Good pull here from Flyers Nation:

“Stupid is the right word maybe? …risky? Yeah I guess that. There’s a time and place for that. We saw it last game where there was a chance to pass to (Travis) Konecny right in the middle of the slot, he’s trying to do his fancy move, that one, if he goes around the net, he can bump pass to the defenseman, point shot, guys head to the net. Instead of feeding your teammates it’s like ‘oh look at me I can do this at full speed.'”

It’s a bit of a boomer take, but I can see both sides of the argument. On one hand, it’s 1-0, third period, a tight game up in Boston. You’re trying to get on track and “win a hockey game,” as Torts would say. So if the higher percentage play is to look for a teammate, then look for the teammate.

Counterpoint:

We’ve seen Michkov pick out teammates a bunch this year, and they’re not up to the task. He’ll feed guys who can’t finish or make the next pass, and you see their level of puck moving and puck handling isn’t close to Michkov’s level. So does that mean you stop trying? It shouldn’t. Maybe there’s some frustration on his part, maybe not, but we’ve all seen the same thing out there. If teammates could put his playmaking to use, maybe he’d keep feeding them instead of trying difficult stuff.


It really depends on how you frame this season. If you think it’s another rebuilding year, and that wins and losses don’t matter, then yeah, go out there and try shit. Be creative. Take some risks and attempt things that are hard. Michkov has the rest of his career to pull back and play a more conservative game if he wants or needs to. They’ll rein him in if it’s really necessary. But I don’t get the sense that he’s selfish or pressing or trying too hard to be the guy. I think you’re just watching a skilled rookie try to do some spectacular things, and you gotta kind of let these types of rare players figure it out on their own. If it gets to be a real problem, it’ll be addressed.

It’s not like Michkov is Trent Dilfer. He’s not out there managing a game. And from Hartsy’s perspective, he scored what, like 75% of his Flyers goals standing directly on top of the goaltender? So of course he’s gonna think that throwing the puck out front is the better option. We’re talking about a guy who once torpedoed the net and scored a playoff goal. The running joke back then was that Hartnell would fall down after every goal. Now it looks like we might have a super skilled guy, so let the super skilled guy show some flashes. If we need to junk it up and play 2013 Flyers hockey, we can do it later.