^{Look who’s back, back again. YFHGIU’s back. Tell a friend.}

Thanks for bearing with me during a few personal days. I’m glad to be able to get back to business.

And speaking of business, tonight the Utah Mammoth look to take care of business against the Seattle Kraken up in Washington. The Mammoth enter this game well rested, the recipients of a rare 4 day break this late in the season.

March was an odd month for Utah, who came in like a lamb and out like a lion. Starting off the month with a loss to Chicago and losing 5 of their first 8 games, only to turn around and win 4 of their last 7 – culminating in a win their final game (March 28) in Los Angeles.

Utah lost winnable games, and won tough matchups, which led to a frustrating but mathematically solid point percentage over .500. Despite the frustration, Utah’s kept their tenuous lead in the wildcard race.

With just 8 games left each, Utah has a 4 point lead over the Los Angeles Kings, a 5 point over the Nashville Predators and San Jose Sharks (who have a game in hand), and a 7 point lead over tonight’s opponent.

Win, and Utah keeps pace and continues to control their own destiny in the WC race. However, anything other than 2 points is guaranteed to tighten the race for Team Tusk. The severity depends on how the Nashville and LA game turns out tonight, as one of those teams is guaranteed two points. Those two teams also play again in a couple of days, further complicating a very exciting Western wildcard race.

What a fun time to be playing for your life.

The Mammoth have already won the season series over the Kraken, winning both home games in Salt Lake City by scores of 5-3 and 6-3.

Seattle’s Mammoth playoff implications:
Tonight is huge for both teams. For the Mammoth, a loss guarantees someone makes up ground and tightens up the wildcard race. For Seattle, anything but a regulation win gives them problems with the teams around them, including Utah.

The Kraken have a game in hand over Utah, and any hope they have for the playoffs rides heavily on tonight for the squids. A win by Seattle puts them square in the middle of a logjam at the outskirts of WC2 with 77 points. That would put them 5 points behind Utah (still with a game in hand) and at best, 2 points out of the WC2 spot.

As I mentioned above, Nashville and LA play each other twice in a span of a week. The best possible case scenario for Seattle is for each team to lose once in regulation. However, given the Kings propensity for overtime losses…

Will Seattle rain on a Utah parade?
Well, as mentioned, a huge amount rides on this game tonight, so if any external situations will motivate a team, tonight’s the night.

The Kraken have struggled hard since last playing Utah. Since the beginning of February, Seattle owns a league second-worst points percentage (.368 over 19 games). They’re barely ahead of only the Vancouver Canucks, which is not a recipe for success.

Seattle had a particularly rough March, winning just 4 of 14 games, totaling just 10 of a possible 28 points. They ended the month horribly, closing out March with losses in 6 of their last 7 games. While they were able to scrape a loser point in 2 shootout losses, getting just 4 of 14 points in the last two weeks was a massive blow to their playoff chances. Their only saving grace? The San Jose Sharks got 5 points out of 14, and the Vegas Knights got just 6 out of 16. The Kings fared the best, with 7 out of 14 points on that stretch.

Seattle’s still got opportunities, but they’ll need to overcome a number of struggles. Scoring has been difficult for the Kraken. Coming off their 6 game road trip, Seattle scored 2 or more goals twice – once in a 4-3 OT win against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and once in a 5-4 shootout loss against the Florida Panthers – and were shutout against the Edmonton Oilers. They had tough games during that stretch, with teams fighting for their playoff lives in each of those road games, except the Panthers game.

The 8 games before they went on the road trip weren’t much better. A back to back against the hapless Vancouver Canucks saw them put up 5 goals in a win, and a home game against Florida saw them put up 6 the next night. Other than that, though, 5 of the other 6 games saw them also score 2 or less, with the lone 4 goal game a 7-4 loss against Ottawa.

The top line of Jared McCann, Matty Beniers, and Jordan Eberle has just not been a top line consistent with being a playoff team. Eberle, one of my personal favorites in the NHL, is the tallest kid in the Kraken’s kindergarten. The only 20+ goal scorer, Eberle’s having his best season in his past few – but the rest of that top line hasn’t performed well. Beniers fourth full season, now as their expected 1C has been a disappointment. His point production is up from last year, but he’s been part of a defensive collapse far more often than not. McCann had been injured on and off since the end of December, so his production was expected to not match previous years, but he has been consistently slipping since their playoff run.

Defensively, Seattle’s a mess. Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson haven’t been able to stop top lines of their opponents. Dunn, an offensive defensemen and the analog comparison to Utah’s Mikhail Sergachev, is no Sergachev. Dunn has more goals on the year, sure, but his offensive production simply can’t keep up with his defensive lapses and inability to stabilize mistakes made by the forwards in front of him. His team low (and career low) -26 plus minus rating doesn’t give you the full picture, but it paints it fairly well.

As a team, they just leave their goaltenders out to dry. This has been an all-year problem for them, though, as they’ve averaged under 30 shots against per game nearly the entire season. And as for goaltending, it has been mediocre for Seattle, with both Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer posting sup .900 save percentage since February 1st, but not too far under .900 for a team that’s been performing as badly as Seattle has. In fact, league-wide, they’re just about average. They’re both over 3.1goals against per game, though, which is bad for some teams’ backups.

