The Utah Mammoth broke a handful of franchise records en route to their 5-4 OT win
On Saturday, the Pittsburgh Penguins took a 5-1 lead against the San Jose Sharks, only to lose in overtime. On Sunday, they squandered a 3-0 lead against the Utah Mammoth, again losing in OT.
“I thought we did a lot of good things throughout,” said Sean Durzi, who scored his first goal of the season in the game. “A few plays we probably want back, but we knew we had our game going and we knew we just had to get a few more pucks to the net and (I) thought we did a good job of that in the third.”
Here’s the story of the Mammoth’s comeback win.
Quick catchup
Utah Mammoth: 5
Pittsburgh Penguins: 4
The Mammoth started the game on the wrong foot: Justin Brazeau scored 48 seconds in, and Bryan Rust doubled the deficit before the end of the first period.
When Ben Kindel scored the Penguins’ third goal, there were probably more than a few TVs that turned off in the state of Utah. This one was all but over.
But you know what they say about it not being over.
First, it was Nate Schmidt. He scored 1:07 into the third period. Just 15 seconds later, Michael Carcone got on the board to pull his team within one.
A couple minutes later, Durzi put a shot top-cheese from distance. The Penguins challenged for goalie interference, but the challenge failed, giving the Mammoth a power play, during which Carcone scored again to take a 4-3 lead.
Brazeau tied it up with six minutes left, forcing overtime for the second night in a row at PPG Paints Arena. That gave Dylan Guenther the opportunity to score the 19th game-winning goal of his 182-game NHL career.
The scoreboard didn’t tell the full story of the game. The Mammoth more than doubled the Penguins in both shots and shot attempts, as well as scoring chances and high-danger scoring chances, per Natural Stat Trick.
It was only a matter of time until the Mammoth broke through. The Penguins held them off for 41 minutes, and they only needed six to tie it up.
Tidbits and takeaways
Comeback stats
Courtesy of the NHL’s stats department, here are a few impressive numbers from this game:
- That was the Mammoth’s largest comeback win ever;
- Their four goals in a 5:59 span were their quickest four goals ever;
- Guenther’s OT winner was his third of the season, tying him with Adrian Kempe and Cole Caufield for the most in the league;
- Guenther is one OT winner shy of the lead over the past two seasons, trailing only Leon Draisaitl;
- Schmidt and Carcone scored 15 seconds apart, which is the closest pair of goals in Mammoth history;
- The Mammoth are just the third team this season to pull off a three-goal comeback win.
Carcone
In his exit interview last season, Carcone told the media that he wouldn’t be coming back to Utah. He didn’t feel he’d received the opportunities he deserved, so he wanted to go somewhere that would value him higher.
“At the end of the day, I’ve scored 20 goals in this league — there’s no reason I can’t do it again," he said at the time. “I think I can do better, to be honest.”
A couple weeks into free agency, he surprised the masses by re-signing with the Mammoth. He may have regretted his exit interview word choice, but he meant what he said: He can be a productive NHL player.
His pair of goals on Sunday, which earned him the first star of the game, were another step in the right direction. He managed seven goals all of last season, and he’s already up to six this year.
Over an 82-game season, that’s a 19-goal pace.
The danger of a risky coach’s challenge
In a 50/50 situation, you really have to weigh the pros and cons of making a coach’s challenge: If you win, you could take an opponent’s goal off the board. If you lose, you have a penalty to kill, on top of the deficit.
On paper, it seemed like a safe gamble for Dan Muse and co. to take when Kevin Stenlund bumped into Sergei Murashov prior to Durzi’s goal. Going into the game, Utah had the sixth-worst power play percentage in the league, while Pittsburgh was the fifth-best team on the penalty kill.
Durz makes it 3-3!
— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) December 14, 2025
Things are getting exciting here in Pittsburgh. pic.twitter.com/vb1fdKQJut
In the event that the challenge failed, they’d simply kill the penalty off and the score would still be tied.
But it’s not that simple.
Yes, Utah has struggled with the man advantage this season as a whole, but they’ve been much better this month. Since Dec. 1, they’d operated at a 22.2% success rate, good enough for 14th in the NHL — and Pittsburgh’s PK has receded to 14th in the league since that date.
Those stats should have made the Penguins much less comfortable with challenging.
The Penguins failed the challenge and the Mammoth seized the power play opportunity, scoring the go-ahead goal.
The 18-year-old rolls on
Put yourself in Kindel’s shoes for a moment.
On April 23, you play your final WHL playoff game. You assumed you’d be back in the fall — almost nobody goes straight from the CHL leagues to the NHL — but that’s not the case.
The Penguins select you with the 11th-overall pick, which means you get to meet Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
You turn heads in training camp. You end up making the NHL right away. Now you get to call those guys teammates.
You continue to impress during your rookie season, scoring your eighth goal and your fifth assist of the year in Sunday’s game against the Mammoth. Those would be decent season totals for most rookies, but you accomplished them with another 51 games left in the season — you could easily end up with 20 goals and 35-40 points.
Another mistake by Utah and the Penguins make them pay.
— KSL Sports (@kslsports) December 14, 2025
3-0 Pittsburgh through 2 periods.
20 to go.pic.twitter.com/mCmo1E12hS
Oh, and don’t forget the lifestyle upgrades that come with the transfer from the WHL to the NHL: chartered flights instead of 12-hour bus rides; paychecks of nearly $12,000 a game instead of a few hundred dollars a month; traveling to LA and NYC instead of Medicine Hat, Alberta and Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
Not the worst way to live as an 18-year-old.
Goal of the game
Dylan Guenther’s OT winner
Someone in the postgame media scrum asked head coach André Tourigny if it ever gets old watching Guenther’s overtime winners go in.
“No, I like it a lot,” Tourigny chuckled.
Mammoth Nation feels the same.
Gunner doing what he does best! OT Winner!!! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Q5YsH4DEZO
— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) December 14, 2025
Category: General Sports
