Flyers

We’d All Benefit from a Touching of Grass and a Temperature Drop When it Comes to the Irksome Matvei Michkov Discourse

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 11th, 2026 · 1:14 PM EDT

---

I went into our photo service before writing this post, to look for pictures of Matvei Michkov. The most recent one is from the Penguins series, which is somewhat apropos I guess since the Flyers’ second-year winger was mostly invisible in the Hurricanes series. He had some nice moments in Game 2, but was healthy scratched in Game 4 and logged about 36 minutes total ice time in the series.

Naturally, it added some more fuel to the speculation fire, since his season ended on the quietest of notes. He was scratched twice in the postseason and mostly failed to impact the game when he did play, which was a 180 from the solid regular season hockey he showed everyone after the Olympic break.

That means Michkov is probably the biggest offseason storyline, and Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas spent a while talking about it on the lasted 32 Thoughts podcast. Here are some bulletpoint takeaways and quotes from Friedman:

• “Everything that’s going on with Michkov now is a wild social media debate, so I look at this way – they could really benefit from a temperature turndown. The season’s over, relax, this goes in the background for a little bit, and they try to sort things out. Moments like this, I always think about Jay Feaster. And the reason I think about Jay Feaster is because was the guy, when John Tortorella and Vincent Lecavalier weren’t getting along, said ‘you guys are going to have to figure this out, I’m not firing the coach, I’m not trading the player, you guys have to figure this out.'”
• it’s very “obvious” that there is an internal problem
• easier to “solve the problem than trade the problem” in this current NHL, thinks Michkov is “way to young to give up on” unless there’s something deep going on
• if you trade, you’re dealing from a low-leverage position of weakness
• it was pointed out that the optics of losing Cutter Gauthier makes it hard to let two players like that go in a short amount of time (I agree)
• he would tell Michkov straight up that he’s not going to be traded, “unless somebody brings me something that says, ‘you have to trade this guy’“
• staying in Philadelphia for the offseason would make the most sense
• Michkov’s representation needs to be involved in helping out and making this work

Good assessment. Fair. The Michkov temperature has been hovering around 9,000 degrees and we need to lower it to 54 degrees with partly-cloud skies and some rain, like the last three weeks of Pennsylvania and New Jersey weather. Rick Tocchet needs a break. Michkov needs a break, and numerous rabble-rousers should log off of Twitter and go outside and touch grass. Then the player and the head coach and front office revisit this thing in a month and sit down and hash out an offseason plan that everyone agrees on. Then Michkov comes into camp in the best shape of his life and we see how he does in Tocchet’s system in 2026-2027, and if it just isn’t going to work out, then you make the trade. But you don’t do it unless you really have to. You don’t give up on talented offensive players until you’re sure it’s not gonna work.

But for now – golf and relaxation.