Not all has been bad for Seattle, though. They’re the best of a bad bunch of wildcard hopefuls with just bad levels of of goal differential. At -21, they’re better than everyone in the race, other than the Mammoth and suddenly resurgent Winnipeg Jets. So, they’re not quite as weak as the surrounding mess in the Pacific.

They secured a 2-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, the top seed in the East, and then came back to beat the second seed Tampa Bay Lightning in a 4-3 OT winner just last week. The game against the Florida Panthers that ended in a shootout loss saw a point earned despite being down 3-0 in that game, showing some resiliency and fight left in the team.

Bobby McMann has been a major contributor to the Kraken since joining Seattle at the March 6 trade deadline. McMann’s scored 7 goals in his 9 games played, with 11 total points over that span. In fact, McMann is the only Kraken player averaging more than a point per game.

Even over their bad stretch since February 1st, Seattle’s penalty kill has been solid at over 81%, which improved in an otherwise dismal March.

Seattle also has the ability to perform well in a third period. Most of the time, they’re trailing and selling out for points, but they still outscore opponents in the 3rd period slightly, and have scored 7 more goals in the 3rd period than either of the first two. They’re not clutch by any means of the imagination, but they’re also able to make a late push, if you’re not prepared.

Key points to secure a victory today:
Mann or Cann? The fun task for the announcers tonight is not mixing up McCann with McMann. The fun task for Utah will be to make sure to mark the better of the two, and contain him.

Bobby McMann was a trade more for depth for Seattle, but the ex-Maple Leaf has blossomed in Seattle. His 7 goals and 4 assists in just 9 games puts his per-game production through the roof for his career stats. This year, McCann eclipsed 20 goals for the second time in his career (20 last year); of his 26 goals, 7 have come in less than 10 games with the squids.

Yes, his shooting percentage is unsustainable at about 25% when career wise he’s about half that. However, he’s their hot hand right now. For a team that is struggling to light the lamp, the biggest threats are the tallest blades of grass you need to cut first.

McCann isn’t a slouch, by the way. While his production is down significantly, his per game production hasn’t massively regressed. He’s still capable of putting up numbers at even strength. 12 of his goals – a full 66% of his goals and points – come from 5 on 5 play. He’s third most in goals even strength, and has missed 25 games.

It’ll help Utah to focus on the McWhoever’s out on the ice at the time, as they – and Jordan Eberle – really are the threats the defense needs to key on.

What’s cooler than Cools? Ice cold, which is where Logan Cooley was until just a few games ago. Since I’d taken some time myself, Cooley decided to start balling out. With 3 goals in his last two games, Cooley has done less to over-think, and more to just produce.

He’s flourished on the top PP1 pairing, netting 2 power play goals in the last two games, and has looked fantastic paired with Dylan Guenther on the 2nd line. His JJ Peterka bromance off again, though, as the kid-line has been broken up yet again.

Still, Cooley’s waking back up at a critical time of the year. His 2 goals were critically important to put them 2 more points up from a hot-on-their-heels LA Kings team. Expect Cooley to see another big night tonight as lineman Kailer Yamamoto slots in with him against Yamamoto’s former team. Kailer tends to play big against them, so that line should see some good results!

Special Teams The Seattle Kraken, as mentioned, actually have a decent penalty kill. Don’t look now, though, because out of nowhere Sergachev has become a power play point production beast. 4 power play assists in his last two games, Sergachev has found his form again, as Utah’s power play has finally gone from listless to list…ful?

Clayton Keller’s not been a scoring machine for the power play, which has been a surprise considering he hit 10 goals last year, but he’s also been racking up some additional points. During the last two games, Keller’s 3 assists are second only to Sergachev’s, and his ability to help drive play has helped give Cooley and Dylan Guenther time and room to operate.

That top PP unit has also given up a shorthanded goal, so expect them to be dynamic either way…

Utah’s penalty kill, meanwhile, has also been stepping up as the season rolls on. In March, they killed 80% of penalties successfully, up from just 72% from January and February. Seattle’s power play has faltered pretty hard lately, with just 14% during their free-fall since February 1st, and an 11% (1 for 9 average) since March 1st.

Utah should have a significant advantage in special teams tonight, so look for the Mammoth to exploit this if and when the whistles start.

Projected Lineups:
The NHL says there’s no expected changes to the lineup. I do expect one substitution, noted above, but we’ll go with the experts and correct them when they’re wrong:

Clayton Keller — Nick Schmaltz — Lawson Crouse
Kailer Yamamoto — Logan Cooley — Dylan Guenther
JJ Peterka — Jack McBain — Michael Carcone
Alexander Kerfoot — Kevin Stenlund — Brandon Tanev

Mikhail Sergachev — Mackenzie Weegar
Nate Schmidt — John Marino
Ian Cole — Sean Durzi

Karel Vejmelka
Vitek Vanecek

Late game tonight, with puck drop at 8PM on ESPN+. So, enjoy this one on the radio with the sound off, or better yet, head to a watch party.

TUSKS UP!