Flyers

Sounds Like Matvei Michkov Wants to Play on the Right Wing

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Feb 25th, 2026 · 11:39 AM EST

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The Flyers made Matvei Michkov available to the beats on Tuesday. First time in a long time. It was a good window to do it because the team is coming back from the Olympic break and the temperature in the room has been lowered after a few weeks off following Danny Briere’s media scrum to settle things down.

I thought this was the quote that stood out the most:

Asked #Flyers forward Matvei Michkov about the adjustment to playing LW after playing RW most of career:

"I’m always playing [on] the right, I was always happy. Now I’m playing on the left [and] it’s a new role."

Full quote⬇️ pic.twitter.com/UcoDDDxvmC

— Jackie Spiegel (@jackiespiegel93) February 24, 2026

Yeah. I dunno man. More than anything about his conditioning, or diet, or whatever, the guy is used to playing on the right and now he’s on the left. He is a left-handed player, so in his rookie season under Torts he made a living cutting inside, working towards the high slot, late-arriving backdoor stuff at the net, things like that. He’s looked like he’s learning an entirely new game playing on the other side of the ice. It just felt like he was so much more influential and able to create more from the right, to be more of a playmaker from those starting points.

Couple of other notes:

• he feels good for the home stretch, says he was training twice a day during his Dominican getaway, one session in the gym and then conditioning and stamina for the second session, he did that for 7 days
• he called it a standard relationship with Rick Tocchet and that everybody has the same goal to win
• 100% is how he’s feeling on the ice, feeling “light” and feeling that everything is going to be good
• summer break was too long and it was hard to get things going at the start of the season after four months off, “you have to concentrate on hockey all the time and can’t take even a month’s break”
• he’ll play as much time as he’s given and he has to do his job, that’s what he cares about. he’ll do what the coach asks him to do

Here’s the full thing. The wing question is around 7:47 and look at the body language: