Cooley Bags a Hat Trick as Mammoth Edge Penguins in Overtime
Logan Cooley scored all but one of Utah's goals, and the Mammoth left Pittsburgh with a 4-3 win that needed extra time to settle. The hat trick wasn't a string of lucky bounces. Cooley put 5 shots on goal, and those looks were worth close to a goal on their own: 0.96 expected goals, a measure of how dangerous his chances were. He nearly had a fourth, too, ringing one off the post.
Cooley played on a line with Vincent Trocheck and Lawson Crouse, who each added an assist. Trocheck also hit iron.
The teams split shots evenly at 34 apiece, but Utah got to the better spots. Across the game, Utah's chances were worth 4.54 expected goals to Pittsburgh's 3.34. Mikhail Sergachev scored Utah's other goal in 26:17 of ice time.
The posts were busy all night. They were hit five times, by Kevin Stenlund, Sidney Crosby and Ville Koivunen as well as Cooley and Trocheck, so a few inches either way could have flipped this one.
For Pittsburgh, Evgeni Malkin set up two goals, and his linemate Ben Kindel had a goal and an assist. Rickard Rakell and Erik Karlsson also scored. Sebastian Cossa made 31 saves for Utah, while Arturs Silovs stopped 30 of 34 at the other end.