Minnesota Wild goaltender Jasper Wallstedt (30) makes a behind the back save shot from the Utah Mammoth center Barrett Hayton (27) in the second period at the Delta Center on Tue Oct 27, 2026 (AP News photo)
By Tom Walker
October 27, 2026
SALT LAKE CITY– The Utah Mammoth delivers punches against Minnesota Wild in literal slugfest, but Minnesota wins the scoresheet 3-1 to increase Central Division lead.
The Mammoth (8-4-0) hosted the Wild (8-3-2) on Tuesday night with the Central Division lead on the line. Making his first appearance of the season for Utah was forward Liam O’Brien who recorded three goals and an assist in 38 regular season games last season.
Returning to Delta Center for the first time since being part of the trade which brought MacKenzie Weegar to the Mammoth from the Flames was defenseman Olli Määttä. During his time in Utah, Määttä recorded 19 points (2g, 17a) in 92 games.
The first period offered no scoring but plenty of punch. O’Brien marked his return to the ice exchanging blows with Wild forward Michael McCarron. The fight was O’Brien’s tenth with Utah, second only to Jack McBain’s 17. It was the second time O’Brien has tangoed with McCarron, the first coming back on March 9, 2023, when the then-Arizona Coyotes played in Nashville.
Less than 90 seconds into their reciprocal five minute major penalties, Mammoth defenseman Mikhail Sergachev dropped his gloves for the first time in Utah with Minnesota forward Matt Boldy as his dance partner. Sergachev’s last fight took place over three years ago while he was with Tampa Bay as he battled Max Jones of the Anaheim Ducks.
With a combined six penalties in the opening period, what did the two teams do for an encore in the second? Eleven. Unfortunately for the home team, seven of those eleven came at their expense, castrating their offense and incapacitating their ability to roll four lines at any point in the entire frame.
The constant merry-go-round to the penalty box notwithstanding, Utah surrendered just one goal in the period when Joel Ericksson Ek scored his fourth of the season on the power play, assisted by Quinn Hughes and Kirill Kaprizov. Vincent Trocheck’s fight with Danila Yurov at 18:15 of the period marked the first time that Utah has been involved in three fights in a single game, and their eight fights overall on the season lead the NHL. Trocheck’s last fight was two seasons ago while with the Rangers against New Jersey’s Paul Cotter.
Having accumulated a combined 17 penalties in the first two periods, naturally the final period was completely penalty free. With Utah captain Clayton Keller still riding the bench in the sin bin for an additional “abuse of officials” penalty late in the second period, Minnesota came through again on the power play 48 seconds into the third as Kiprizov put a wrist shot past Karel Vejmelka for his 14th goal of the season, assisted by Boldy and Hughes, to increase the Wild lead 2-0.
At 11:44 of the period, Maxim Shabanov knocked in a loose puck in front of the Mammoth net for his fourth of the season, unassisted, to put Minnesota up 3-0. In the final minutes of the game, Utah pulled Vejmelka for an extra attacker if for no other reason than to practice six on five situations, having only been successful once in franchise history when Clayton Keller scored against Philadelphia last January.
With 81 ticks left on the clock, Logan Cooley banged in a rebound of a shot by Nick Schmaltz with banked off the far goal post and slid across to the opposite side where it found Cooley’s stick. Mikhail Sergachev picked up the additional assist on Cooley’s fourth goal of the year, breaking up Jesper Wallstedt’s shutout as the horn sounded with a 3-1 final score. Having managed only five and four shots respectively in the first two periods, Utah put 18 shots on goal in the third to no avail.
Clayton Keller was dispatched as the first to face the media following the loss. “I think we gotta be hungrier in their zone,” the captain began.. “We got to win more battles. We’ve got to have good dumps and good pucks. Our forecheck is good so I think that is something that we focus on. But I think we can be better being more connected, coming up the ice together, and supporting our line mates. I feel like at times we’re a little disconnected, they squeeze us off and we’re one and done. It’s tough to create like that.” Asked if it was fun to play in such a spirited contest, Keller responded, “Yeah for sure, lots of emotion. A lot of guys stepped up today with the fights and blocked shots, things like that. So for sure, those are the fun ones.”
“Overall, we need to do a better job of getting our shots through,” lone goal-scorer Logan Cooley said. “Props to them; they blocked a ton of shots on the PK and five-on-five. I mean, their goalie played unbelievable too. When he’s playing that good, you’ve got to get in front of his eyes and get shots through, and that’s what we didn’t do tonight.” With the two teams atop the Central Division, do these teams have the makings of a new rivalry? “Yeah, if you look at the standings, we’re right there neck and neck, and in our division, tough team to play against, and they’re always in the playoffs,” Cooley said. “For us, I think it’s a good measuring stick to compare against them. As I said, they’re always in the playoffs; they’ve got unbelievable players, always in the top of the league. So anytime we play them, we’re definitely up for it.”
In his opening statement, head coach André Tourigny began, “I think the big story, for me, is the number of penalties we got. First of all; you get in the box seven times against that kind of a power play, you’re going to get hurt. It’s (also) the momentum we lost in our rotation. From the end of the first period until the third period, we did not have one time where we could go with our four lines one after the other. That was a lot of guys that could not get into their rhythm, couldn’t get our physicality, our pace, our forecheck going. We played better in the third period where we had an opportunity to get going and having some rhythm. We need to learn (with our) discipline as well. I think (Karel Vejmelka) played really good. I’m happy he’s back on track. That’s what I think.” On balancing the emotions of the game, Bear added, “I think it was alright. It was tough to stay even keel. But I think we stayed focused for long parts. It’s a lot of adversity when you get that many penalties; [it’s tough] to stay in the game. (Barrett Hayton’s) line has been really good; at some point they could not play. They’d been sitting out there for a long time. Other guys would play only PK for most of the second period. They didn’t play much 5-on-5; maybe one or two shifts. It’s tough when you don’t have the opportunity to get into the rhythm of the game. That’s self-inflicted. I’m not deflecting. We take responsibility on that and we need to learn from it.” On the performance of Vejmelka, Tourigny commented, “He gave us a chance for a long time. I think they beat him on really, really good plays. Our PK was solid. You’ll tell me we gave up two goals; (Minnesota) had to take a perfect shot to score their first goal. The second goal, we blew a tire. That’s the kind of thing that’s unfortunate, but was not a structure thing. It’s just really unfortunate because we were right there and one shot away.”
Utah (8-5-0) now embarks upon their longest road trip on the schedule, with six games in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Las Vegas before returning to Delta Center on November 12 to face the St. Louis Blues.
