Who: Utah Mammoth (15-15-5, 33 points, 5th place Central Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (14-8-8, 36 points, 6th place Metropolitan Division)
When: 3:00 p.m. eastern
How to Watch: Broadcast locally Sportsnet
Pittsburgh, Utah16, streaming on ESPN+
Pens’ Path Ahead: Connor McDavid and Edmonton come to town on Tuesday and then the Pens hit the road to play in Ottawa on Thursday. Then next weekend will be Canadien-centric with a game in Montreal next Saturday (12/20) and then MTL/PIT rematch on Sunday 12/21 in Pittsburgh.
Opponent Track: The Mammoth were last in action Friday at home winning 5-3 against Seattle. Prior to that they had lost three straight games, however. Tonight is the start of the on the road with stops coming up in Boston and Detroit.
Season Series: The Pens take their trip out to Utah on March 14th.
Hidden Stat: Utah is 1-0 all-time in Pittsburgh, having won 6-1 last November in the franchise’s only game under this iteration.
Getting to know the Mammoth
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Clayton Keller – Nick Schmaltz – JJ Peterka
Lawson Crouse – Barrett Hayton – Dylan Guenther
Michael Carcone – Jack McBain – Danil But
Liam O’Brien – Kevin Stenlund – Kailer Yamamoto
DEFENSEMEN
Mikhail Sergachev / Sean Durzi
Nate Schmidt / John Marino
Ian Cole / Olli Maatta
Goalies: Karel Vejmelka and Vitek Vanecek
Potential scratches: Kevin Rooney, Nick DeSimone
Injured Reserve: Logan Cooley, Alex Kerfoot, Juuso Valimaki
- Tough break for Sidney Crosby Little Penguin alum Cooley to hurt his leg last week crashing into a goal post. He’s out a minimum of eight weeks, which that seemed like it could have been a lot worse if that’s about all it is.
- That defense has a lot of “hey, I know him” names on it.
- All Czech goalie crease? That’s a rarity.
Season stats
via hockeydb
- Utah was doing great on the injury front until Cooley went down, barely any of their key players have missed time at all before that point aside from that incident and Durzi missing a chunk of the year and Kerfoot out for all of it so far. 11 of their players still have perfect attendance this deep into the season, that’s no small feat with injury time going up across the league this year.
- Cool to see 34-year old Andrew Agozzino (who played 17 NHL games in Pittsburgh in 2019-20) still kcking around. He’s not at the NHL level currently.
- Tanev has a great agent and reputation to get multi-year contracts deep into his 30’s.
Key matchup: Utah offense vs. Pittsburgh defense
This would be a big red blinking warning light even if the Pens didn’t blow a big lead yesterday and head into today with an unknown and uncertain state, while the Mammoth didn’t play yesterday. Utah is a great 5v5 offensive ream, they generate a ton. They also have the speedy forwards that can exploit the weaknesses of the Pens’ defense: Dylan Guenther scored two goals and added an assist in his lone game against Pittsburgh last season. JJ Peterka is another gifted offensive player with incredible wheels, he scored two goals over three games last season vs PIT (while with Buffalo). Clayton Keller collected three assists in the two games against the Pens last year.
Another “watch out for Guenther” segment
Guenther has four goals in three games since Cooley has gone down. He was massive against Seattle on Friday night.
“He’s been great,” Nick Schmaltz said. “He’s one of our best players, he makes a ton of plays, he scores a lot of big goals for us.”
“We’re happy to have him. I think he’s been great for us all year.”
It might be Guenther’s two-goal, three point game last year in PPG Paints Arena, but seriously. Circle No. 11 on the board, underline it, bold it and make sure he’s accounted for as much as possible. Easier said than done, of course, but this is the player that could wreck the game if he’s allowed to do it.
And now for the Pens
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust
Rutger McGroarty – Ben Kindel – Justin Brazeau
Ville Koivunen – Tommy Novak – Anthony Mantha
Connor Dewar – Kevin Hayes – Noel Acciari
DEFENSEMEN
Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson
Ryan Shea / Kris Letang
Ryan Graves / Connor Clifton
Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov?
Potential Scratches: Danton Heinen, Jack St. Ivany
IR: Blake Lizotte, Evgeni Malkin, Filip Hallander, Caleb Jones
- It remains unknown if Stuart Skinner and Brett Kulak can get their visa situation squared away in time to join up for today’s game. Murashov was recalled under the emergency circumstances to get on the roster, he’s free to be used at any time (just has to be returned to the AHL once the emergency has subsided and Skinner rejoins the team).
- The IR list is getting notably shorter in recent days, at least. Malkin’s absence has been felt, though Rakell’s return at least provides a trickle down effect to create a fairly formidable group on paper compared to some of the lineups over the past few weeks.
- The team may well choose to have Crosby, Malkin and Kindel on three different lines when all are healthy at the same time, but it seems an easy prediction to make that Kindel won’t be playing on a third line for very much longer. At some point it might make sense to “Jordan Staal age-18” Kindel and put him on a scoring line as a winger considering he definitely is one of the team’s best six forwards.
- This could be a danger game for the Pens, based on frittering away a 5-1 third period lead in a historic fashion. There’s a bad recent precedent, earlier this week when Pittsburgh blew the Anaheim game by conceding the tying goal with 0.1 seconds left they ended up starting slow and losing 4-2 to Montreal as a follow up. It’ll be interesting to see if they can scrub the memories of their latest blown lead but that is typically a difficult thing to instantly move on from.
Penguins seeking answers
Dan Muse has a big problem on his hands when it comes to figuring out how to get his team to perform for full games. Given the condensed schedule, they’re going to have to try and figure it out on the fly. In a way they’re left trying to finish building the aircraft while it’s already in the air, but such is life in an 82-game NHL season. How the rookie coach is able to handle this moment could go a long way in defining how the season goes.
