3 Takeaways From Mammoth’s 5-4 Double Overtime Game 5 Loss to the Golden Knights

This series continues to be a crazy one. One filled with twists, turns, and theatrics. Game 5 was no exception. In what could be the biggest game of the series, it took the Vegas Golden Knights and the Utah Mammoth five periods to decide who would have a controlling 3-2 lead in the series.

Yet again, it was Brett Howden who came up big. In Game 4, he scored twice to help the Golden Knights get to overtime and win. In Game 5 in double overtime, he took a shot that beat Karel Vejmelka shorthanded to give his team a 5-4 win. For the Mammoth, it’s placed them on the brink of elimination with their season potentially ending on Friday. Here are some takeaways from Wednesday’s game.

A Good Start

Give credit to head coach André Tourigny and the Mammoth; they fixed one of their bigger issues from the past couple of games. For the first time in most of the series, you can confidently say the Mammoth had a good start.

The Mammoth didn’t have any goals to show for it in the first half of the first period, and they eventually tied the Golden Knights in shots. However, they played at a better pace and had more control over the game than in the prior two games. Plus, even when the Golden Knights pushed, they pushed back.

“We were all talking about our start today,” Tourigny said. “We had a helluva start, so the boys were really tuned in. I’m really proud of it.”

It all paid off with 2:49 remaining in the period. Off the faceoff, which the Mammoth won, John Marino slid a pass to Clayton Keller, who shot the puck from the top of the zone at the boards. Marino, who had floated down towards the net, stuffed a rebound opportunity into the back of the net for his first-ever playoff goal.

“It’s a pretty deep group,” Marino said. “Line after line, we just keep coming after them. That’s when we’re at our best. We see that throughout the series. That’s where we have to get back to.”

Here's Johnny! 👏

1-0, Utah. pic.twitter.com/o0wpfcAsxO

— x – Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) April 30, 2026

Pavel Dorofeyev did score around two minutes later to get the Golden Knights on the board, but the Mammoth clearly had learned a thing or two from the prior couple of games. They also continued some of the strengths from the series by getting better over time.

Around halfway through the game, Lawson Crouse unleashed a quick shot that looked very similar to his second goal from Game 3 to put the Mammoth up 2-1. However, that’s where a new issue arose for the team.

Special Team Woes

The Mammoth have a special teams issue. Power play, penalty kill, and we’ll group six-on-five play in here as well. They’ve all been mediocre at best through this series, and it’s something they have to fix for Game 6; otherwise, their season is over.

Let’s start with the penalty kill. It actually got better as time went on. Dorofeyev’s first goal happened to be on the power play, and the team didn’t allow any power play goals after that, but if the Mammoth’s penalty kill had gone three for three, well, they would be heading home with a 3-2 series lead, not the other way around.

“We killed a lot of minutes, but we gave them too many opportunities to be on the power play, and we need to be at five on five, where were playing really good hockey, as we did all season long,” Tourigny said.

Not to mention if those penalties didn’t happen, as Tourigny mentioned, that leaves time for the Mammoth to generate opportunities, maybe score. However, all three power plays that the Golden Knights had were caused by pointless penalties. Cooley got called for holding for yanking a Golden Knights player back, Mikhail Sergachev took a dumb boarding penalty, and Cooley once again took a bad penalty for high-sticking. All three of those penalties could’ve easily been avoided.

Pavel Dorofeyev and Shea Theodore scored later in the second period after Crouse’s goal to suddenly put the Golden Knights up 3-2. It forced Tourigny to call a timeout to allow a little reset. 

“At that moment in the second period when we had the timeout, we had a little slump for about three minutes where we didn’t do the specifics we needed to do to be successful against Vegas,” Tourigny said. “Right away, as soon as we stopped, they were calm. They were coming hard. That was just to refocus everybody and make sure we’re getting back into the plan and into the details we need to do.”

Let’s move on to six-on-five play. The Mammoth came roaring back in the third with goals from Dylan Guenther and Michael Carcone. With a minute left to go, they were in the driver’s seat. They were one minute away from taking a 3-2 series lead and potentially a game away from eliminating the Golden Knights.

Instead, the Mammoth collapsed. With Carter Hart pulled, the Golden Knights started generating chances. Not sealing the deal with those empty netters can come back to bite you, and it did.

Dorofeyev put the puck in the back of the net with 52.7 seconds remaining in the game to finish off the hat trick and to send Game 5 to overtime. It was a completely avoidable situation if the Mammoth had simply iced the game with an empty net goal.

“Their six-on-five goal, the rebound came right on the stick, he’s at the right place,” Tourigny said. “It’s going in the net, they did the right thing. I’m not suggesting we didn’t do what we had to do, but we need to find ways in those situations.” 

PAVEL DOROFEYEV HAT TRICK TIES IT WITH LESS THAN A MINUTE LEFT 🎩🤯 pic.twitter.com/seH9kAA5LW

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) April 30, 2026

This isn’t the first time the Mammoth have failed to maintain a lead late. In Game 3, the Golden Knights came back late, but the Mammoth had already put a four-goal lead in front of them, which is a tough one to climb back into. In Game 4, the Golden Knights scored in the last half of the third period because their opponents weren’t pressuring them enough. It’s a recurring problem that needs to be solved.

