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Loophole: Matvei Michkov Earns Overtime Shift by Taking a Penalty at the End of Regulation
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The Flyers got a badly-needed 3-2 win against the horrific New York Rangers inside of MSG on Thursday night.
Scoring the game winner was Matvei Michkov, who took an interference penalty with less than a minute left in regulation, which allowed him to get onto the ice in OT:
It wasn’t some horrible penalty either. He drove the puck to the net and ran into Igor Shesterkin and the refs blew the whistle. Michkov took an outlet pass on the right wing, dangled past Adam Fox, then just lost control and ran out of room while trying to get back to his forehand.
Funny enough, there was a little bit of that up-ice cheating going on during both sequences. First one, he’s looking for some room to break out before the interference penalty. The OT winner, he’s out of the box and out in transition and gets a tired JT Miller backtracking. Even the first goal he scored, on the power play, he’s making himself available on the back post to receive a great pass from Noah Cates.
It feels like Michkov’s game is always going to include opportunism. You can’t turn every player into a 200-foot grinder and Selke candidate. If you find the right balance of creativity, risk taking, and defensive responsibility, then that’s probably the way to go. Maybe the coaches and the player himself can meet in the middle and find the best way to blend it together. And that’s not even a hockey-specific thing. In every sport across the entire world you’ve got offensively-talented players who can make things happen, and you’re trying to use those guys to their best ability while masking their defensive weaknesses or working to correct their two-way deficiencies (see: Simmons, Ben).
Unless it’s Lionel Messi, who is allowed to just walk around and wait for his 10 teammates to win the ball back.
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