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Matvei Michkov, or Whoever is Controlling his Instagram Account, Likes a Couple of Posts Highlighting His Low Ice Time
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Michkov wiped his Instagram about a month ago, when the Flyers were winless in their first seven games. The account was set to private or whatever and no longer had any pictures on it. It’s possible that someone else is in control of the account, and someone from his camp liked the posts. That happens in MMA all the time. There are tweets like, “I’m gonna kick your ass! Let’s fight next month,” and it ends up being the guy’s manager tweeting on his behalf. But of course it’s plausible that Michkov himself is liking these Instagram posts. It’s possible he’s sort of lurking but not posting anything to his page.
The posts, by the way, highlight his low ice time. He leads the Flyers with 10 goals but is only averaging 15:53 per game. That’s less than TK and Coots and Tyson Foerster. Sure, it’s hard to compare center and wing time straight up, and the penalty killers have to go out there way too often each night, but as we mentioned in the Friday morning blog, Michkov has the least ice time on average of every single NHL player who has at least 10 goals this season:
It’s true that Michkov does have some tap-ins and backdoor clean-up type of goals, but those count the same as anything. The Flyers struggle so much to score and have so little offensive talent that you can’t really nitpick or put an asterisk on how they score. You have to take the goals wherever you can get them at this point.
Now, to address this tweet:
Andrew’s point is fine, but nobody is missing the bigger picture. This has been a thing in sports since the dawn of creation. We’ve known this about Michkov since he got here. Every coach has to figure out the best way to use a talented attacking player who doesn’t defend well, doesn’t particularly care to defend, and/or wants the puck or the ball more than the other players. Keyshawn Johnson once famously said, “just give me the damn ball.” Every NBA team has a skilled shooter who might be a liability on the other side of the floor, for instance.
So what do you do with a guy like that? Do you try to turn Michkov into a 200-foot player? Do you ask him to back check and muck and grind and become the Russian Coots? Or do you deviate from the “everybody plays the right way” mentality and try to maximize innate offensive talent?
Keep in mind, the Flyers can’t score. Michkov is one of the few guys who can do it, or even create a chance. Asking Michkov to fall into a boring team role is like asking Lionel Messi to come back and defend in a 4-4-2 low block. Not that Michkov is the hockey Messi, not even close, but the point of the comparison is that players need to be utilized in a way that highlights their strengths and masks their weaknesses. Otherwise it’s square peg / round hole stuff. If every Flyers player does things “the right way” and gets off the ice at the right time and is defensively responsible, then congratulations, you have 20 clones out there. And you probably aren’t winning anything meaningful.
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