Clayton Keller collected his third career hat trick in a four-point game to lead the visiting Utah Mammoth to a 7-4 victory over the cellar-dwelling Vancouver Canucks on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Dylan Guenther and Lawson Crouse both scored once and added an assist for the Mammoth (40-30-6, 86 points), who pulled closer to clinching a playoff berth.<\/p>\n
Kailer Yamamoto and Liam O\u2019Brien also tallied, while Logan Cooley collected a pair of assists and goaltender Karel Vejmelka made 19 saves.<\/p>\n
Utah, which has won six straight versus Vancouver, is firmly in control of the Western Conference\u2019s first wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Linus Karlsson scored twice while Jake DeBrusk and Marco Rossi added singles for Vancouver (22-46-8, 52 points), which has lost eight of nine games.<\/p>\n
Goalie Nikita Tolopilo stopped 17 shots.<\/p>\n
Keller broke open a 2-2 tie with a power-play goal at 7:04 of the second period by deflecting Guenther\u2019s high point shot. It was originally waived off but video review showed Keller\u2019s stick was even with the crossbar at impact.<\/p>\n
The Mammoth have scored on the power play in five consecutive outings, converting nine times in that span.<\/p>\n
After a string of near misses, Utah extended the lead when Guenther buried a sharp-angled chance into a yawning net at 11:55.<\/p>\n
To their credit, the Canucks kept fighting but could not draw even.<\/p>\n
DeBrusk\u2019s power-play goal 20 seconds into the third period, a nifty deflection of Filip Hronek\u2019s point shot, made it a one-goal game. But Crouse restored Utah\u2019s two-goal bulge with a top-shelf shot at 1:32 of the final frame.<\/p>\n
Rossi again pulled the hosts within one with another power-play goal at 4:40, only to see O\u2019Brien tally seven minutes later with a deke on a partial breakaway in his first game since Feb. 4.<\/p>\n
Keller\u2019s empty-net goal rounded out the scoring, and gives him 10 points (three goals, seven assists) in a four-game streak.<\/p>\n
Both clubs staked and squandered a lead.<\/p>\n
Karlsson opened the scoring at the 2:28 mark, but Yamamoto drew Utah even 11 minutes later and Keller potted his first of the game with 90 seconds remaining in the opening period to give the Mammoth a 2-1 edge.<\/p>\n
Karlsson tied the clash at 2-2 by deflecting the point shot 125 seconds into the second period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clayton Keller collected his third career hat trick in a four-point game to lead the visiting Utah Mammoth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5128],"tags":[894,5,4,893,27,5313],"class_list":{"0":"post-541461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver-canucks","8":"tag-canucks","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-vancouver","12":"tag-vancouver-canucks","13":"tag-vancouvercanucks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}