It was looking great early for Utah ahead of its eventual 4-3 loss to Pittsburgh and it was all thanks to the individual effort of Dylan Guenther.

Already on hat-trick alert with two goals scored in just 1:31 of ice time, Guenther was leading the charge for a Mammoth team that was outpacing the Penguins and simply playing with momentum.

Even the way Guenther was getting goals was special too. His first goal came right after his heavy pressure on Penguins forward Blake Lizotte led to a steal, but it arguably wasn't his best of the night- that would be his second goal:

Crashing the net, and sacrificing his body to the goal posts, Guenther had put Utah up 2-0-all unassisted by the way- and the Mammoth looked like it would be in control the whole game on way to a great win. 

But when the second period came, penalties on the Mammoth soon followed. The Penguins certainly took advantage of its the five consecutive power plays, scoring two of its four goals on special teams.  

Not only did Pittsburgh convert two of its six power play chances into goals, it was also able to find its playing style largely because Utah was forced to be on the penalty kill often.

The Penguins confidence grew as it kept getting power play chances and Utah suddenly found itself losing the momentum it had built early. That will tend to happen to any team that finds itself down a man consistently.

"Even if you play well but you (make) the wrong decisions and you don’t manage the game the right way, it’s a song we (sang) two months ago, before the break," said André Tourigny. "The guys fixed it, we had success, but now we have to do it all over again. The lack of maturity today in our game and our management cost us the game. We were in full control, we had no reason."

And it didn't help that the Mammoth found itself with less power play opportunities of their own, only getting half of what the Penguins had.

Utah certainly could have gotten a couple more too whether it was Cooley getting an elbow to the face when battling for the puck late in the third or, more importantly, a missed interference call on Pittsburgh right before took the lead for good on Noel Acciari's goal

While the penalties didn't always go Utah's way, it still made sloppy errors and allowed a Penguins team, who has fourth-best power play in the NHL, too many chances on special teams. 

“I mean, I think you learn from stuff like this, but as much as you want to break everything down, you can’t beat yourself up for too long–there’s 15 games left, so make sure we learn from it, but it doesn’t bleed into our other games," said Guenther.

But there still was some inconsistency with the officiating in this game, especially with Logan Cooley: 

Before Cooley even got an elbow to the face from Ryan Shea in the faceoff circle,  Mammoth fans experienced a bad kind of deja vu when they saw Logan Cooley hunched over on the ice after an injury midway through the second period.

After cutting past Kris Letang and Shea, two of Pittsburgh defenseman, Cooley was driving to the net with a lot of speed, hungry to score a goal before Pittsburgh's Illya Solovyov returned from the penalty box. 

But before making a shot attempt, both Letang and Shea converged on each side of Cooley making him lose balance and crash into the post: 

It certainly wasn't anything malicious, but it was surprising that no penalty got called. Cooley was only ever in a vulnerable position like that because he lost balance from Letang and Shea's contact.

But while Cooley originally avoided pressure on his left leg when leaving the ice, Cooley would end up returning later in the period, playing as fast as ever, looking like nothing had ever happened to him.

"No, not really, but I know he played a lot of minutes after, so I assume he's fine," said Tourigny when discussing if he how serious Cooley's injury was. 

Still, it is rough seeing Cooley have another collision with a goal post considering he missed eight weeks for a similar reason. But seeing Cooley return this game should be considered a great sign.