Inside the emotional roller coaster of Game 4 between the Golden Knights and Mammoth – The Athletic
SALT LAKE CITY — Game 4 between the Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth was an emotional roller coaster. But that almost doesn’t do it justice.
Monday night’s overtime thriller at the Delta Center was the emotional equivalent of a malfunctioning theme park ride that’s gone rogue, lost its brakes and is hurling into darkness. A coaster that jumped the tracks, only to somehow regain them before you caught your breath.
That kind of emotional whiplash is what makes the Stanley Cup playoffs great, and this game had it all.
By its end, Utah goaltender Karel Vejmelka flopped to his back in defeat and sheer exhaustion. He stared up at the arena rafters, his stick strewn across his crease and the game-winning puck lying in the goal mouth.
On the other end of the spectrum, Golden Knights players tackled each other in the corner, celebrating their 5-4 overtime win for the second time that night.
“There are going to be huge ebbs and flows,” Vegas winger Cole Smith said following the game. “It’s playoff hockey. Especially in an away environment. The message was just stick together and play our game. Everybody stuck together.”
The stakes of the contest were clear coming in. Winners of each of the last two games, the Mammoth were looking to take a commanding 3-1 series lead. Historically, that leads to a series win 91 percent of the time. The Golden Knights were trying to tie the series 2-2 and regain home ice advantage.
For the first time in the series, the Golden Knights played with desperation. They tore out of the gates, pressuring the Mammoth with a fierce forecheck that led to turnovers and a flurry of goals.
Early in the second period Vegas stretched its lead to 3-0 and felt completely in control. The Delta Center was in a stunned silence. The overwhelming feeling was that the series favorite, with heaps of championship experience on its bench, had found its stride, and was ready to head home tied after a dominant victory.
That feeling didn’t last long. Utah got goals from Nick Schmaltz and Ian Cole 29 seconds apart to cut Vegas’ lead to one. Michael Carcone and Clayton Keller scored two more in the first five minutes of the third period to give Utah the lead.
At that point, it felt like the younger, faster team had taken Vegas’ best shot and was still standing, primed to take a commanding lead and push the Golden Knights to the brink of elimination.
Then Vegas’ Brett Howden scored his second goal of the game, a beautiful deflection of a shot by defenseman Noah Hanifin, to tie it and force overtime. The sold-out crowd, which swung from defenening roars to shocked silences throughout the night, had an intermission to recharge for sudden death.
The overtime itself was a back-and-forth brawl. The teams traded opportunities, hemming each other in, until Pavel Dorofeyev looked to have scored the winner midway through the period. Dorofeyev potted a rebound into the net, and Vegas’ players leaped over the bench in celebration. But they were quickly halted by the officials, who announced the play would be reviewed for offside.
Eichel, who had been Vegas’ best player all night, entered the zone early, only by millimeters, to put himself offside on the entry. It was incredibly close, with only a single frame showing Eichel offside.
“We didn’t know,” Smith recalled. “I was right on the blue line, actually, when it went by. It looked a little bit scary, but it also looked good at the same time. On the bench we didn’t have a clear, good look at it. We just had the one from behind the blue, not down the blue, so we were praying.”
It was ruled no goal, sending the Mammoth crowd into yet another frenzy, and the two sides back into action.
“That’s maybe a first for me,” Vegas’ Mitch Marner said. “Everyone jumping on the ice, and then obviously an offside call, and the building got pretty rocking there. There was a sigh of relief from them and their fanbase.”
Smith added: “The message was, ‘whatever happens here, stick together and just keep playing the same way.’”
After nearly 10 more minutes of frantic overtime action, the clock was ticking down on the first extra frame when Eichel raced in alone on Vejmelka. The Mammoth netminder made the save and tried to cover the puck with less than a minute on the clock, but it bounced off his own player and behind the net. There, Eichel recovered the puck, fought through a body check, and sent a no-look, backhand pass between the skates of two Utah defenders, right to the tape of his teammate, Shea Theodore’s stick in the slot.
Theodore buried the shot into the wide-open net, sparking Vegas’ second game-winning celebration in less than 20 minutes of real-time.
