The Utah Mammoth made it to overtime, but they were not happy with their effort — or the result
Each time the Utah Mammoth and Columbus Blue Jackets have met in NHL action, the visiting team has won 3-2 in overtime. Their matchup at the Delta Center on Sunday, their third all-time, was no exception.
Here’s the story of Sunday’s game.
Quick catchup
Columbus Blue Jackets: 3
Utah Mammoth: 2
The first 10 minutes set the Mammoth off on the wrong foot. They went down 1-0 while getting outshot 8-0. The goal came at the hands of Mikael Pyyhtiä, who had yet to score this season.
Jack McBain tied the score with perhaps the most fortuitous bounce of his career, as Clayton Keller’s shot hit him on the shoulder and bounced past Blue Jackets goalie Jet Greaves.
They don’t ask how — they ask how many, right?
Once the first-period jitters were out of the way the Mammoth improved, but they still got out-battled, outshot and out-chanced.
“I don’t know what the analytics say, but it felt like we were under siege quite a bit,” said Mammoth defenseman Mikhail Sergachev. “We didn’t make the right decisions at the right times.”
Sergachev and Charlie Coyle traded goals in the second period, but the game-defining moment was Daniil But’s tripping penalty with 34 seconds to go in regulation.
His team killed enough time to make it to overtime and earn the guaranteed point, but it’s harder to kill off a 4-on-3 than a 5-on-4 — and that was the difference in the game.
Dmitri Voronkov tipped a Zach Werenski pass past Vítek Vaněček to end it 1:01 into the extra frame. At first glance, it looked like a standard pass along the ice for a relatively easy tap-in, but watching it again, it’s clear that Voronkov actually picked it out of mid-air with the shaft of his stick, rather than the blade.
That’s got to be as difficult as hitting an MLB pitcher’s fastball.
BLUE JACKETS SNAP A FOUR-GAME LOSING STREAK 🫰
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) January 12, 2026
Zach Werenski finds Dmitri Voronkov for the Subway Canada OT winner! pic.twitter.com/eAmwU9WfbY
Tidbits and takeaways
Vítek Vaněček needs more support
Until this game, Vaněček was a perfect 7-0-0 all-time against the Blue Jackets. He’s still an impressive 7-0-1, but it stings because he badly needed a victory.
Vaněček’s last win came on Oct. 26. His losing streak is now up to 10 games. That makes it seem like he’s not doing enough, but that simply hasn’t been the case in most of his recent losses.
He’s just catching his team on some of its worst offensive nights. The Mammoth have never scored more than three goals in a game with Vaněček in net. During his losing streak, this is how many goals they’ve scored in each game:
- 2 vs. Columbus
- 3 vs. Nashville
- 0 @ Colorado
- 1 @ Boston
- 0 @ Calgary
- 1 @ San Jose (they also scored two before Karel Vejmelka got pulled)
- 3 @ Dallas
- 2 @ San Jose
- 2 @ Ottawa
- 3 @ Toronto
All you can ask of a goalie is that he gives his team a chance to win — and for the most part, Vaněček has done that. But, as Calgary Flames goalie Dustin Wolf put it earlier in the season, “(Goalies) can’t generate offense.” They get pegged with win/loss stats, even though it’s a team game.
“Tough situation, he didn’t play for a little bit and came in and the guys did not play their A game in front of him,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said Sunday. “He kept us there. I think he did a great job.”
What do the numbers say?
In two consecutive games, the Mammoth have been outshot and out-chanced.
Against the St. Louis Blues on Friday, they controlled 43% of the scoring chances, per Natural Stat Trick. That number increased one percentage point against the Blue Jackets on Sunday.
Utah managed 53% of the expected goals on Friday but receded to 33% on Sunday. The Mammoth took 45% of the shots against St. Louis and 42% against Columbus.
The bounces worked out in their favor on Friday, so they stole the win. They were lucky to get a point out of Sunday’s effort, but they can’t expect to succeed when they get outplayed.
“(It’s) disappointing, the way we processed that game,” Tourigny said. “The way our thought process, mindset, our play with the puck, our play without the puck.
“I think (Vaněček) gave us an opportunity to get a point, which is a big point, which is important. Thought, against St. Louis, (Karel Vejmelka) bailed us out, so I was expecting definitively better from today.”
The Blue Jackets’ effort is even more impressive considering they played almost the entire game with only five defensemen, as Denton Mateychuk left the game with an upper-body injury after his first shift.
Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason praised his forwards after the game for supporting the defensemen so well.
“We didn’t turn pucks over at the blue line. We knew we had to get pucks deep when we were a little bit tired, and we knew there were five guys back there,” he said.
“We didn’t have to tell them. They were talking about it on the bench, or just saying let’s protect the D, get pucks deep and make sure that we get them off the ice.”
The Mammoth have points in four consecutive games, but the real test is about to start. They face the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday and the Dallas Stars on Thursday, two highly talented teams with ample playoff experience in recent years.
Clayton Keller, the scoring machine
Mammoth captain Clayton Keller now has multiple points in three consecutive games. Everything the soon-to-be Olympian touches seems to go in (even if it has to bounce off someone’s shoulder to get there).
This was his 14th multi-point game of the season, and while he’s still not quite on pace to surpass his career high of 90 points, these multi-point games are helping the Mammoth immensely in their race for a playoff spot.
Keller is the type of player who can single-handedly drag his team into the fight, even when things aren’t going well. He protects the puck well in the offensive zone, he has the ability to find passing lanes that no one else sees and he can really shoot the puck.
And when his team wins, his fingerprints are all over it. That’s undoubtedly part of the reason Team USA picked him for the Olympic team and it’ll be part of any success the Mammoth have while he’s on the team.
Goal of the game
Mikhail Sergachev’s floater
Every hockey player in the world has heard the phrase from coaches on countless occasions: “Put it on net and good things happen.” That’s what Sergachev did here, and it paid off in the form of a goal.
Sergachev has become well-known for his “floaters” — long-range wrist shots that aren’t excessively powerful but seem to have the eyes to beat goalies. Sometimes they’re deflected in front, and other times they beat goalies cleanly.
But the goal was nothing out of the ordinary to Sergachev, who has routinely scored this way for years.
“I got the puck, I saw an opening and I didn’t even look what was happening at the net. I knew our guys were there,” he said. “It just bounces off their guy and goes in. There’s nothing special about that goal.”
Utah & Columbus are tied 2-2 after 40.
— KSL Sports (@kslsports) January 12, 2026
The Mammoth quickly jumped out to an early lead in the second but the Blue Jackets hung around and cashed in on a late power play.
Third period on deck.pic.twitter.com/pdYS5pblxp
Category: General Sports
