Tampa Bay\u2019s first power play goal was in the final three minutes of the second period when Darren Raddysh scored his 14th of the season. Utah had back-to-back penalties and after killing off the first one, Tampa took advantage on the second opportunity. Anthony Cirelli\u2019s 15th of the season made it 2-0 in the final 46 seconds of the game. Despite the pair of power play goals, it was a strong defensive effort from the Mammoth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to take away time and space,\u201d defenseman Ian Cole said of Utah\u2019s defensive effort. \u201cTrying to get over guys. We are trying to take away their options, and we know what they like to do. We\u2019re able to kind of shut down a lot of that. They\u2019re a good hockey team. They are highly skilled. They make a ton of great plays; they have a lot of great players. It\u2019s going to be impossible to shut them down completely, but I think overall, we did a pretty good job. The margins are very thin in terms of what wins the game or not and unfortunately it didn\u2019t go our way tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utah\u2019s goaltender Karel Vejmelka stopped 27 of the 29 shots he faced. His strong performance was highlighted by timely saves and great puck touches.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe played great,\u201d Cole said of Vejmelka. \u201cHe played awesome for us. Not only did he play (great), but his puck touches were great too. He was getting out there, stopping pucks for us. It really helps us in the breakout, not having to go all the way back and turn it up (ice) a little quicker. Enough can\u2019t be said for how he\u2019s played recently, and how he\u2019s been our backbone here through this positive stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot that goes into playing a competitive game against a team like the Lightning. The Mammoth had to be focused and driven. Tourigny was happy with the group\u2019s effort and concentration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was great,\u201d Tourigny said of the team\u2019s mentality. \u201cI think the guys were focused. They were urgent. I\u2019m happy about their focus on the game. That team on the other side, for the last two months, they dominated everybody. We arrived here in their building, and we played a good game at 5-on-5. I\u2019m happy about what the guys did. I\u2019m not happy about the result obviously. I would have loved to have a little bit more (opportunity) offensively. But, they have a good goalie.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a quick turnaround for the Mammoth who will play the second half of their back-to-back tomorrow against the Florida Panthers. Game time is 5:00 p.m. MT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay\u2019s first power play goal was in the final three minutes of the second period when Darren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-133120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}