Edmonton Oilers Connor McDavid (97) takes the puck up the ice against the Utah Mammoth center Nick Schmaltz (8) in the first period at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Sat Mar 24, 2026 (AP News photo)
By Tom Walker
SALT LAKE CITY–The Edmonton Oilers capitalized 5-2 on a sloppy Utah Mammoth performance with Connor McDavid picking up his 39th and 40th goals, and 400th in his career, in a game which was never really contested.
The Mammoth (37-28-6) squared off against the Oilers (34-28-9) at Delta Center on Tuesday night for the third of four games on the current homestand. The Oilers entered the matchup as one of just two NHL teams which Utah has never defeated, the other being the Dallas Stars.
At 11:12 of the first period, Utah forward Alexander Kerfoot kicked off the scoring with his third goal of the season, technically assisted by Sean Durzi and Ian Cole, but his drive ricocheted off the bodies of Edmonton defensemen Darnell Nurse and Connor Murphy before sailing like a knuckleball over the shoulder of a helpless Tristan Jarry in the Oilers net who couldn’t keep up with the rapid fire changes of puck direction.
Jack Roslovic evened things up a few minutes later when his wrist shot got past Karel Vejmelka for his 18th goal of the season, assisted by Jake Walman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, resulting in a 1-1 tie as the two squads entered their locker rooms. Jarry stopped 2-3 Mammoth shots in the frame, while Vejmelka turned away 7-8.
11 minutes into the second period, Edmonton forward Zach Hyman gave Utah the first power play opportunity of the game, going to the penalty box for high-sticking against Clayton Keller. Hyman’s teammate Matt Savoie bailed him out, scoring a short-handed goal 24 seconds later, his 12th of the season assisted by Evan Bouchard, to put the Oilers ahead 2-1.
35 seconds later, Utah Assistant Captain Lawson Crouse cashed in on the power play with his 20th goal of the season, the fourth time he has reached this milestone in his career, assisted by Michael Carcone and MacKenzie Weegar, evening things up 2-2.
That lasted all of eight seconds when Connor McDavid won the ensuing faceoff and then scored his 39th goal, and 400th of his career, assisted by Matthias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard. The Oilers continued to step on the gas, with Roslovic netting his second goal of the game at 15:04, assisted by Hyman and Bouchard, to give Edmonton a 4-2 lead.
All four goals for the two squads came in a span of 3 minutes and 40 seconds. André Tourigny called a 30-second timeout to settle his team down, and both teams shut down the other side the rest of the frame, with Jarry stopping 6 of 7 shots in the period and Vejmelka turning away 4 of 7.
The third period began with Vítek Vaněček replacing Vejmelka in goal for Utah, and he did his part to keep the Oilers off the scoreboard going 10-for-10 in stopped shots until the end when he was pulled for an extra attacker. The Mammoth have only ever scored once in a 6-on-5 situation, and Edmonton kept that streak of futility alive. With eight seconds remaining in the game, Connor McDavid sent everyone to the exits with an unassisted breakaway empty net goal, his 40th overall on the season, to give the Oilers a 5-2 victory in a game which wasn’t even that close. Edmonton continued its perfect domination of Utah, with the two squads scheduled to face one another for the final time this season on April 7 at Delta Center.
“It was tough, for sure,” said defenseman MacKenzie Weegar in the locker room after the game. “I thought [the] first half of the game was good, showed some compete and then obviously the power play goal that we tied up was big. Then they scored right after that, and then again quickly right after that, and then I thought we lost the momentum. We didn’t have the energy after that. The compete level in 50/50 battles wasn’t really there either. Definitely something that comes within, it’s not something that you can teach. That’s definitely look yourself in the mirror type stuff, but I trust in this group and we’ll bounce back the right way.”
Alexander Kerfoot, who opened the night’s scoring with a pinball machine shot caroming off of two Edmonton players, addressed the team’s lack of follow through in the game. “We obviously just didn’t have enough of a pushback, in the third especially. We’re down two goals in a game, fighting for a playoff spot against a team who’s also fighting, and we didn’t even make them work for it, didn’t make them earn it. Disappointing. It’s on us,” Kerfoot said. When asked why Utah hasn’t been able to defeat the Oilers, Kerfoot responded somewhat indignantly, “How many games have we played, like six? We were winless against LA, won last game. They’re a good team. They’ve been in the cup finals twice in a row. It’s hard to beat good teams in this league. They’ve got some elite players. We’d like to do a better job against them, and it’s no excuse.”
Utah Mammoth Head Coach André Tourigny, who coached his 400th career game on Tuesday night, said, “We did a lot of good stuff defensively, but I think we didn’t have our usual aggression and our pace, and we gave up too much time and space. Not that it cost us defensively, but it cost us offensively in a sense that we didn’t recover any puck play, we didn’t have the puck enough so that we let them maneuver too much with the puck. I will have loved us to be more aggressive on the puck carrier and generate turnovers or generate takeaways and stuff like that. So that’s what I think of the game.” Talking about the third period, Bear continued, “We didn’t have the puck enough. I think defensively, we were in contain mode. I have talked about that before, and I will repeat it. Your biggest enemy when you trail, is when you think you want to score, so instead you keep your tank, your energy for to go on offense. So what happens is you don’t have the puck, so you defend because you don’t have the same aggression. You don’t create a stop, you don’t create a hit where there’s a battle, then you can recover the puck and go on the offense. So you end up spending all your energy defending instead of spending quick energy defensively, recovering pucks, and then you can go on the offense. Instead of that, it’s a little bit of a human reaction, you get passive defensively. You keep your energy from going on the offense, and then you’re not going in the offense, because you end up not recovering the puck and the team and the other side keeps the puck below the goal line, and they play low, high, and so on and so forth. So you end up defending for the entire period. That’s what I think of the third period. We did not have the right aggression without the puck, so we had to defend away too much, and that took our offense away. That’s the period we generated the least, because we’re waiting for the offense instead of making it happen.”
Tourigny’s career won/loss record through Tuesday night is 164-191-45, with his Arizona record being 89-131-26 and his Utah record standing on the positive side of the ledger at 75-60-19.
The Mammoth (37-29-6) close out the current homestand on Thursday against the Washington Capitals (35-28-9) before embarking on a trio of Pacific coast games against Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver.
Sports Radio Service 