Flyers

The Garnet Hathaway Play Gets Worse with Each Viewing

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jan 22nd, 2026 · 9:53 AM EST

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The Flyers were 90 seconds from beating Utah on the road Wednesday night when this happened:

Garnet Hathaway is beyond cooked. pic.twitter.com/B1Wtn1c3NU

— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) January 22, 2026

Utah scored and went on to win in overtime. It was incredible, like being woken up from your sleep with someone dumping a bucket of water on your face. The Flyers were less than two minutes away from securing back-to-back road wins against Vegas and Utah, coming off a six-game losing streak no-less, and they found a way to turn two points into one as they head to Colorado on Friday.

The sequence is a microcosm of Hathaway’s season. He’s been good for 18-20 points a year going all the way back to his Calgary days, but he’s got one goal in 43 games this season and zero assists and just can’t seem to get anything going at all. It’s really strange. Can’t even get a deflection or a rebound to go. Now he gets a breakaway opportunity and should probably just slide that puck in from the blue line, but he takes a couple of extra strides and loses it on what is undeniably a great defensive hustle play.

“That’s unacceptable what happened,” Rick Tocchet said after the game. “There’s really not much to say. We sunk in pressure situations, something we gotta get out of this team. You gotta rise to the occasion, you gotta want to be out there in pressure situations and a couple of guys sunk in certain situations. That’s the bottom line. We’re gonna have to recover from it.”

It’s crazy how fine these margins are. The Flyers were a split-second from basically erasing the losing streak and pulling everybody back onto the bandwagon. That last Wild Card spot in the east is gonna be a dogfight and they need every point they can get through a difficult part of the schedule.