3 Takeaways From Mammoth’s 5-4 OT Win Over Penguins

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Heading into the third period, it seemed like the Utah Mammoth were on their way to losing their first game on the road trip. It was a shame since the team had been playing pretty decently, but Sergei Murashov and the Pittsburgh Penguins’ defense had laid their bodies on the line to stop every shot that faced them. The Mammoth’s shots weren’t bouncing their way. The Penguins’ shots were.

Everything changed in the third period as the Mammoth came alive, taking over the game, including the scoreboard, and forcing the game into overtime. It was all set up for an overtime winner to give the Mammoth their second straight victory. It was truly one of the biggest comebacks in franchise history. Here are some takeaways from the 5-4 overtime win from Sunday afternoon.

Can’t Catch a Break

It took 41 minutes for the Mammoth to score on Sunday, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The Mammoth dominated the shots in all three periods. They clearly had the edge over the Penguins.

However, just because they won in shots doesn’t mean they were winning on the scoreboard. The Penguins were playing solid defense. Erik Karlsson, Rickard Rakell, and Ryan Graves, in particular, were laying it all on the line, sacrificing their bodies to stop shots.

In net, rookie Murashov was putting on a show. He made quite a few good saves to keep the Mammoth scoreless in the first two periods. There was no luck going the Mammoth’s way as Murashov and the Penguins’ defense seemed locked in, allowing no opportunities to score.

“We did a lot of good stuff in the first two periods,” head coach André Tourigny said. “We could not get our shot through; they blocked a lot of shots. We could have been a little bit quicker in our execution to get some pucks through and have some deflection on our side, as well as help our shooting volume and open up the floodgate.”

Meanwhile, the rare times the Penguins had the puck, they managed to find a way to score. They stormed the net and found every rebound possible to score on the Mammoth, like on Bryan Rust’s goal. The Penguins also capitalized on turnovers, like with Ben Kindel scoring on the breakaway after a miscue by the Mammoth.

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The Mammoth also had three power play opportunities in the first two periods. It seemed like it should’ve been 3-0 Mammoth at the end of the second period. Not 3-0 Penguins. That’s just hockey, though. It can be such an unpredictable game. 

“It’s hockey,” Sean Durzi said. “It’s such a fast game, so much of our game is gray area, bad pucks, dirty pucks, things like that. I thought they got on the good side of balances early on. To stick with it, and not just mail it in and find a way to get two points, is something that we got to keep doing.”

To the Mammoth’s credit, that’s exactly what they did. They put their heads down and worked. They didn’t give up, and they got rewarded for it.

A Third Period Comeback for the Ages

In under 10 minutes in the third period, the Mammoth managed to change the entire game from what appeared to be a potential blowout to a nightmare for the Penguins. Four unanswered goals showed the fight and resilience of the Mammoth despite staring down a loss.

Just a little over a minute in, Nick Schmaltz found Nate Schmidt on the other side of the Penguins’ zone with the puck. Schmidt roofed it to ruin Murashov’s shutout hopes. This is the play that kick-started all the momentum for the Mammoth and gave the Penguins flashbacks to their prior game.

See, in the Penguins’ prior game, they were up 5-1 on the San Jose Sharks near the middle of the third period. Somehow, the Sharks then proceeded to score five unanswered goals to win the game in overtime. Coming off of that, seeing the Mammoth score giving them momentum was not a great sign for the Penguins. No one would’ve thought that history would repeat itself.

A couple of seconds after Schmidt’s goal, Michael Carcone retrieved his own rebound and banked the puck off of Murashov’s back to score the second Mammoth goal of the game. Now, the Mammoth only trailed by one.

Only a couple of minutes later, the Mammoth would complete the comeback. Kailer Yamamoto, near the blueline, slid the puck over to Sean Durzi, who sniped it home off of a beautiful wrist shot to score the game-tying goal.

The goal was Durzi’s first of the season. It’s been a tough season for the defenseman as he suffered a major injury only a couple of games into the season. Ever since returning a couple of weeks ago, he’s played decently defensively but hasn’t refound his offensive game. 

His teammates have had his back, especially his fellow defensemen like Schmidt. Seeing him score earlier in the game gave Durzi even more motivation and energy to try to get one of his own to further help the team. He broke through at the right time.

