The goal snapped a nine-game goal-scoring drought for Eichel, which was tied for the longest in his career with the Golden Knights.
“You’re not going to get many more that are easier than that one, so it was good to get that one,” Eichel said. “I haven’t seen the puck go in in a minute. So it was good to see that go in and kind of carry that momentum into the rest of the second and third periods.”
Said Cassidy: “The longer it goes, the more it gets kind of talked about. “I think he’s had some real good looks lately. They just haven’t gone in for him, and sure enough, he gets one that basically is a tap-in. [If you] hang around the front of the net long enough, keep going there, you’ll get rewarded.”
Hutton scored 19 seconds later at 3:28 when he took a pass from Cole Reinhardt off a turnover and beat Vejmelka under his left arm with a snap snot to make it 2-0.
Schmidt cut the deficit to 2-1 at 6:48 with the teams playing 4-on-4, sending a wrist shot from the right face-off circle that squeezed under Schmid’s right arm. It was Schmidt’s first goal as a member of the Mammoth.
“Winning needs to matter to us. It needs to matter more than anything,” said Utah defenseman Ian Cole, who assisted on the goal. “We need to do whatever it takes to win hockey games. It’s a lot of little things. It’s a lot of big things. It’s bearing down on every puck. It’s all of these things.”
Eichel scored his second goal of the game at 16:51 to push the lead to 3-1. Bowman connected on a stretch pass with Eichel, who snuck behind the defense and finished a breakaway with a backhander over Vejmelka’s right pad.
Bowman made it 4-1 just 45 seconds into the third period when he set up at the netfront and redirected Eichel’s pass from the goal line past the left skate of Vejmelka.
