MORNING SKATE NOTES<\/p>\n
The Mammoth held an optional morning skate ahead of their game against the Edmonton Oilers.<\/p>\n
Head coach Andr\u00e9 Tourigny shared there would be some game time decisions ahead of tonight\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Getting Ready<\/p>\n
Utah has four games in six nights this week and the Mammoth held a full practice on Monday. On Tuesday, the team held an optional skate. Here\u2019s who was in attendance:<\/p>\n
Kevin Rooney, Kailer Yamamoto, Logan Cooley, Liam O\u2019Brien, Alexander Kerfoot, Dylan Guenther, Sean Durzi, MacKenzie Weegar, Nick DeSimone, John Marino, Mikhail Sergachev, Dmitri Simashev, Karel Vejmelka, and V\u00edtek Van\u011b\u010dek.<\/p>\n
Facing the Oilers<\/p>\n
Utah and Edmonton are two quick, talented teams and tonight\u2019s contest is expected to be an exciting matchup. Both teams are also in the middle of a playoff push and are determined to get two points tonight.<\/p>\n
The Mammoth want to improve on their performance from the last time these teams played each other on Mar. 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cEdmonton\u2019s a team that (has played) really well lately,\u201d Tourigny explained. \u201cWe didn\u2019t like our last game against them so it\u2019s a good opportunity for us to be back in front of our fans and have a strong showing against them and we\u2019re in the thick of it. So, I\u2019m excited about the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Oilers have veterans, depth, and all-star players on their roster. Edmonton Captain Connor McDavid is one of the best players in the NHL. To shut down him, and other key threats on the Oilers, it\u2019ll take all five skaters on the ice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigh-end generational players, it takes a unit of five,\u201d defenseman Sean Durzi explained of shutting down opponent’s top players. \u201cKnowing that and going into games, obviously it\u2019s got to be a focus for everyone. You can only work on matchups so much, there\u2019s going to be times where everybody gets on the ice with high-end players, and it\u2019s doing a job of knowing where they are on the ice, and then taking pride in shutting them down. It\u2019s something that I think we\u2019ve done a good job of and (being a) five-man unit, and going from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose guys there, what they\u2019re really good at is finding the open guy,\u201d Tourigny shared. \u201cIf you put all your attention on them, they make you pay by finding the open guy. So, it\u2019s really a job of five. There\u2019s no miracle, or secret sauce, or anything. I think you need to get above them, you need to be hard on them, you need to cut their time and space. Need to have a good stick and great, great coverage. I think there\u2019s a bunch of things you need to be good (at defending them) that\u2019s what makes those guys some of the best players in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Offensive Output<\/p>\n
Over their last three road games, Utah outscored their opponents 19-8. In addition, the Mammoth are on a five-game power play goals streak and have scored nine tallies on the man-advantage. Tourigny discussed Utah’s\u00a0offensive output.<\/p>\n
“There’s a bunch of things,\u201d Tourigny said. \u201cI think our power-play is one for sure.\u00a0 I think the way we play as a unit is another one. I think our defense often feeds our offense, when you create turnovers, you put traffic at the net, but it’s the same old, same old for us. Simpler is better.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MORNING SKATE NOTES The Mammoth held an optional morning skate ahead of their game against the Edmonton Oilers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5,4,51,5290,232,5291,5289],"class_list":{"0":"post-546117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-hockey-club","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-utah","11":"tag-utah-hc","12":"tag-utah-hockey-club","13":"tag-utahhc","14":"tag-utahhockeyclub"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116365138692665387","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546117","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=546117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}