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Flyers Twitter in a Huff After Sean Couturier Said Some Things About Matvei Michkov
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The Flyers lost 3-2 to the Senators in overtime on Saturday afternoon. After the game, this Sean Couturier quote regarding teammate Matvei Michkov made the rounds:
“He’s a great goal scorer and has a lot of skill. I think you just gotta find a way to contribute to helping the team win in other ways when you’re struggling. You’re not always going to be scoring in every game. I’ve seen improvement in the way he’s not cheating as much, and being on the right side of pucks. I’m sure it’s a little different for him, but if he sticks to playing more of the right way, I think it’s going to be better for the team overall…. I think you can tell, tonight he was trying to make a lot of plays with the puck, holding on to the puck, but yeah I think he’s definitely feeling good about himself.”
If you’re not a diehard orange and black supporter, the CliffsNotes here is that there’s been some grumbling about Michkov’s early-season performance. He was slow out of the gates and hasn’t looked to be in the best condition. He apparently came in with an ankle injury, and told reporters after Saturday’s game that he took four months off from hockey, which affected his offseason training. Some fans and media are choosing to accept this at face value, while others surmise that he’s lazy and/or doesn’t care.
It’s created two basic factions. One one side is the fan that thinks Michkov just wants to score goals and cheat without doing any of the dirty work. He doesn’t want to defend or backcheck. They point out quotes like the one above, from Couturier, and look for little clues here and there to support the theory. One of those was a Michigan attempt at practice in which Michkov’s stick got Dan Vladar in the helmet:
There was similarly INTENSE investigation of a sequence from overtime and whether or not Coots was shaking his head at Michkov after an offside entry:
The other faction is fans and media who will remind you that the kid is 20 years old and playing his second NHL season. They’ll point out the natural talent and the need to nurture and cultivate that talent and find a way for it to exist within the system instead of turning him into a 200-foot, blue-collar grinder, which defeats the purpose of having a skill player on the team in the first place. This is a continuation of the discussions we had when he was playing his rookie season for Torts in 2024.
The third thing here is the Coots quote itself, and whether or not that should stay in house. It wasn’t totally incendiary, not exactly Brandon Graham going to Chickie’s and Pete’s to pour gasoline on the Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown topic. Coots is the captain and a tenured NHL veteran, so if anyone’s justified in calling out a young player publicly, he’s one of the few. Probably Coots (a Selke winner), Rick Tocchet, and Travis Konecny. If it comes from anyone else, it doesn’t mean much.
I also think that Flyers fans have had very little to talk about over the past several years, so you get a piece of drama to work with here and it’s amplified tenfold, like 94 WIP levels of “what’s your concern?” going on here. Maybe the Flyers fan and ecosystem has been starved for so long that they’re fed a morsel here and they turn it into an Eagles-esque drama.
Maybe this something, maybe it’s not!
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com