The Utah Mammoth nabbed a vital two points with a dominant 6-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs in Salt Lake City on Tuesday night.
Dylan Guenther and Jack McBain recorded three points each. Ian Cole, Michael Carcone and JJ Peterka also had multi-point nights. Veteran Calle Jarnkrok scored Toronto’s only goal of the game.
Karel Vejmelka waited nearly eight minutes to face his first shot, turning away 19 of 20 on the night. Dennis Hildeby stopped 34 of 40 shots for the Maple Leafs.
Carcone opened the scoring just 3:22 in off Nate Schmidt’s swift feed through the slot, his one-timer sneaking under the glove of Hildeby and just inside the post. The Toronto netminder had dropped his stick seconds earlier when he sped through the crease to stop Carcone’s wrist shot from the face-off circle.
Guenther extended their lead early in the second period, carrying the puck into the zone himself and sniping one over the shoulder of Hildeby from the edge of the face-off circle. It took a moment for the goal horn to sound, the puck sailing in and out of the net in mere milliseconds.
Guenther pocketed his second just over a minute later, this time off a sly set-up from McBain, who snuck a pass under the stick of Morgan Rielly to tally his second helper of the affair. Peterka made it 4-0 with a weak flip from the sideboards that Hildeby struggled to track through rookie Daniil But’s high screen.
Jarnkrok, inserted into the lineup after Nick Robertson’s injury the night before, spoiled Vejmelka’s shutout three-and-a-half minutes into the third. The Swedish forward took Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s point shot off his skate and slapped the puck into the top corner from in tight.
McBain quickly put it out of reach, jamming in Guenther’s cross-crease pass to make it 5-1. Then, But added a sixth with just over three minutes remaining.
John Tavares was gifted a fabulous opportunity at the beginning of the second period off a long William Nylander breakaway pass. The Leafs alternate captain snapped his shot right into Vejmelka’s glove. Auston Matthews rang a shot off the post halfway through the final frame.
The result marked Utah’s first win over the Leafs since the club’s relocation from Arizona. The Mammoth have now won four of their last five and find themselves in a wild-card spot with the 50-game mark of the season rapidly approaching. The loss snapped Toronto’s 10-game point streak.
–Field Level Media
