The Utah Mammoth’s season ended the same way it began: 1 for 16 on the power play.

They had a stretch in between — 27 games, to be exact — during which the power play was the second-best in the NHL, which helped them make the playoffs.

But as soon as they arrived in Las Vegas for Game 1 of the postseason, the group went flat.

Five games into the regular season, a reporter asked Mammoth head coach André Tourigny about the 1 for 16 power play. His response was that regardless of whether the puck was going in, the group was getting good looks.

It was only a matter of time, he opined.

That proved to be true in the regular season. The Mammoth scored a 5-on-3 goal that night, followed by 5-on-4 goals in each of the next five games.

But in the playoffs, time is not guaranteed — and due, in large part, to the ineffectiveness of the power play, the Mammoth ran out of it.

In his exit interview after the season, Tourigny described the power play as having had “three seasons” within the season.

“It’s easy to say we need to be more direct (and) we need to put pucks to the net, which is all true. We need to be a little bit better, much better on our loose puck recovery, much better in the net front,” he said.

“How (can) we make that all happen?”

That’s the multi-million-dollar question. Tourigny and his staff planned to hit the drawing board within the coming days to figure out what had caused the disparity.

We headed to the film room (a.k.a. the living room couch) to see what they may have concluded.

Why did the Mammoth’s power play struggle in the playoffs?

After going back and breaking down each of the Mammoth’s 16 playoff power plays, frame by frame, a few things became clear.

On the positive side:

• The guys never lacked the confidence to make plays.
• They never seemed frustrated or desperate.
• They had extended O-zone possessions on every power play.
• They had plenty of shot attempts.
• They were near-perfect on zone entries.

Those are great qualities to have. In fact, they should make for a highly successful man advantage. But as the stats show, the negatives outweighed the positives:

Valuing speed over finesse: Successful power play units move the puck quickly, rather than skating fast. Logan Cooley in particular had too many instances when he gained the zone and then tried to stickhandle his way through the defensemen, inevitably losing the puck along the way.

Connor McDavid can do that pretty consistently and Nathan MacKinnon pulls it off every now and then, but that’s more or less the end of the list of guys who should be trying that in the NHL — especially in the playoffs.

Neutralized options: Dylan Guenther burned the Golden Knights with three one-timer goals throughout the first five games of the series, though only one of them was on the power play.

It became clear that somewhere along the way, Vegas’ game plan was to neutralize Guenther on the power play.

He still had a number of one-timers, but most of them were from longer range than normal and off of less-than-ideal passes. Even when he did get clean looks, there always seemed to be a stick or a shin pad in the shooting lane.

Nick Schmaltz had the same issue. He scored plenty of goals in the regular season from the bumper spot on the power play, but right from Game 1, the Golden Knights clogged up that area so much he could hardly get a shot away.

Guenther and Schmaltz were responsible for scoring 43% of the Mammoth’s goals in the regular season, so the Golden Knights recognized that neutralizing those two threats would significantly reduce the Mammoth’s overall effectiveness on the power play.

That type of game planning is part of what makes playoff hockey so difficult.

Puck luck: Luck is part of the game of hockey. It helps and hurts both teams every game, so there’s no sense playing the “what-if” game.

That said, when Michael Carcone missed high on a wide-open net in Game 4 and Utah ended up losing in overtime, accepting a 2-2 tie rather than a 3-1 series lead, it’s hard for Mammoth fans not to imagine how different the series could have been.

Goals against: Vegas scored more during Utah’s power plays than Utah did.

That said, neither goal against was due to bad systems — both were simply from bad turnovers, which happen to every team throughout any given game. The Golden Knights just happened to capitalize on them.

Net-front play and loose-puck recoveries: In his exit interview, Tourigny briefly mentioned that his team’s net-front play and loose-puck recoveries had to be better.

The net-front guys struggled because the Golden Knights keep a tight box in front of their goalie. That allows their opponents more space around the perimeter, but it significantly limits their ability to pick up rebounds, deflections or passes to the bumper spot, as mentioned.

As far as loose pucks go, the Golden Knights are just good at winning puck battles. They have a lot of big guys who are strong on their sticks, which gives them the edge over all the sub-six-foot players on the Mammoth’s two power play units.