The 2nd period decided it. Utah won it 2-1 and took a 4-2 lead into the 3rd, so Pittsburgh needed 2 goals just to get even. Keller, who came in off a 2-goal night in Edmonton, scored again. The Keller-Cooley-Schmaltz group the preview pointed to did a lot of the work: Nick Schmaltz scored Utah's 5th goal in the 3rd, and that stood as the winner.
Pittsburgh did push back late. Egor Chinakhov, day-to-day going into the game, played and scored in the 3rd. Declan Carlile added another, and Pittsburgh got within 1. That's 4 goals for a team that had scored 2 in each of its previous 2 games. The Penguins went 2-for-? on the power play by count of goals (2 PPG against Utah's 1), and special teams kept them in it. Five-on-five was a different story.
Shots tell you how Pittsburgh got outplayed. Utah outshot them 29-19 and the Penguins' goalie gave up 5 on 29. That's better than the 5-on-18 night Murashov had in Vegas, but it isn't the .938 start to the season the preview hoped for. The blue line in front was as thin as advertised. Samuel Girard was listed out and Bryan Rust went on the out list during the night, so Pittsburgh played this one with fewer regulars than when the trip started. Sidney Crosby, who carried the scoring all month, doesn't show up as the scorer on any of the 3 Pittsburgh goals the box-score summary credits. The 2nd-period goal isn't attributed there, so his line in this one is still an open question.
For Utah, this was the get-right game it needed after Edmonton beat it 6-2 at home. That makes 4 wins in the last 5 and a 7-3-0 record. Utah gave up 2 power-play goals and let a 3rd-period lead get tight, but the top line produced and the Mammoth never trailed after the 1st period's 10-minute mark.
Pittsburgh flies home at 3-6-1 after 4 straight losses, outscored 20-11 across the trip. There were things to like here: the power play showed up, the depth got 2 3rd-period goals, and the team didn't fall behind early. But the Penguins went 4 games out west without a win and lost every 2nd period that mattered. Rust's name on the injury list is the last thing a roster this thin needs.