Hazlett's Late Goal Lifts Utah Outliers Past Ogden, 2-1, for 2-0 Series Lead

Colin Hazlett took a feed from alternate captain Magzhan Sagadiev and slid the puck home with 47 seconds on the clock Friday night, lifting the Utah Outliers to a 2-1 win over the Ogden Mustangs in Salt Lake City and a commanding 2-0 lead in their first-round Dineen Cup Playoff series. The victory sends the best-of-five matchup back to Park City, where the Outliers will host Game 3 at the Black Rock Mountain Event Center on Saturday at 7:05 p.m., with a potential Game 4 on Monday at 6:05 p.m.

The sequence that produced the winner began when forward Anton Sollin stripped the puck in the offensive zone. Sagadiev, the Kazakhstan-born alternate captain in his third year with the club, gathered it and threaded a pass to Hazlett, who finished over the goal line. For Hazlett, an Illinois native, it marked his seventh back-to-back points stretch of the 2025-26 season and his first such run in postseason play, building on an assist he had collected in Game 1 two days earlier.

Head Coach Richard Bohan credited the team's defensive structure as the deciding factor. "We made a solid commitment to defensive hockey," Bohan said. "P.K. [penalty kill] came up big when they had their chances." The numbers backed him up: goaltender Colin Tornqvist stopped 39 shots, and the Outliers' penalty kill neutralized all three of Ogden's power-play opportunities.

Tyler Kedzo, 19, opened the scoring in Game 2, extending the explosive postseason form he announced in Game 1 on April 2, when the second-year forward became the first Utah Outlier to record an NCDC hat trick. Kedzo finished that game with four goals, and even after Ogden clawed back to 4-3, he sealed it into an empty net late in the third period.

The series now shifts home for the first time in the Outliers' inaugural Park City season. The Black Rock Mountain Event Center, built as the centerpiece of managing partner Rick Wolper's relocation effort that took approximately four years to complete, holds up to 2,000 fans on an NHL-standard 200-by-85-foot ice surface. Saturday's Game 3 at 7:05 p.m. will be the first playoff contest the arena has hosted since opening night on November 1, 2025. Monday's Game 4, if necessary, tips off at 6:05 p.m., an hour earlier than the standard evening start to get younger fans home at a reasonable hour.

Those fans have added incentive to show up: the Outliers' Youth Sports Night promotion has been extended into the playoffs. Any young fan wearing their team jersey, from any sport, gets free admission when accompanied by a paying adult at both Game 3 and Game 4.

Two wins would clinch the series and advance Utah into the next round of the Dineen Cup, a four-team double-elimination tournament, where the Outliers would face the winner of the Idaho Falls-Grand Junction series. For a franchise marking its 10th anniversary season while simultaneously introducing itself to Park City, closing out a playoff series on home ice before Monday night would be a statement few predicted when Erick Bachtle's overtime goal against these same Mustangs on March 20 clinched the Outliers' postseason berth in the first place.