The end of the road, or at least the first road trip, is here for the Utah Mammoth. It wasn’t a fantastic conclusion in Chicago as the team fell to the Chicago Blackhawks, handing them their first win of the season.
Funny enough, it wasn’t a bad game for the Mammoth. In fact, the team nearly doubled the number of shots the Blackhawks had. Despite this, it ended up being a 3-1 win for the Mammoth’s opponents as they head back to Salt Lake City. Here are some takeaways from Monday’s game.
JJ Peterka Gets His First Goal As a Mammoth
If there’s a massive positive takeaway from not just this game but the entire road trip, it’s that the second line has been clicking, more than any other line on the Mammoth. The second line, which is being dubbed the “youth line” by fans, is made up of Dylan Guenther, Logan Cooley, and JJ Peterka. On Monday, the trio once again flashed their brilliance.
It started when John Marino tossed the puck into the Blackhawks’ zone, which found Peterka. The German forward chipped it to Guenther behind the net. He waited for his teammate to get into position. Then, Guenther from the left side of Spencer Knight passed the puck on his backhand to the other side of the net to a waiting Peterka, who shot it in for his first goal with the Mammoth.
JJ's first goal with the Mammoth couldn't have come at a better time! pic.twitter.com/Amg2hBm8Xg
— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) October 14, 2025
After being traded to the Mammoth in the offseason, Peterka was expected to be a big part of the Mammoth’s top six heading into this season. So far, he’s been exactly as advertised with two points in three games. He’s connected well with Guenther and Cooley, and the line has been the team’s best by far.
“Just pressuring them, I think that was the key to getting chances off the forecheck,” Peterka said. “It’s also how the goal went in, just forechecking, then getting bodies on net.”
The three forwards now have seven points split between them. Their speed has been their biggest asset throughout the three games, as they’re able to outpace some of the best defensemen in the league. The trio is also fantastic at finding each other, making unreal passes across the ice to get to the net.
Head coach André Tourigny loves the speed from the line. He does want them to play more of a two-way game heading forward, but he does like what he’s been seeing from the three.
Related: Breaking Down the Utah Mammoth’s Opening Night Roster
“They play well,” Tourigny said. “They did a good job of utilizing their speed. I think it’s a little bit the reflection of our game when I assume they start forechecking. They’re fast and they have good stick. They have good legs. If they forecheck the way they did in the second, they will separate themselves.”
We’ll see if the line can continue to improve. Of course, Guenther is excelling right now with four points, but you’d like to see more out of Cooley, specifically, who only has one goal through three games.
However, if you compare the line to the other three on the Mammoth, they are the only line that has really been producing. It’s a problem, but if you’re Guenther, Cooley, and Peterka, you just have to keep going and improving. They are a line that can and will win the Mammoth games. The trio will just have to keep working towards consistently helping their team win and hope the rest of the team can follow in their footsteps.
Everything But the Win
It’s not a fantastic look to lose to a rebuilding team like the Blackhawks. What’s probably most frustrating is that the Mammoth did a lot right. Just not enough to win it all.
Starting with the shots, the Mammoth nearly doubled the amount the Blackhawks had, outshooting them 23-14. They weren’t horrible shots either. The Mammoth had numerous high-danger opportunities, especially with the power play or the second line on the ice.
For the first time this season, the Mammoth fared well in the faceoff circle as well. They won more than half of them, recording a 55% success rate. It is against the Blackhawks, but it is an improvement.
For most of the game, if not all of it, the Mammoth looked like the better team. Especially considering the dominance the Mammoth had in zone time when the Blackhawks didn’t have a single shot in the first half of the second period. Then you start getting into the gritty details.
Starting with a minor problem, the Blackhawks outmuscled the Mammoth. They had 31 hits while the Mammoth only had 16. It’s not something that will outright lose you a game, but it is surprising that the Blackhawks had that many more than their opponents.
Despite taking only three penalties, they were once again the death of the Mammoth. Mikhail Sergachev’s hooking penalty led straight to André Burakovsky’s power-play goal, which was a display of poor play by the Mammoth’s penalty kill.
