The Utah Mammoth will try to get back in the win column when they host the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday night.
This is the third and final game between these Central Division rivals this season. The Mammoth won the two previous meetings, 3-2 in Winnipeg on Oct. 26 and 4-3 on Dec. 21 in Salt Lake City.
Utah (42-32-6, 90 points) sits in the first wild-card spot in the Western Conference playoff race. Leading scorer Clayton Keller (85 points, including a team-high 59 assists) and company are also looking to end a two-game losing skid.
After winning five straight games and punching their ticket to the postseason, the Mammoth fell 4-1 at home to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday. They then struggled their last time out to find the back of the net, falling 4-1 to the host Calgary Flames on Sunday.
“I didn’t like the way we approached our game in the sense that we had to be ready to grind, get inside, and to work extremely hard for every inch,” Mammoth coach Andre Tourigny said after the loss to the Flames. “I don’t think our emotion, our focus was at the right place, and it showed everywhere from everybody. I’m not blaming anybody. Coaches, players, we need to be better. We need to grind.”
Utah defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, who was traded by the Flames to the Mammoth on March 4, said he knows from experience how hard it is for opponents to play in the Flames’ home arena.
“Both teams had a tough schedule coming into this one; whoever was the more prepared team in that first period had a really good chance to win this game,” Weegar said. “We didn’t come out prepared and connected and ready to compete.”
Meanwhile, the Jets (35-33-12, 82 points) have had their three-year playoff run snapped after they were mathematically eliminated from the postseason race on Monday night. They also enter Tuesday’s game on a two-game skid, which started with a 7-1 home loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.
“The message is, I think, no one wants to lose like that,” Jets defenseman Josh Morrissey said after the loss to Philadelphia. “It was embarrassing in our own arena. But at the same time, what are we going to do, sit around and cry about it?
“We have three games left and a huge back-to-back, a tough road trip,” he continued. “Turn the page, fly there tomorrow, and get yourself ready to go, and let’s bring it to the next game. The score hurts right now, embarrassing right now as we drive home, we have to turn the page and keep pushing like we have been.”
Now, the Jets visit the Mammoth on the tail end of a back-to-back that started with a 6-2 loss to the playoff-bound Vegas Golden Knights on Monday.
In that game, the Golden Knights held the Jets off the scoreboard completely until the final frame, when Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi found the back of the net. Connor Hellebuyck allowed six goals on 38 shots after he was pulled in his previous start for allowing five goals on 20 shots against the Flyers.
