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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Hockey Club coach André Touigny's voice cracked. Was it anger? Frustration? Sadness? All of the above?
His team led the San Jose Sharks 4-1 with under five minutes remaining in the game. Somehow, Utah lost 5-4 in overtime.
Fabian Zetterlund and Mikael Granlund scored 25 seconds apart, leading to Tyler Toffoli's snapshot equalizer with 2:42 left in regulation. It was three goals in about two minutes to a team that hadn't won a game all season — at least not until Monday came along.
Alexander Wennberg finished off the improbable comeback with a power-play goal in overtime.
What looked like a sure win for Utah (4-4-2) quickly turned into an embarrassing loss.
"I can't," Tourigny said when asked to explain what occurred in the final five minutes. "Let's give them credit, they put pucks at the net. They got their bounces. The way we played in the third period, it's tough to explain."
Aside from the coach, it was up to freshly turned 24-year-old Matias Maccelli to put the collapse into words. It was supposed to be a celebratory night for the Finnish forward. He scored two goals in the first two periods and had the Delta Center crowd rising to its feet every time he touched the puck, hoping to see the franchise's first hat trick.
Instead, he ended up in an empty locker room facing the media trying to expound on what just happened.
"This sucks. It's frustrating. You're up three goals going into the last four minutes, and they just got two good shots through a screen, and the last one we blocked it, and they got a good rebound but so, yeah just frustrating," Maccelli said.
Tourigny said the breakdown was "100% mental."
"It started with a turnover in the neutral zone, then they get two scoring chance out of it," he said. "Then their face off in our zone, then pull their goalie and score on that play. It was a snowball effect."
A snowball that went right into overtime, where even the most optimistic fan would have had a hard time believing the team could recover enough to pull off a win.
"As the coach, we need to own it, and the leadership (group) needs to own it, as well," Tourigny said. "What happened there, it's unacceptable — it's embarrassing."
The fans sure thought so, too. After the game-winning goal, some trash was thrown from the stands (none reached the ice) as the once celebratory crowd voiced its displeasure.
Tourigny even warned his team against this type of defeat. San Jose was looking for its first win of the year; it was a desperate a team, and he knew the dangers of underestimating that type of opponent, because he'd been on that side of the glass before.
"They're professional, they're proud athletes, and they want to get going," he said before the game. "I've been in their shoes. I know exactly what it is, and we've surprised a lot of teams, so we don't want to be one of them."
At least early on, they heeded the warning.
After having his own shot go off the frame moments earlier, Clayton Keller zipped a pass to Dylan Guenther, who fired in his sixth goal of the season to give Utah a 1-0 lead at 11:00 in the first period.
A few minutes later, Maccelli stormed the net for a rebound, falling to his knees as he collected the puck and backhanded it in for his first goal of the season. He wouldn't have to wait long to get his second — and it was pretty close to a carbon copy.
In the middle period, Maccelli rebounded Ian Cole's shot and backhanded it top shelf for his second score of the game. The goal came in quick response to San Jose's Fabian Zerrerlund backhanded shot on the other end to give Utah a 3-1 lead.
Mikhail Sergachev's blue-liner lob later in the period gave Utah what looked to be an insurmountable lead.
At least, until San Jose proved it was anything but.
So where does Utah go from here?
"Before moving on, I think we need to unpack that," Tourigny said. "I think that's not who we are, and that's not how we want to be. It's at home, in front of our fans; credit to San Jose, like I said, but that's not how we want to be. You have that kind of a lead. It's not the way we want to play, it's not who we want to be."
