Two teams that have struggled badly so far in November meet on Saturday night when the San Jose Sharks face the Utah Mammoth in Salt Lake City.
Both clubs come in off shootout losses. San Jose, which is 1-4-1 in November and has lost six of its last seven games, fell 3-2 at home to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday while Utah, 1-3-2 in November, lost 1-0 after an eight-round shootout to the St. Louis Blues on Thursday.
Despite the tough loss, Utah coach Andre Tourigny took the glass-half-full approach afterward. The Mammoth were playing the tail end of a back-to-back after losing 5-3 to the Vegas Golden Knights in Las Vegas on Wednesday — the final game of a six-game, 14-day road trip — and were missing a handful of key starters, including forwards Dylan Guenther and Logan Cooley and defensemen Nate Schmidt and John Marino.
“I’m really proud of our guys,” Tourigny said. “We challenged them this morning when we talked about having to accept to play this kind of game, a little different than when we have a full lineup.”
Karel Vejmelka made 22 saves, including several crucial ones late in the game to get the contest to overtime, for his second shutout and 10th of his career.
“Probably our best game in the D-zone of the year,” Tourigny said. “Could not be more proud of our guys. You don’t have your team buying in, playing that hard defensively, because the coach says so. It’s because the leaders say so. It’s the leaders who bought in and everybody else bought in. … I don’t have a lot to whine about right now.”
San Jose has just two regulation wins this season and none since a 3-2 come-from-behind victory over Vancouver on Oct. 29. The Sharks’ only win in November came on Monday in an eight-round shootout over the New York Islanders, prevailing 3-2 behind the goaltending of Yaroslav Askarov, who made 30 saves and did not allow a shootout goal.
The Sharks almost made it two wins in a row behind another 34-save effort by Askarov, but the Penguins’ Ben Kindel scored the only goal of the shootout to open the first round.
San Jose rallied from a 2-0 deficit thanks to a pair of third-period goals by Macklin Celebrini and Mason Marchment, the latter with just 4:11 to go.
“Just kept battling,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “Grinded and found a way to get a point out of that one, (which) was probably the biggest thing.”
The 20-year-old Celebrini, who finished with a goal and an assist, hit the 200-point mark for his career while Marchment tallied his 100th career goal.
“That doesn’t really happen without the guys in the room and the guys that I play with, all the plays that they make and all the work that they put in,” Celebrini said of his milestone. “I think all of us, after that last little stretch we were on, wanted to make a push. I think we all knew that the game wasn’t over, and it didn’t go our way (in the shootout), but we did a lot of good things.”
