Our preview asked whether Utah could hold the NHL's lowest-scoring team under three goals. It couldn't. We picked Utah 5, Philadelphia 3, and said the pick was dead if the Flyers got to five. They had five on Karel Vejmelka before Cole Knuble's empty-netter made it 6-3. We also said the likeliest way to five was a big Flyers power-play night, and we missed that too. Philadelphia went 0-for-2 on the power play, and all five goals Vejmelka allowed came at five-on-five.
A 6-3 loss to a team that came in 3-8-4 looks like a team that didn't show up, and that's how a lot of Utah fans took it. One wrote on X during the second period that it "Looks like the mammoth are playing hockey at the bottom of a lake." We read the play-by-play differently, and we find it more worrying: Utah lost this game in 12 minutes. In the first six minutes of the second period and the first six of the third, Philadelphia scored four goals on five shots on goal. Over the other 48 minutes, Utah out-attempted the Flyers 46-36, outshot them 19-16 and outscored them 3-2, counting the empty-netter.
Those 48 minutes come with an asterisk. Utah trailed for most of them, and trailing teams shoot more: after Oliver Bonk made it 5-1, Utah out-attempted Philadelphia 13-5. The rest of the second period also went to the Flyers, 14-9 in attempts and 7-3 in shots on goal while they sat on a 3-1 lead. Rick Tocchet saw the same thing from his bench. "Second was one of our better periods," the Flyers coach said, per NHL.com. "We checked really well, we were above them, came up with some loose pucks." Utah didn't carry this game. It lost it in two short stretches right out of the intermissions, and the coach and the players explained each one differently.
Twelve good minutes, then a giveaway
Before Matvei Michkov's opener at 12:49, Utah out-attempted Philadelphia 22-9 and outshot it 8-5. It had one power play in that time, and Dan Vladar stopped the two shots it put on goal. Michkov's goal, his 10th of the season, came from about nine feet, six seconds after the play-by-play logs a giveaway by Nate Schmidt on a clearing attempt.
Dmitri Simashev answered 95 seconds later. Vincent Trocheck lifted a backhand from center ice that took an odd bounce in the slot, by NHL.com's account, and Simashev skated onto it and scored from about 18 feet, his third goal in four games and his first on the road. It was 1-1 after one, with Utah ahead 9-7 in shots.
Two bounces, then a bad reaction
The four goals, in order:
- Second period, 1:06. Travis Konecny, back from a 10-game injury absence, scored his first goal of the season on a backhand from about eight feet, from the side of the net. NHL.com says it went in off Artem Duda's skate.
- Second period, 5:50. Noah Cates scored from about 39 feet, a snap shot that went in off Mikhail Sergachev's stick, per NHL.com.
- Third period, 1:02. Christian Dvorak, from about 21 feet, set up by Konecny.
- Third period, 5:35. Bonk, a slap shot from about 42 feet.
The only other Flyers shot on goal in those 12 minutes was Knuble's, at 4:58 of the third, which Vejmelka stopped. Utah had nine attempts and three shots on goal over the same stretches. The second-period run started with two goals off Utah players. What bothered Andre Tourigny was what came after. He said, per NHL.com, that "in the second period when things did not go our way, I didn't like the way we reacted. We did not keep our composure, and we didn't defend with the same pace, the same drive that we had early in the game." Sergachev put the third-period goals on the team: "And third period we start cheating, leaving the zone, and exposing ourselves and giving up two unnecessary goals we shouldn't have given up," he said, also per NHL.com.
The third period doesn't look like a team that didn't show up, either. Down 3-1, by Sergachev's account, Utah's skaters left the zone early looking for offense, and Philadelphia scored twice in the first 5:35. We'd call that a team pressing to get the game back, and a coaching staff can fix pressing faster than it can fix effort.
The top line, more than the goalie
The shift charts show who was on the ice. Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz and Dylan Guenther were on for Cates, Dvorak and Bonk, three of the four. At five-on-five Keller was on for three Flyers goals and none of Utah's. Keller and Guenther finished minus-4 and Schmaltz minus-3, and Keller and Schmaltz are both minus-9 for the season. Duda, in his second NHL game, was on for Konecny, Cates and Bonk. In the r/Utah_Hockey postgame thread, one fan put it this way: "It's not goaltending as much as it is the first line leaving both goalies out to dry."
That doesn't clear Vejmelka. He stopped 15 of 20, a .750 save percentage, and 12 of 17 at even strength. Bonk's shot from 42 feet is one he needs to stop. His season save percentage drops to .868 (244 of 281, by the shots and goals the NHL lists), though the Sebastian Cossa fans on X should know Cossa's is .855 (71 of 83).
Brogan Houston of the Deseret News split it the way we would: "With five goals against on just 20 shots, Vejmelka wasn't good enough either, but the lack of support from his teammates was the bigger issue." He also wrote that "Time and time again, they left orange jerseys open in the slot." Our count puts the problem in the finishing more than the volume: Philadelphia had eight shots on goal from inside 25 feet all game, one fewer than Utah, and three of the eight went in.
Sergachev had a fix for the composure part, in a clip posted by the team's PR account: "If we're not executing we just got to take a breather during the period and just say, 'Relax, we're good.' We have a skilled team. We can make a lot of plays." Both collapses started right after an intermission, which is the one breather the schedule already gives them.
The power play showed up at 5-1
Utah came in with the league's best power play, and for three tries it didn't look like it. Its first three power plays (two in the first period, then Simon Benoit's trip on Jack McBain at 8:22 of the third) produced eight attempts, three shots on goal and nothing on the scoreboard. Then Sean Couturier and Cates went to the box, and Utah scored on both. Sergachev scored from about 57 feet, 61 seconds into Couturier's hooking minor, which Keller drew. Logan Cooley scored from about 10 feet, six-on-four with Vejmelka pulled, 41 seconds after Cates tripped Barrett Hayton. That made Utah 2-for-5 on the night and the kill 2-for-2. Keller and Schmaltz had the assists on both.
Cooley has eight goals in his last eight games, and seven of them came in his last four road games. Benoit hit him three times in the third period, and after the last one, at 11:51, Lawson Crouse fought him. Crouse's extra roughing minor gave Philadelphia its second power play, which Utah killed. We liked the answer, though it came at 5-1.
What it changes
Utah is 9-6-0 with 18 points, second in the Central on points: five behind Minnesota, which has played a game more, and a point ahead of Colorado and Dallas, who each have a game in hand. It has now allowed three or more goals in seven straight games and is 0-4-0 when it allows five or more. It was also the Flyers' first win over Utah in five all-time meetings, after Utah won the first four, two of them in overtime. Utah still hasn't lost two in a row this season, and the Deseret News says it's the last team in the league that can say so.
Next is Toronto on Tuesday at 5:00 PM MT, game three of six on the road (schedule). Whoever starts in goal, the question we'll take into it is whether the Keller line can get through the first six minutes of a period without a puck in its own net.
Tusks up.
Sources: NHL box score, play-by-play, shift charts, standings, club stats and player game logs. Shot attempts and shots by period, window and strength, each power play's attempts, shot distances (approximate, from the NHL's coordinates) and who was on the ice for each goal are our counts from the NHL's data. Adam Kimelman, NHL.com game recap (Tocchet, Tourigny and Sergachev quotes; how the Simashev, Konecny and Cates goals went in); Brogan Houston, Deseret News; Catherine Bogart, Mammoth game story; Mikhail Sergachev, via the Utah Mammoth PR account; Andrew McGuinness, The Hockey Writers. Fan posts from X during the game and the r/Utah_Hockey postgame thread. Our preview and Penguins recap.