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Buried Myself Alive: Mammoth 6, Blackhawks 0

Awful, embarrassing, deflating, humiliating … pick your favorite adjective!

Posted on by Dave Melton
(Photo by Aaron Baker/Icon Sportswire)

The Utah Mammoth kicked the ever-living shit out of the Blackhawks on Thursday night in Salt Lake City.

Utah dominated from the get-go but needed about 17 minutes of action before it opened the scoring. Dylan Guenther took care of that with this power-play tally:

Just 40 seconds later — because the Hawks love giving up a goal right after one was scored! — Michael Carcone made it a 2-0 Utah lead:

In the middle of the second period, a Blackhawks first-round pick scored a goal. Was it Oliver Moore? No. Frank Nazar? Nope! Artyom Levshunov? Nuh-uh. Sam Rinzel? Wrong again. Teuvo Teravainen? Too old. Anton Frondell? Too young.

It was Nick Schmaltz!

Oh, right: He’s on Utah now. Anyway, Anders Lee scored three minutes later and it was a 4-0 Mammoth lead.

Guenther add a second PPG a few minutes later:

Let’s check the scoreboard after two periods:

Was Utah done?

Friend, they were not. Danil But scored to make it a 6-0 Utah lead.

Then, they were done.

Notes

Let’s start with a few clips that summarize what seems to be the biggest of the approximately 96 million things wrong with the Hawks right now: they are incapable of passing the god-damned puck to each other, especially while trying to break the puck out of their own end.

Watch this sequence. Starts with Levshunov having acres of time and space but throws it away. Hawks get possession later and Bertuzzi's pass to Frondell doesn't connect.

[image or embed]

— Second City Hockey (@secondcityhockey.bsky.social) October 1, 2026 at 9:52 PM

This is the play, with quality as poor as the ESPN broadcast!

[image or embed]

— Second City Hockey (@secondcityhockey.bsky.social) October 1, 2026 at 9:42 PM

OK. Enough of that. Pull up a chair, friends. Let’s talk.

Towards the end of last season, as the Hawks were embarking on that dreadful stretch in March and April, I found myself leaning a little too far into the cynicism/pessimism/doom/gloom/whatever while writing that weekly series here. So, I made it a serious point to myself that I was not letting those thoughts cloud any vision at the start of this season, that I was going to begin the 2026-27 campaign with a fresh slate to allow for the potential to have a little more fun with it, should the on-ice results offer the opportunity.

I’m not here to say that I’m abandoning that approach after only two games out of 84. But I sure as hell didn’t think it was going to be this difficult to avoid the warm embrace of misery because: holy FUCK does this team look incompetent right now. There are no caveats which can excuse the lightyears that reside between the play of the Hawks and the play of their opponents. It does not matter that both opponents were in the playoffs last season. It does not matter that both opponents were playing their home openers. It does not matter that both opponents have more talent on their rosters. There just cannot be this much of a gap between two teams full of players collecting paychecks that all say “NHL” on them.

It’s only been two games, but what positives do we have? First one to mention No. 88 gets pistol-whipped.

There’s no point in discussing the path forward until they can stop this freefall. Saturday night in Buffalo doesn’t seem like the end of it, given what’s unfolded during these first two and that game having the similar script of a playoff team from last season playing its home opener — and don’t forget what happened in Chicago’s last visit to Buffalo. Feels like 0-3 is pretty much a lock, doesn’t it? Perhaps we can talk about it after Tuesday’s home opener.

The question we’ll need to answer once that’s all done is this: what’s causing the Hawks to be so bad?

Maybe it’s about a coach who’s in over head. Maybe it’s about a group of players who don’t have enough collective talent to compete in the NHL. Maybe it’s about a roster constructed in such a way that it’s going to be overmatched and outplayed all season long because the philosophy behind it was borne of naivete or arrogance. Pinning down that answer will be important because that’ll indicate whether a solution is possible in a matter of days or a matter of years.

Want to know what’s not the answer?

This:

Thought we were done with Captain Postgame Cliché!

Game Charts

Three Stars

What’s Next

The Blackhawks will attempt to resemble an NHL team on Saturday night when they head to New York to face the Buffalo Sabres at 6 p.m.

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