January 22, 2026
Garnet Hathaway was looking at an empty net, with the puck on his stick, no one in front of him, and the Flyers sitting just over a minute away from victory in Utah.
Then he eased up his skating and made an extra handle, presumably looking to coast the puck across the goal line. He never registered Nick Schmaltz's presence, the Mammoth skater who was hustling right behind him through center ice, and then fully caught up to tap Hathaway's stick up and swat the puck away before he could shoot.
For Hathaway, it was an embarrassing late-game fumble. For the Flyers, though still up a goal at that point, it was a catastrophic domino to fall.
Utah had possession back, and life. Travis Sanheim couldn't get a grip on a puck trickling back to him by the Flyers' blue line, and the Mammoth's Clayton Keller, with the forward momentum, powered through the defenseman caught on his heels and in toward the net, flipping a backhander over Sam Ersson's glove for the tie and overtime.
Then, in the extra frame, Travis Konecny had a pass that wrapped around the offensive zone boards roll right past his stick. It sent Utah storming the other way, left Keller with a look to shoot head-on, and Ersson without a chance.
Utah completed the comeback as the puck flew over the goalie's glove again, and the Flyers imploded with a 5-4 overtime loss from just a brutal comedy of errors on Wednesday night.
They were leading 3-0 into the second period, too. You just can't blow a game like that.
"That's unacceptable, what happened tonight," head coach Rick Tocchet said postgame. "There's really not much to say. We sunk in pressure situations."
The play, or rather how it all fell apart, spoke for itself.
Garnet Hathaway with one of the WORST empty net blunders you'll ever see 😵
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) January 22, 2026
And Utah went on to win the game in OT... 😵💫 pic.twitter.com/NTeP8U1tHX
Christian Dvorak scored his second goal of the night on the power play to give the Flyers a 4-2 lead in the second period, after the Mammoth finally cut into it with a quick two for themselves.
The third period was just a matter of the Flyers holding steady to grab the win, but they couldn't.
Noah Juulsen took exception to Jack McBain's check of Jamie Drysdale in the corner and wanted a fight. He just went a step too far in initiating it with the play still live, throwing McBain around in the corner for a few seconds away from the play to draw a roughing call and a Utah power play on top of the usual five for fighting.
The Mammoth used that man advantage to bring it back to a one-goal game, 4-3.
"I love Juuls, but take a punch in the mouth. We gotta win the game," Tocchet said.
Then Hathaway had his chance with time winding down and an empty net. He got his pocket picked, and the dominoes quickly fell one after another into disaster.
KELLER TIES IT UP LATE IN THE THIRD 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/J6effzA8lR
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) January 22, 2026
You just can't blow a game like that, especially right now.
The Flyers still got a point in the standings from going to overtime, but the way the loss happened didn't make it any kind of silver lining. Instead, it brought them right back to the misery from their six-game losing streak, before Monday night's win in Vegas finally gave them a break.
They're 3-5-2 since New Year's, have since slid to the outside of the playoff bubble, and through recent special teams struggles and even continued difficulties in scoring at even strength, they've quietly had their overall goal differential drop to minus-8. Every team occupying an Eastern Conference playoff spot as of Thursday is in the positive by at least five goals.
"It's something that we gotta get out of this team, right?" Tocchet said. "You gotta rise to the occasion. You gotta want to be out there in pressure situations. A couple of guys sunk in certain situations. That's the bottom line. We gotta recover from it."
But it's only looking like a steeper and steeper uphill climb now, and on skates.
And more than anything, especially narrowed down to Wednesday night's collapse, the Flyers' veterans have to own this one.
ELITE OVERTIME DUO: DYLAN GUENTHER AND CLAYTON KELLER! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/lHd49WRYDn
— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) January 22, 2026
Juulsen got tagged for the penalty that gave Utah a chance; Hathaway's brutal, and now Patrick Stefan-level, blunder with the empty net snowballed into Keller tying the game; and both of Sanheim and Konecny's fumbling with the puck late fed into the Mammoth's momentum to swing the comeback.
It's a young team, sure, but wisdom and experience are what're supposed to guide them forward, and now it's going to be on these guys to guide them out of this jam.
"We unraveled, and we gotta put the pieces back," Tocchet said.
But then it's just as much on Tocchet, too, to put them back together in a way that works.
Hathaway had a gimme at the end of Wednesday night. He should've scored, but didn't. But it also has to be highlighted that he's an aging fourth-liner who only had one other goal through 43 games this season. In fairness, it has to be noted, too, that he was out there in what was functionally a penalty killing situation since Utah was skating with an extra attacker.
Even so, Hathaway skated 12:19 on Wednesday night. Matvei Michkov, the Flyers' struggling but still on-the-rise winger, skated 12:11 with only two other Philadelphia forwards playing less – Nikita Grebenkin at 11:54 and Phantoms call-up Lane Pederson at 9:29.
Michkov, a right winger, has also been playing on the left instead, and didn't see a second of the overtime period.
Much has been made about the 21-year-old's fitness coming into the season, his skating, and his abilities away from the puck, but up front, he's been a known offensive dynamo and the future star the Flyers have pinned a whole lot of their rebuilding hopes on.
When they were in trouble, when they needed a goal, there have been spots to just let Michkov go out there and create something, not even just from Wednesday night's loss, but going back through the whole season.
Yet Tocchet has seemed to have a continuous refusal to take that kind of risk and just let him fly, often opting for the more established skaters who, in theory, offer safety, structure, and for better or worse, predictability.
But there was none of that for the Flyers by the end of Wednesday night, as they left the ice stunned.
You just can't blow a game like that.
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