Logan Cooley completed a hat trick against his hometown team with one second left in regulation. Mikhail Sergachev then scored at 3:27 of overtime, and the Utah Mammoth beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-3 on Thursday night, per the AP. Ben Kindel had put Pittsburgh up 3-2 with 25 seconds left. Cooley, a Pittsburgh native playing his third NHL game there, batted the puck in from the left side of the net. The AP counts it as his sixth goal in four games and seventh of the season.
The box score fills in the shape of the game. Utah scored twice in the first period and Pittsburgh answered once in the second. The Penguins scored twice in the third to lead, and Utah got one back to force overtime. Cooley took five of Utah's 34 shots, finished +2 and played 18:35. Sergachev logged 26:17, the most of any skater, and blocked five shots. Shots were even at 34-34. Utah had a large edge in hits, 25 to 7, and blocked 20 shots to Pittsburgh's 12. Each team had one power play and neither scored on it. Pittsburgh did score a short-handed goal.
Our season table lists Cooley at four goals and eight assists in 13 games, and Sergachev at three goals. Those lines predate this game. The box score's year-to-date goal counts put them at seven and four after it, and the seven matches the AP. Sergachev has 15 points and 15 penalty minutes. That gives Utah's top-pair defenseman a game-winner on top of the production he already had.
The result keeps Utah at 9-5 and second in the Central, now on a one-game winning streak after Tuesday's 3-1 home loss to Minnesota. Pittsburgh falls to 5-6 and sixth in the Metropolitan, with an overtime loss as its latest result. The Penguins had won their previous two, 3-2 over Nashville and 4-0 over Florida.
Pensburgh's Jim Rixner framed the night around Pittsburgh's lineup problems. He wrote that it was the club's 13th game of the season and its 13th different lineup. This one was a better kind of change, since Egor Chinakhov, Kindel, Evgeni Malkin and Sam Girard all returned from ailments, and Arturs Silovs was back in net. All four played. Malkin had two assists and four shots, Chinakhov had an assist and Girard finished +2. Kindel scored what looked like the winner. Silovs stopped 30 of 34, and Sebastian Cossa stopped 31 of 34 for Utah. Rixner's recap headline said Cooley's hat trick helped Utah beat the Pens "again." The summary we have doesn't explain that word, so we can't say what earlier result it refers to.
The outlets differ on one detail. Deadspin calls it Cooley's fourth career hat trick, and none of the other summaries we have mention a career count. ESPN and the AP both lead with the hometown angle, and Sportsnet's highlight copy describes the same sequence.
Pittsburgh plays at Montreal on Saturday, Oct. 31. Utah has a game at Philadelphia on Sunday, Nov. 1.
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