BOSTON - For the fifth time this season, the Utah Hockey Club struggled offensively and was held scoreless in 60 minutes. With so many offensive woes and a lack of urgency on the puck, Utah dropped their third straight game to the Boston Bruins, 1-0.
Here are the key takeaways from Utah's third straight loss.
Despite an unfortunate result, goaltender Karel Vejmelka was fantastic against the Bruins with 30 saves on 31 shots faced.
He was fast, aware, reacted well, didn't cough up rebounds, stayed in position, and saved every puck in 5-on-5 hockey. Yeah, he allowed one to get past him, but it was during one of Utah's seven penalties on the night.
It's hard to really blame Vejmelka on a power play goal as the man advantage opened up extra space and a free man at the net who cleaned up a rebound without any resistance from the defense. That's not on the goaltender.
So even though Utah ended up losing, Thursday night was another great performance from Vejmelka. For a goalie to stop 30 of 31 shots, he's done everything he needs to do in order to give his team a chance to win. But when the offense doesn't score, it unfortunately doesn't matter and can be easily overlooked.
Regardless, Vejmelka was superb and is continuing to show that he deserves more starter minutes between the pipes.
Coming into the game against Utah, the Boston Bruins had the worst power play unit in the entire NHL at 11.69 percent. Simply awful.
While their struggles continued as they began the game 0/4 on the man advantage without very many dangerous opportunities and a lack of consistent possession, eventually they found the back of the net.
When you surrender five penalties through two periods of play in the NHL, you're begging to be scored on no matter who is on the other side of the ice. Even against the worst special team's unit in the league, the penalties eventually caught up and the Bruins took advantage of the extra space which led to a goal.
What makes it worse is that several of them were even offensive zone penalties which is completely unnecessary. Not that there's ever really a good penalty to take aside from saving an actual goal from happening, but offensive zone penalties eliminate momentum and put your team at a disadvantage for absolutely no reason.
"We went in the box way too much...in the first period we had good momentum, create good offense, and then we start to get in the box too much and that cost us the momentum," head coach Andre Tourigny said.
Ultimately that was the difference in Boston tonight. Neither team was particularly good offensively, but Boston had way more chances on the power play which provided the only goal and Utah was unable to respond.
Thus far, penalties and an inability to generate offense have led to most of Utah's losses. Against the Bruins, it was the same issues.
As the Utah Hockey Club continues to weather a tough stretch of results, it's clear that this team needs more energy and passion.
In addition to being held scoreless for the fifth time this season against Boston, Utah lacked energy, effort, speed, urgency and just about everything that makes their offense tick. Thus, a big ol' goose egg on the scoresheet.
"I didn't like the urgency and the speed around the puck...if we want to score goals, we need to get in the dirty area and we need to get there with passion. Not just get there. Get there with burning desire to score goals," Tourigny said.
Breaking down the stats ever further, Utah lost all the important battles against Boston. They were outshot 31-21, outhit 24-10, lost 53.4 percent of faceoffs and gave up seven penalties. There's rarely going to be a situation where you lose each of those battles and win a hockey game.
With such a poor overall performance and another scoreless night, it's obvious this team is in their own heads and lack confidence.
"That's the problem. Thats what they're thinking about. I think that's enough. I think at some point. They're big boys. They're NHL. We need to have more passion on our offense," Tourigny said.
Utah needs someone to step up. Someone to say enough is enough and take it upon themselves to do something about their current offensive woes. At times, that's what it takes. Somebody fueling their frustration with a big moment or high energy play that gets the rest of the team into it.
"Maybe just see one go in," Forward Nick Schmaltz said. "It's frustrating. I feel like a lot of guys are getting a lot of chances, myself included. Maybe just gripping the stick a little too tight. Got to have a little bit more poise and confidence with the puck when you get those grade-A opportunities. It's frustrating for sure...once we see a few go in, I think everyone will become more confident."
Like Schmaltz said, it's frustrating. But the only way it's going to change is if the team keeps grinding and doing whatever it takes to put the puck in the net to lift everyone's confidence.
The Utah Hockey Club will continue their four-game road trip in Pittsburgh on Saturday night. The game can be viewed on SEG+. Fans can also tune in on air on the KSL Sports APP or on 97.5 and 1280 The Zone. Click here for the full schedule.