“It’s great,” Theodore said, describing the emotion of scoring the winner. “I think especially, close to the end of the first overtime. You don’t really want to go to the second. It’s just a good feeling. Scoring an OT winner is pretty special.”
Eichel went from being the hero to potentially the goat, then back to the hero once again. Even crazier, he may not have gone through the biggest swings on the Golden Knights’ bench.
Here’s a glimpse into some of the most emotional shifts within the game:
John Tortorella
Less than a month ago, Tortorella was still working as an analyst for ESPN. Television was nice, but devoid of the high stakes and emotion that accompany playoff hockey.
“The thing I missed the most was the locker room, and being with the athletes,” he said after the game. “I think our league has great athletes. These are fun games, and when you’re on the other end of it, it sucks.”
Tortorella doesn’t portray himself as the most strategic X’s and O’s coach. Instead, he places more emphasis on the emotional state of his team, and he had plenty to manage on Monday night.
“There are times that we think we need to be a little bit of a cheerleader, and cheer them on, but we’re not getting too high when we’re up 3-0,” he said. “You know sooner or later, the way this game is played now, and the way the games have been played throughout the tournament here, that it’s not going to be an easy game.”
When Dorofeyev looked to have scored the first goal of overtime, Tortorella left the bench before realizing it was being reviewed.
“I thought we won it the first time,” he said. “I was in the coaches’ room pretty much celebrating, and then I was yelled back out that they’re not sure, so that was a little weird for me.”
Cole Smith and Tomas Hertl
These two Vegas forwards shared the same bench, but couldn’t have had more different experiences.
Smith’s first career playoff goal put the Golden Knights up 3-0 in the second period.
“It felt great to finally get one in the playoffs,” he said with a smile. “That’s when they matter most, and it was a big goal at the time, so it felt great.”
He and his linemates were fantastic from start to finish, spearheading Vegas’ forecheck and putting Mammoth defenders in tough positions. The fourth-liner averaged only 11 minutes of ice time during the regular season, and even less through the first three games of the playoffs, but played a career-high 17 minutes and 11 seconds on Monday.
“It feels good,” he said. “Any time you can get more minutes as a player, you want to get those minutes, especially in the playoffs, in a tough game like this. Kudos to the other guys on the line, playing hard and playing the way we have to.
“We’re going to take as many minutes as they’ll give us.”
Meanwhile, Hertl was having a nightmare night. The veteran forward with 83 games of playoff experience under his belt played his third-fewest minutes — and his fewest in nearly seven years.
Hertl ended the regular season in a 20-game goalless drought and has yet to score in this series. Tortorella deployed him for only four shifts in the third period, and a team-low 18 for the game.
Pavel Dorofeyev
Then there’s Dorofeyev, who experienced a little bit of both.
The 25-year-old, who led the Golden Knights with 37 goals in the regular season, has had a rough go of it in the playoffs. Entering Monday’s game, he had gone 10 straight games in the postseason without a goal, and hadn’t scored at even strength in 13 career playoff games dating back to 2024.
In Friday’s Game 3, Tortorella bumped Dorofeyev down the bench to the third line with Hertl for a few shifts and eventually down to the fourth line, where he finished the game.
Entering Game 4, Tortorella moved Dorofeyev up to the top line, beside Eichel, in hopes that it would spark his goal scoring. It did, with Dorofeyev scoring the game’s opening goal on his first shift.
Then, just as it appeared to be reaching an apex, his personal roller coaster hit another downturn.
Dorofeyev turned the puck over in the defensive zone, leading straight to Utah’s first goal and completely shifting the momentum of game. At that point, Tortorella started shortening his bench, playing mostly three lines, and Dorofeyev spent the majority of regulation sitting. He took only two shifts in the entire third period, before Tortorella inserted him back into the rotation for overtime.
Then, for a brief moment, it appeared Dorofeyev had become the redemption story of the night. He buried a rebound to deliver Vegas what it thought was an overtime win and was mobbed by his teammates, only to find out minutes later that it didn’t count.
Perhaps seeing the puck go into the net is still what Dorofeyev needs to find his game moving forward, but he went through quite the gamut of emotions.
