in our forecheck.” Making a similar observation as Cole, Tourigny said, “They play heavy. They make good plays on the breakout. They hold on to the puck. You have to go to work. You won’t surprise that team with just your skill. They have skill too. That’s the biggest thing when you play against Tampa, you always think of their skill. They have skill, but what they do is they work and they don’t give you time and space. You need to grind the game, and I’m really happy about the way Crouser’s line played. Really happy about the way Stenny’s line played. I think Yammy played a hell of a game. They showed up in that kind of a game, and that’s what you want.”
The Mammoth (8-4-0) go back on the road beginning Tuesday against the Sabres in Buffalo, followed by a swing through Canada against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, and Ottawa Senators before returning to Utah on November 12 for games against the Sabres and New York Rangers.
Tom Walker is a Utah Mammoth beat writer at http://www.sportsradioservice.com