John Marino’s high-sticking penalty was just as bad, if not worse. Taken with 3:04 left in the game and down 2-1, it allowed the Mammoth to only have 1:04 to pull Vítek Vaněček and try to score a tying goal. If you’ve watched Mammoth hockey in the past year, you’ll know that the team has yet to score with the goaltender pulled. That streak continued on Monday with Ilya Mikheyev scoring an empty net goal, his second goal of the game.
It’s not just the defense, though. The offense for the Mammoth has been disappointing to say the least. Outside of the second line, the bottom six players have been extremely quiet, which is exactly what happened last season. Even the top line has been a mixed bag, although the usual center, Barrett Hayton, was out for the first two games of the season.
In total, 13 points have been produced by players on the Mammoth. Seven of those have come from the second line. Even worse, the bottom two lines have a combined total of one point. That is not acceptable.
The Mammoth’s production was supposed to be one of the strong suits for the team heading into this season. In the first three games, it appears to be a weakness.
“I think over these first three games, I don’t think we’ve been nearly hard enough around the net,” Hayton said. “That’s a big thing, that there’s another big piece of our team being able to have two guys inside, compete around the net, be hard in there. When we have gotten around the net, we haven’t been hard enough. We got to fight around there.”
Tourigny agreed with Hayton’s blame of the lack of net front presence. Rebounds and getting in the crease are big in helping the production thrive, and it’s something the Mammoth need more of.
“If you look at Nashville, the second goal they scored, they dug in, they found a way,” Tourigny said. “Chicago, their first goal today, they dug in, they found the way. We need to score those greasy goals if we want to have a chance to separate ourselves.”
It’s not just the net front presence either. It felt like the Mammoth were one good pass away from a goal during a lot of their opportunities on Monday. However, that pass just wouldn’t connect. You can call that lack of luck or something else. Either way, it has to change.
There was a lot of good that came out of the game against the Blackhawks. It certainly was an improvement from their game on Saturday.
“You see what we can do, and we play fast, play connected,” Hayton said. “That was a big thing coming into this game. That game that we talked about, we saw that in the second period. It starts with hard work, and that needs to be the foundation of it all.”
There needs to be some improvements heading into the first couple of games at home. Hard work will help, but this team needs to get back into the win column soon. Time isn’t a friend of theirs.
The First Road Trip In the Books
The first road trip for the team is now officially over for better or for worse. The Mammoth now have a record of 1-2-0. We are far from the conclusion of the season, but that does put them at the bottom of the Central Division. It is only three games, but a slow start isn’t what the Mammoth need.
For the longest time, American Thanksgiving has been a benchmark for teams to see how they’re doing. Historically, if you’re a couple of points outside of a playoff spot by then, it’s not good chances for you to make it into the postseason. We’re a few weeks out from then, and it’s crazy to be talking about playoffs right now, but a mediocre first half of the season is what doomed the Mammoth last season. A slow start, even in the first couple of games, could doom them again.
Losing against what is projected to be one of the worst teams in the league this season shouldn’t happen. The Mammoth’s next three games are against teams that didn’t make the postseason in 2024-25. They should be able to win at least two of them. They need to win at least two of them.
The good news is that the Mammoth played competitive hockey across the three road games. If you take away Mikheyev’s empty net goal from Monday, each game was a one-goal game. That’s a good sign, the team is on the right track. That means the Mammoth have to capitalize on every shot, every chance to get that one goal to tie the game and potentially win.
“I’m not complaining about our performance,” Tourigny said. “The guys work really hard. We track really hard. We did a lot of good things. Our forecheck was excellent in the second period. We did a lot of good stuff. In order to go over the hump and win those games, we need to be harder inside. We need to be harder at the net.”
It feels like the Mammoth are on the cusp of breaking through and finding their winning ways. One more bounce, one more pass, one more move to get the puck into the back of the net, and they could have it. That’s at least what it felt like throughout the road trip. We’ll see if they can get that final part of the equation down on Wednesday.
The Mammoth will play the Calgary Flames next. It’ll be their first game at the Delta Center this season. The Flames are 1-2-0 and are coming off a 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues. They’ll play the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday before travelling to Utah. Last season, the two faced off three times, with the Mammoth sweeping the series, winning the latest game 3-1.