“We had a nice defensemen and goalies dinner last night,” Durzi said. “To see Schmidty (Schmidt) get the D going kind of motivated me a little bit. It’s a great group. We got such a good group of D in our organization that care for each other, push each other every day, and have fun with each other. I think that’s really important.”

Sean Durzi Utah Mammoth
Utah Mammoth defenseman Sean Durzi skates with the puck as Pittsburgh Penguins right wing Rickard Rakell chases (Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images)

The Mammoth’s attack didn’t stop there. Fast forward a couple of minutes, and Carcone scored his second of the game to give his team its first lead of the game. The four-goal comeback was the largest in franchise history. Just as sweet as all of that, Daniil But got his first NHL point off of an assist on Carcone’s second goal.

It was a fantastic effort by the Mammoth in the final 20. To score four unanswered in less than 10 minutes to come back in a game is pretty rare in the NHL. However, the Mammoth showed they can do so, truly a glimpse into how this team played back in October.

“To get a quick three goals is hard, especially in this league,” Dylan Guenther said. “We were able to get one, and we know that they were maybe a little bit fragile from how the game ended yesterday, so that gave us confidence.”

Though Justin Brazeau scored late in the third off a deflection to tie the game and send it to overtime, there was no mistaking who had all of the momentum. Final shots in the third period were 17-6 in favor of the Mammoth. It was their game to win. Fortunately, the team’s most clutch player came in handy in the extra period.

The Gunslinger Wins the Duel

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Guenther scores the overtime winner and wins his team the game. You’ve actually heard it six times in the past season and a half. Guenther is second in the league in overtime goals (6) since the start of the 2024-25 season and is first in game-winning goals (14).

When the game went to overtime, everyone knew it was his time to shine. The Penguins flung the puck into the Mammoth zone, which John Marino retrieved. Marino flipped the puck to Guenther, who skated up through the neutral zone and into the Penguins’ zone. Guenther then rifled a puck past Murashov and into the back of the net for the overtime winner.

It was Guenther’s 15th goal of the season, which now makes him the sole leader in goals for the Mammoth. His teammates know they’re watching something special every time he scores, especially given how young he is. They’re excited to continue seeing Guenther grow and score.

“He’s elite,” Durzi said. “It’s awesome to watch. I think what’s so special about Gunner is that he cares about improving his game and getting better. He’s not satisfied with his shot, even though it is one of the elite ones. You see him working on it constantly…I think that competitiveness and that fire to continue to get better and really care about his craft are what make him special.”

Even Tourigny joked that he never gets tired of watching Guenther score overtime winners and that he likes it a lot. I’m sure Mammoth fans can’t blame him one bit for that.

Guenther’s overtime winner makes it two wins in a row for the Mammoth. Yes, both wins were over struggling teams, but as Durzi mentioned, points are what the team cares about right now, and they got two of them on Sunday.

What I will say is that Sunday’s game was one of the better showings of the Mammoth recently, despite being down 3-0 at the start of the third period. The big thing that the team showed on Sunday is that they are able to keep their confidence and keep working despite being down. 

That’s very important because if the Mammoth simply gave up heading into the third period, it shows a toxic and lazy culture, which could require some changes. However, there was only fight and hard work coming from the Mammoth in the final period, which shows the strong culture they have.

“The guys in the room and on the bench, they said the right thing all night long,” Tourigny said. “They didn’t panic. Obviously, that did not go the way we wanted for a little while in the in term of score, but we were playing well, and the guys stayed with it, and we believed we needed to get an ugly one, a rebound, or something like that, in the third and when we got the first one, then we were rolling pretty good.”

This is the type of win you can build off of. Why? The momentum from a comeback and the hard work the Mammoth put in is something that can be continued into the next game and the next. It’s not like they squeaked this game out and narrowly won it. The Mammoth were by far the better team. While they had to fight to get the win, it shows true grit and character.

This was a game that showed the Mammoth are still united as a team and truly care about winning. Who knows? They could lose the next two games on the trip. However, the potential is there, and winning a game as they did on Sunday feels like a step in the right direction.

“We did a good job in the third building momentum,” Durzi said. “The group really cares about each other. We care about having success as a team, and I think we did a good job taking care of each other tonight.”

The Mammoth will continue their road trip on Tuesday as they travel to battle the Boston Bruins. The Bruins are 19-14-0 this season and are coming off a 6-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild. These two teams last met in October, where the Mammoth won by a score of 3-2.

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