“They’re a great team,” Crouse said. “It’s playoff hockey. There’s a lot of energy out there. There’s a lot of highs, there’s a lot of lows. They’re a great team. They’re playing really good hockey, but we’re also playing good hockey. There are still some things that we can improve on. We’ll go over that and get back to it.”

That brings us to the power play. The power play had six chances to score throughout the game. The Mammoth didn’t score on any of those chances. One of the big ones is a four-minute power play when Keller was high-sticked.

Yet the Mammoth squandered the double minor opportunity. The Golden Knights successfully killed the whole thing off.

“(The penalty kill) really came up big for us tonight,” Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella said. “It’s a very skilled team, a very dangerous power play, really big in OT as far as the kill. It’s steadied itself. Utah gets a lot of momentum off their power play, whether they score or not. I think we’ve done a better job as the series has gone on.”

Ironically enough, it was the Mammoth’s penalty kill that cost them the game. Combined with a couple of other factors, it was the reason why they lost.

Pushed to the Edge

When Reilly Smith went to the box for high-sticking in double overtime, it felt like the momentum shifted in the Mammoth’s favor. The Mammoth are the faster team, and the Golden Knights have had a tough time handling that. You saw that earlier in four-on-four play, which the Golden Knights essentially treated as a penalty kill.

Yet the Golden Knights changed that narrative when Jack Eichel escaped MacKenzie Weegar for a breakaway. Vejmelka came up big, but the save forced the faceoff to be in the Mammoth’s zone, giving the Golden Knights a chance.

A chance is all you need in overtime. The Golden Knights kept the puck in the Mammoth’s zone, and Howden eventually beat Alex Kerfoot out for control of it. Right near the faceoff dot, he wristed a high shot that beat Vejmelka and won the game for the Golden Knights.

“I blacked out there,” Howden said. “Mitch (Marner) had a close chance right after the faceoff…I just tried to get a shot and just kind of blacked out.”

BRETT HOWDEN, IT'S FINALLY OVER 🚨

VEGAS WINS IT IN DOUBLE OVERTIME 😱 pic.twitter.com/zblfHUFZrq

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) April 30, 2026

With that goal, the Golden Knights won the game and took a 3-2 lead in the series. It wasn’t necessarily a bad game by the Mammoth, but there were a lot of errors that can be fixed. The power play, penalty kill, maintaining the lead, and unnecessary penalties. All of that cost the Mammoth this game.

“We’ve got to check with our feet,” Keller said. “We can’t get our sticks in there, little things like that. The power play has to be better. We’ve got to find a way to score; they had one, and we had some looks, but that’s something that we’ll look at going into Game 6.”

There weren’t a lot of guys on the blueline that had good games either. The Marino and Nate Schmidt pairing wasn’t horrible, but that’s the best you can say. Weegar let Eichel escape for that breakaway that eventually caused the Howden goal. Sergachev had that bad penalty and some bad passes. Sean Durzi had some turnovers and didn’t look great out there either.

With the win, the Mammoth are on the brink of elimination. If they lose on Friday in Game 6, their season is done. They have been backed into a corner, but that doesn’t mean they’re giving up. The Mammoth have shown they can compete with this Golden Knights team and win games. That won’t be going away on Friday.

“I like our group,” Keller said. “We’re still confident. It sucks to lose that one tonight, but we get to go home and play in front of our fans, and we want to win a game at home.”

There are positives. The top two lines are still playing well. JJ Peterka, after being benched for most of the third period and overtime in Game 4, played solid and even got his first playoff point. Vejmelka, even though he turned over the puck that led to the Theodore goal, played well. The Mammoth even outshot the Golden Knights 38-32.

Yet those small errors have snowballed into bigger errors that are costing them this series. Now that they’re down in a hole, even though they’re heading into a home game with a loud crowd awaiting them, they’ve basically played three games of hockey in the course of three days. The Golden Knights know how to handle that fatigue well. Plus, it seems like Hart has finally found his footing despite a bad Game 3. He has learned how to stop Guenther’s routine shot with ease and was a big reason why the game even got to double overtime.

“Carter has the ability to put things away and move on,” Tortorella said. “Whether it be good or bad, he’s ready to play the next day of work, practice, the next day. He’s grown over the years. Now. This is my third year with him. I’ve watched him grow. It’s such a unique position. You’re kind of on an island out there in a team sport. It’s the most important position in the game. He has a good mental toughness about him when he’s playing really well. He knows he is, but he doesn’t get caught up in it when he has a struggle or some bad minutes.”

A lot is going against the Mammoth right now, but this is where we’ll see the best of the Mammoth in the highest pressure they’ve ever faced. The most important game in franchise history. Backed into a corner, will the team rise up and give it everything they’ve got, or will they bow out in a game not to be remembered?

The message going into Game 6 is simple. As the late great Al Davis once said, just win, baby.

“Just win,” Marino said. “Just get a win.”

The Mammoth will play the Golden Knights in Game 6 on Friday night at the Delta Center. The Golden Knights lead the series 3-2.