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I Find it Hard to Believe that Matvei Michkov is So Fat and Useless and Defensively Irresponsible that He Can’t Even Get off the Bench in Overtime
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Jordan Hall at NBC Sports Philadelphia wrote this on Saturday, before the Flyers played two overtime games on back-to-back nights against the Carolina Hurricanes:
Matvei Michkov didn’t see the ice in overtime of the Flyers’ 3-2 loss Thursday night to the Golden Knights.
Travis Konecny had a turnover that led to Mark Stone’s game-winning goal with 2:13 minutes left in the five-minute OT. With 3:46 minutes left, Noah Cates won an offensive-zone draw. The Flyers eventually lost possession before regaining it later in the defensive zone.
Nine skaters had a shift in overtime for the Flyers. Rick Tocchet said Michkov’s turn was coming up had the Flyers not committed a turnover.
“We’re trying to get possession, so usually you try to get the two centermen, but he was actually going to be up on the run, the next guy,” the Flyers’ head coach said Saturday after morning skate. “Unfortunately, couldn’t get to him in time. But, yeah, he’s in the mix.”
He is “in the mix” but didn’t see the ice in overtime on Sunday night, though there was a fugazi penalty against Bobby Brink that kind of threw the period out of whack. That was after an OT period on Saturday night in which Michkov was out there for one shift, lowlighted by Owen Tippett being unable to handle a pass that went into his skates and resulted in a loss of possession. There were multiple shifts on both nights for the usual suspects, like Coots, TK, and Trevor Zegras.
Michkov, who had three OT game winners last season under John Tortorella, isn’t even in the top 10 of Flyers players in OT ice time this season.
If you watch the games and listen to the coach, you know the Flyers are playing not to concede in overtime, and Rick Tocchet has talked at length about “culture” and playing the right way and all of that typical old school hockey guy stuff. Likewise, the beats will tell you that Michkov remains out of shape and he’s not out there in 3v3 because he’s going to be exposed as any combination of slow, fat, and/or defensively irresponsible.
For the sake of the blog post, let’s accept that being true, then ask two questions:
1) What has the staff been doing with Michkov this entire season? If he came in out of shape and was dealing with an ankle injury, okay. But that was months ago. We’re midway through December and Michkov is still getting about 14:30 of ice time on average. These are pro athletes with nothing else to do. They don’t have full time jobs and daily responsibilities like we do. You’ve got the world’s best trainers to get this guy fit and ready to play. We’re a bunch of washed 40-year-olds sitting at home and if our only responsibility was to work on our fitness with the assistance of pro sports recovery and regeneration, we’d have our cardio at top shape in two months, easily.
2) If Michkov isn’t a Tocchet guy, and commits too many penalties or doesn’t skate hard enough or doesn’t play a two-way game, then what really is the end game here? You hired a coach whose approach doesn’t interface with the top young talent that the fan base is excited about (maybe before Zegras showed up). Is the Flyers’ future 200-foot grinders, or is it some flair and offensive skill while doing your best to mask the limitations on the other side?
Admittedly, I’m a hockey casual, but from a generic standpoint, Rick Tocchet seems to be coaching Michkov the way we were afraid Torts was going to coach him. It’s an extension of the same argument we had in 2024 when we were asking if young players should hit the bench after making mistakes, or be given the opportunity to play through those mistakes and learn from them. An ages-old question in every sport.
Or, maybe we just take this at face value and accept the learning curve for Matty Ice, a come-to-Jesus moment in understanding what’s required of you as a professional athlete. One step backward in order to take two steps forward. Either way, the good thing is that we’ve got a long break coming up here in two more months and the only thing he’ll have to do during the Olympics is skate back and forth until he’s got the lungs for 400 minutes of ice time on any given night.
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