Another bad second period spelled doom for the Utah Hockey Club as they lost 5-3 to the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday. Despite getting players back from injury, Utah’s costly mistakes led to them losing their second straight game. Here are some takeaways from Tuesday night’s loss.
Josh Doan On the Scoresheet
After an impressive 11-game stint with the Arizona Coyotes last season, most fans expected Josh Doan to take another step in his development and stay up in the NHL for the majority of the 2024-25 season. However, despite scoring nine points in those 11 games with the Coyotes, Doan took a step back in his first nine games with Utah. He only scored two points and just wasn’t playing well. This prompted Utah to send him down to the American Hockey League (AHL) with the Tucson Roadrunners.
Doan is only 22 years old. It’s okay to have some struggles in his development as long as he and Utah can correct the issues. Playing top minutes with the Roadrunners definitely helped. He made an immediate impact, scoring in his first game back with the team. In 25 games, Doan scored 21 points. His play placed him first in line to be called up if Utah ran into any injuries.
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Dylan Guenther’s long-term injury gave Doan that exact opportunity. Making his NHL return against the San Jose Sharks, he was noticeable with his speed and confidence. On Tuesday, his play led to his first goal since October. Only a couple minutes into the game, Clayton Keller flung a shot at the net on the power play. Doan was right in front and buried the puck on the rebound opportunity.
It was clearly a big goal for Doan as he looked energized and thrilled while celebrating with his teammates. Just three games into his second stint with Utah and he looks better than he did in October. It shows that his time in the AHL did him some good. If it didn’t, head coach André Tourigny wouldn’t have placed him on the power play in his first game back. While Guenther is sidelined with injury, this is Doan’s chance to carve out a permanent spot in the lineup. With the trade deadline slowly creeping up and Utah making some possible roster changes, he very well could stay in the NHL permanently depending on his play in the coming weeks.
John Marino Makes Utah Debut
Another Utah player made his return from injury on Tuesday night. Before the game against the Canadiens, John Marino had never played a game for Utah. Unlike everyone else who was injured this season, the fans didn’t even get to see how the defenseman played. Even though Marino was heavily involved in community events with Sean Durzi during his recovery, it didn’t give anyone the chance to see how he would fit into the lineup.
Tuesday’s game provided fans their first opportunity to see Marino in action with his new team. Despite not having played a game since April 15 with the New Jersey Devils, he looked good on a pairing with Juuso Välimäki. He ended the game as a plus-1.
It was an emotional moment for Marino to finally be able to pull on the Utah jersey after nine months of rehab. The minute he hit the ice for warmups, the fans got loud and that made his night.
“Especially with the atmosphere here and the crowd and everything, the whole setup, it was pretty emotional coming out,” Marino said.
Now Marino sets his eyes on Utah’s next game on Thursday. His goal is to improve on his game with each passing day along with trying to help Utah get back on track.
“Just got to build off each game,” Marino said. “Obviously, you wanted to win here but we got to win a game.”
With Connor Ingram and Marino now back from injury, Utah has slowly started getting healthy again. The only players that remain out are Durzi who is expected to return near April, Robert Bortuzzo who is considered week-to-week, and Guenther who will miss some time but will return this season.
Turnovers and Disappointment
What was the biggest disappointment during Utah’s loss? Pick your poison, there are a lot of answers. Turnovers were a big one. Most of the Canadiens’ goals were due to horrible giveaways and turnovers by Utah in the neutral zone. The icing on the cake was Kirby Dach’s second goal of the game. Välimäki turned the puck over to Dach and he snapped it past Karel Vejmelka to put the game out of reach.
Dach’s first goal didn’t show much from Utah’s defense either. The forward received the puck at the blue line and was able to skate in front of the net and score. Utah’s defense looked out of place as they let Dach get away with scoring. It was a second period worth forgetting as despite having the lead, the team allowed the Canadiens to crawl back into it with two goals.
“It built up in the second period and instead of recovering, we got worse,” Tourigny said. “That was the game. I don’t know for which reason we thought the second period would not be a fight or whatever. There’s no reason to have an excuse.”
It wasn’t just the defense though. Tuesday’s game was arguably Vejmelka’s first bad game with Utah. The usually rock-solid goaltender allowed some pretty soft goals. Dach’s second goal in particular looked awful as Vejmelka was expecting a completely different shot. Instead, it whizzed right under his glove and into the back of the net.
On Tuesday, it wasn’t just the defense, it was everyone. The offense didn’t have good two-way play and once again, failed to generate much on the power play despite having six opportunities to do so. Nine giveaways aren’t impressive either.
“We have to be better as players,” Nick Bjugstad said. “We know what we have to do. It’s frustrating losing a game like that…From myself and everyone, I think we’ve got way more. That’s about it…It’s frustrating because we know we can be better and we can have a better record. It’s not going the way we want right now. It’s time for everyone to look in the mirror.”
It is time for every single person in the locker room to sit down and look in the mirror and decide what they want the second half of the season to look like including the coaching staff. For the past two games, it hasn’t been good at all. Does this team really want to make the playoffs? That’s what Utah needs to decide because the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, and St. Louis Blues have begun to pull away in the wild card race.
Excuses of playing the best team in the league or competing hard against the defending Stanley Cup champions need to be thrown out the window. Excuses don’t get anyone anywhere. It’s time for everyone to start accepting responsibility and change how they play, coach, or work on the ice for the better.
“There’s no reason to have excuses,” Tourigny said. “It’s time for all of us; coaches and players, to take our responsibility. We need to be better than that.”
Utah is now 1-3-0 on their seven-game homestand. They are now at .500 with their overall record which is sitting at 18-18-7. Improvement hasn’t been made as the Coyotes were 21-18-2 at this point last season.
Utah will host the New York Rangers on Thursday. The Rangers are currently 20-20-3 and are coming off a 3-2 overtime loss to the Colorado Avalanche. The two teams met back in October when Utah pulled off a gutsy 6-5 overtime win in New York.
