Mammoth vs. Penguins: Logan Cooley's Hometown Hat Trick With One Second Left Sets Up Sergachev's OT Winner

Logan Cooley was 5 years old when he took part in Sidney Crosby's very first Little Penguins Learn to Play Hockey program. On Thursday night he came back to PPG Paints Arena in a Utah sweater and broke the place's heart with one second on the clock.

Ben Kindel had just put Pittsburgh ahead with 25 seconds left. Cooley answered at 19:59, swatting a puck out of midair to finish a hat trick and force overtime, and Mikhail Sergachev buried a rebound 3:27 into the extra period. The Utah Mammoth won 4-3, and the Penguins will be seeing this one in their sleep.

Two Quick Strikes, Then a Slow Leak

For two periods this looked like a Cooley showcase with a sleepy undercard. At 4:40 of the first, he picked off an Erik Karlsson pass, carried it into the left circle and wired a wrist shot past Arturs Silovs, no assists required. At 14:11 Karlsson and Spencer Stastney got a front-row seat as Cooley went straight between them and finished blocker side from close range. Lawson Crouse and Andrew Peeke got the helpers, and Peeke picked a fun night for it: it was his 400th NHL game.

Karlsson, who had been on the wrong end of both goals, went and got one back. At 8:38 of the second he deked past Nick Schmaltz and beat Sebastian Cossa from the right circle, with Kindel and Evgeni Malkin assisting, to make it 2-1. Utah still carried a one-goal lead into the third.

Then came the gift. Midway through the third, Karlsson went to the box for tripping Cooley, handing Utah its only power play of the night. It turned into a Pittsburgh goal. At 10:59 the puck slipped past Cooley at the point, Rickard Rakell collected it in the neutral zone and snapped it past Cossa from the right circle. Shorthanded, 2-2, and Rakell's third goal in four games. At that moment Cooley was the guy who had drawn the penalty and then watched the puck squirt past him for the tying goal. Hold that thought.

The Hometown Kid Goes Nuclear

Cooley's final line reads three goals, plus-2, two hits and a blocked shot in 18:36. That is six goals in his last four games and seven on the season, and it came after he had gone six previous games against Pittsburgh without scoring once. Per the AP, he is now the third Pittsburgh native with a hat trick against the Penguins, joining Brandon Saad and R.J. Umberger.

"This city means so much to me," Cooley said afterward. "I'm super fortunate to be from here and to be able to grow up through the Penguins organization."

His teammates sounded like they had been waiting for this. "He's one of our top players who's supposed to be doing that," Sergachev said. "He had a bit of a slow start, but he's going to show everyone what kind of player he is."

Coach Andre Tourigny went out of his way to praise the stuff that doesn't show up on the scoresheet: "It's his work ethic, his mindset, his body language, his decisions with the puck."

Sergachev was the night's other engine. He logged 26:16, blocked five shots and ended it in overtime. Vincent Trocheck finished plus-3 with the primary assist on the tying goal, Clayton Keller picked up his 12th assist of the season, and Cossa stopped 31 of 34 shots. Barrett Hayton set up the winner and went 9-6 on faceoffs.

For Pittsburgh, Malkin had two assists, Kindel had a goal and an assist, and Silovs made 30 saves. None of it was enough.

Twenty-Four Seconds of Pure Chaos

At 19:35 of the third, Kindel pounced on a loose puck at the edge of the crease and jammed it in, with Malkin and Egor Chinakhov drawing the assists. The 19-year-old had the place shaking. Pittsburgh was 25 seconds from a third straight win and some payback against the team that beat it 5-4 in Salt Lake City on Oct. 19.

Utah never blinked. Off a sequence that ran through Keller and Trocheck, Cooley found himself lurking at the side of the crease as the puck fluttered toward him, and he got his stick on it in midair and knocked it in. The scoreboard read 19:59. Silovs never had a chance.

How bonkers was that? NHL.com counted it as just the 10th game in league history, regular season or playoffs, in which teams traded a go-ahead goal and a tying goal in the final 30 seconds of regulation, and the first since April 7, 2015.

Overtime barely needed four minutes. Hayton put a shot on Silovs, the rebound sat in the slot, and Sergachev wristed it home at 3:27. Malkin's postgame verdict captured the vibe in Pittsburgh: "It's like, under 20 seconds, and they score a goal."

The Numbers That Tell the Story

• 34-34. Dead even on shots, but Utah outhit Pittsburgh 25-7 and blocked 20 shots to the Penguins' 12. The Mammoth won the ugly stuff.
• 0-for-1 on the power play for both teams, except Utah's one chance actually produced a goal for the other side when Rakell scored shorthanded.
• 56.1 percent on faceoffs for Utah, which won 32 draws to Pittsburgh's 25.
• 8-0-0. Utah's record when leading after two periods. Add the AP's other nugget: the Mammoth are 5-0-0 after a loss.

Patterns, Payback and a Penguins Problem

Utah moves to 9-5-0 with 18 points, and the Mammoth have now beaten Pittsburgh twice in October, both times by a single goal. They have also alternated wins and losses over their last seven games, per NHL.com, so they will want to break the habit when they visit Philadelphia on Sunday.

Pittsburgh falls to 5-6-2 with 12 points. The overtime point keeps the home record respectable at 4-1-1, but the Penguins had won two straight after a four-game skid, and this one stings because they held the lead for 24 seconds and still lost. Kris Letang put it bluntly: "We battled hard to come back into it and get the lead," he said. "But I think, overall, the performance was not there."

Malkin went further. "We need to play, like, so much harder, whole five guys," he said. The Penguins get a quick chance to prove it at Montreal on Saturday night.

Home Sweet Heartbreak

There is a famous moment in The Perks of Being a Wallflower when the kids burst out of the Fort Pitt Tunnel and the whole city opens up in front of them. Cooley got his own version of that feeling on Thursday. The catch, for Pittsburgh, is that the kid from Crosby's program is now doing it to the Penguins.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Postgame quotes as reported by NHL.com; additional details from the Associated Press.