These 3 things are going wrong for Utah Hockey Club right now

Utah Hockey Club unwound Monday night in a 6-2 loss to the Washington Capitals at Delta Center. Jack McBain and Nick Bjugstad scored for Utah, but it was not anywhere near enough to keep the team afloat through 60 minutes.

Here are three things going wrong for Utah after dropping its fifth game this month.

Power play production at a standstill

Utah Hockey Club has scored one power-play goal in the last six games and went 0-for-7 on the man advantage against the Capitals.

It is officially a problem.

Game after game Utah is put in positions to either extend a lead or get itself back in the fight on the power play, and it has rarely been able to capitalize on those moments this season. It was the same story Monday.

Utah had four power plays in the first period — including over 30 seconds of 5-on-3 — and could not cash in. Having the opportunity to make it a one-goal game on home ice before the second is close to a must-score situation.

Despite Dylan Guenther hitting the crossbar and Michael Kesselring ringing the post on the power play, Utah allowed Washington space to quickly shift the ice, and that it did.

“We have to be way better. It’s easy to sit here and say that we hit crossbars, but that’s no excuse. We have to find a way to put the puck in the back of the net,” forward Lawson Crouse said. “That’s not good enough. …You maybe tie the game up and it’s a different story.”

The Capitals scored two goals in 10 seconds to take a 2-1 lead by 11:05 of the period. The first came from Dylan Strome who took advantage of a Utah turnover and jammed the puck past Connor Ingram on the wraparound. Nic Dowd followed it up with a goal off a 2-on-1 rush the very next shift.

Alex Ovechkin — who is currently chasing Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 goals — potted two more against Utah, bringing him 27 away from holding the title. The Washington captain first released a snapshot to make it 3-1 at 11:05 of the opening frame. He then rocketed one home on the power play from his office on the weak side to put the Capitals up 4-1 at 5:38 of the second.

Defenseman Ian Cole said the team feels the “weight of the world on our shoulders” when things slide in a game.

“I would like to think it’s because guys care a lot. Guys really care, they want to turn this corner, they want to be a team that can win consistently and we haven’t quite gotten there yet,” Cole said. “I think we have a tendency of when things start to slip, they slip big.”

Utah was put on the power play twice more in the middle frame and once in the third and couldn’t convert. Utah’s power play percentage has dropped to 28th in the league (out of 32 teams) at 13.7%.

Utah needs more from its experienced players

It is not for lack of effort, but the offensive production from Utah’s top, more veteran forwards has been lacking and it is costing the team wins.

Utah has seen strong spurts from players like Bjugstad — who has three goals in three games — and McBain — who has two goals in three games — but the consistency from the forward group as a whole has not been there.

Secondary scoring is important for any winning team, but it means less when you aren’t getting primary output too. It is not often Utah gets the back-breaking, momentum-shifting goal it needs to run away with a game.

Nick Schmaltz, who is a first-line winger on a $5.85 million AAV deal, has zero goals through 18 games, marking the worst start to a season in his career. Schmaltz had the third-most goals on the team last year with 22. While the forward has 13 assists with Utah, it has not been enough. Schmaltz is on the first power-player unit and averages a fifth-highest 18:10 of time on ice a night. That needs to result in scoring for Utah to get better.

“Right now we aren’t getting enough from anybody. I think we’re getting possession, shots, stuff like that. But we don’t finish. We miss the net on a lot of our grade-A opportunities,” head coach André Tourigny said. “We need to finish, we need to make the last play that makes the difference.”

Crouse, similarly, had the second-most goals for the team last season with 23 and now has just four points (three goals, one assist) through 18 games. The forward is on the second power-play unit with Barrett Hayton who has not scored since Oct. 30. Captain Clayton Keller has also not scored since Oct. 30.

These struggles don’t come without accountability for Utah. The players know things have to change.

“Everyone needs to hold themselves accountable. I hold myself accountable, I need to be better,” Crouse said.

“It’s no secret, I’ve struggled to find the scoresheet as of late. Personally, I’m just trying to stay out of my own head about it. Once you get into your head it’s no good…When you’re going through stretches and adversity like this you have to find ways to do something else to help the team win.”

Goaltending has not been consistent

Connor Ingram returned to Utah’s net Monday night after Karel Vejmelka played the last two games — and played them well.

While some of the Capitals’ tallies were off Utah turnovers and lapses in coverage, Ingram allowed four goals on 13 shots which got him pulled early in the second period. Vejmelka came in and made nine saves on 11 shots to finish the game.

“At that point, we needed to try to get some momentum back and spark something,” Tourigny said of pulling Ingram. “We thought that was the right decision.”

Tourigny said Monday morning that Ingram was the team’s starter out of training camp and he didn’t want to keep its No. 1 goaltender out of game action for more than a week. However, it is not training camp anymore and Ingram hasn’t proven to be as shut down as he was for stretches of last season. After all, Josh Doan was a third-line winger out of training camp and now he’s playing in the AHL. Things change.

Utah’s defense no doubt has to hold some of the responsibility for the high volume of goals the team is allowing per game, but it starts with stability in net.

“I think we would put ourselves in a better position if we kind of just worried about what our responsibility was, winning our shift or winning the period rather than trying to win the game all in one shift,” Cole said.

Ingram has posted a 3.61 goals against average and .871 save percentage through 13 games this season. Vejmelka has a 2.58 GAA and .915 SV%.

It’s not to say that Vejmelka is the answer — Brandon Duhaime and Aliaksei Protas scored in the third period against him to bring the game to its final 6-2 scoreline — but perhaps a revised look at the goaltender rotation. In the modern NHL, sometimes you just have to go with the hot hand.