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Just when it looked like the 2024-25 season was starting to slip away from the Utah Hockey Club, Dylan Guenther said not so fast. The 21-year-old scored his second consecutive overtime winner in a 3-2 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena on Thursday night.
After taking a breakaway pass from goaltender Connor Ingram, Guenther scored on his own rebound to give Utah a second straight 3-2 OT triumph.
“Once I saw [Ingram] got it, I kind of figured he was going to shoot it and I didn't even really see it,” Guenther said afterwards, per NHL.com's Craig Merz. “Pretty bad first shot, to be honest. Like that didn't really have any chance of going in, but [I] got lucky that it came back to me.”
It wasn't perfect, but a goal is a goal, and Utah needed it badly. On the heels of five consecutive losses, the squad has now picked up four of a possible four points — largely due to Guenther's heroics.
“I don't think that we played our best today and we found a way to win, but when you're in those situations more often, you get more comfortable, more confident,” the star forward continued. “We're going to be in a lot of those moving forward, so it's important for us to get some of those wins doing it like that.”
After missing 12 games with an injury, Guenther didn't take any time at all to make his presence felt. He scored with one second left in overtime against the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday, and called game yet again on Thursday night.
He's just the second player in NHL history to score in the final minute of overtime in consecutive games, joining Brent Burns, who did it for the Minnesota Wild on March 11 and 13, 2007, per Merz.
Utah is now back above .500 at 23-22-9 — and not out of the playoff picture quite yet.
Utah isn't out of the playoff race just yet
Although it's still an uphill climb, the Utah Hockey Club is now just six points back of the Vancouver Canucks for the final wildcard berth in the Western Conference.
After a red hot start to the season, it's been an extremely difficult couple of months for Andre Tourigny's team. The group has had to battle multiple key injuries, and that's not just Guenther missing 12 games.
Key defenseman Sean Durzi remains out of the lineup, while Logan Cooley was just placed on injured reserve; he'll be out indefinitely. John Marino was also on the shelf for months, and has played well since his return. Despite the ailments, the team is over .500 and starting to heat up again.
Utah will look for two more wins in a critical back-to-back set against the two best teams in the Eastern Conference this weekend. Utah will head to Carolina to play the Hurricanes on Saturday afternoon before making a trip to the nation's capital to face the Washington Capitals less than 24 hours later.
After that, it'll be a 13-day break for the 4 Nations Face-Off, which begins in Montreal on Wednesday night. The Utah Hockey Club will return to play against the Kings in Los Angeles on February 22.
