For Utah Mammoth head coach Andre Tourigny, Monday night’s collapse and comeback were inseparable.
His club spent the opening stretch chasing the game, then authored one of the fiercest rallies of the postseason before watching it slip away in overtime. In the end, resilience was not enough.
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Utah erased a three-goal deficit against the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 4 of its first-round series at Delta Center, only to suffer a crushing 5-4 overtime defeat.
After falling behind early, the Mammoth stormed back with four unanswered goals and seized a 4-3 lead in the third period, sending the Salt Lake City crowd into a frenzy. But Vegas answered with 10 minutes remaining, and Shea Theodore buried the winner in overtime to even the series.
It was a painful missed chance for Utah, which had an opportunity to grab a commanding 3-1 series advantage and put itself one win from the second round. Instead, the Golden Knights reclaimed home-ice advantage heading back to T-Mobile Arena for Game 5.
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“Obviously, they had a great start,” Tourigny said afterward, per NHL.com’s Matt Komma. “I liked the way we responded after their third goal. … Right away after that’s where we started rolling and got back in the game a little bit. So, I’m proud of the way our guys responded to adversity. That was a hard-fought game. We know how good they can be, and I think we responded well in the second half of the game.”
The Mammoth looked sluggish early, generating only three shots in the first period before gradually finding their footing. By night’s end, Utah had fired 31 shots at Vegas goaltender Carter Hart and solved him four times.
Vegas countered with 36 shots of its own, and Utah netminder Karel Vejmelka will likely replay a few of those goals in the days ahead. Still, the Mammoth’s pushback reinforced why this series remains far from settled.
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“I loved our fight. We’re still playing confident,” captain Clayton Keller said after scoring Utah’s fourth goal. “We got down in the game but kept going. Everyone was contributing, and we got some momentum there from the fans as well. All in all, we fought well until the end. We’ll learn from this game and still be really confident, for sure.”
Utah has already proven it can win in Las Vegas once this series. To regain control, it will need to do it again when Game 5 begins just after 10:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday night.
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