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Guy Who Worked for Rick Tocchet Breaks Down Matvei Michkov Film
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This is good from Steve Peters, who worked with Rick Tocchet as the Coyotes’ video guy:
Michkov has defensive holes in his game. Not exactly a revelation, since he’s a young player and offensive minded. The tape showed him doing a lot of this same stuff when he was in the KHL, so it’s not like the Flyers didn’t know what they were getting when they drafted him. He didn’t become a different player overnight when he arrived early in Philadelphia.
There are plenty of players who cheat out of the defensive zone in the NHL. Ovie used to just float around entirely. Pavel Bure, Nikita Kucherov, Patrick Kane, etc. Michkov is 21 and currently half the player those guys are or were, but it’s really about finding the proper balance here. How do you improve Michkov’s defensive ability without compromising his offensive quality? It would be malpractice to turn the guy into a 200-foot grinder. Those players can be found and developed with relative ease compared to landing goal scorers who we think can be generational.
Torts just seemed to “get” this and nurture it better than Rick Tocchet is currently doing. For all the talk about coming into camp out of shape, and sophomore slumps, and nutrition and schedule and all of that, this is a prime opportunity during a rebuild to get this guy as many minutes and reps as possible. Let him play his way through his mistakes and learn on the go. Let’s make it count now, because the Flyers ain’t winning the Cup this year.
Here’s the full video. It’s worth 20 mins:
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