Can the Differences Between Michkov and Rotenberg Be Reconciled?
Matvei Michkov spent SKA’s first two regular season games on the bench. When he makes his way into the lineup, it will doubtlessly be as the 13th forward and ice-time will be far from a certainty. SKA head-poohbah (he takes all the titles, because he thinks he’s playing franchise mode IRL) said that Michkov will “need to earn his ice time” when asked about the situation.
By any objective measure, Michkov already has earned his ice time. His point a game performance in the preseason games where he actually played should have made the point. If that wasn’t enough, his performance with Sochi last season–again–should have proved he was ready for a top role in any KHL lineup.
Michkov’s scoring rate of 0.74 points per game with Sochi would have ranked 4th among all SKA forwards. Now, consider the differences in environment between Sochi and SKA. Michkov’s support was so limited that every prospect prognosticator on the internet thought going there was a double-edged sword where he’d get ice time but flounder in the process.
Yet Michkov didn’t flounder. He instantly cemented himself as the best player on their team. He asserted himself as “the guy.” He became his team’s primary offensive engine, and his team’s winning percentage practically doubled when he took the reigns. The highlight among those wins? Sochi’s defeat of SKA by a 3-2 score where Michkov had a goal and an assist.
Now, honestly ask yourself: could all 3 of the players ahead of him produce at the same rate with Sochi? Could all 3 of them have become for Sochi what Matvei did with such resounding success? I highly doubt it.
That makes Michkov one of SKA’s best 4 forwards, and it’s unlikely that he’s 4th. Like I said, by any objective measure, he has more than earned his spot.
But it isn’t objective measures that Rotenberg is using. It’s subjective measures, and he’s been using them for quite some time now.
In some way that isn’t objectively measured, Rotenberg believes that Michkov’s game is inadequate. He wants change. Michkov is a strong-willed, highly intelligent player who has already formed well-founded opinions on how he should play the game. He won’t change easily.
Maybe this fight started last year. Not this year?
Rewind back to September of 2022, and Michkov was poised to become a full time contributor with SKA even then. His preseason knee injury–the result of a questionable hit by Alex Emelin–delayed what seemed to be his right.
When Michkov was healthy enough to enter the lineup, he did so as the 13th forward and received a ghastly low amount of ice time. I am relatively certain he played 6 minutes between the 3 games. Suffice it to say: he didn’t play. At all. For 3 games, he simply did not play despite being listed in the lineup.
Back then, Michkov was not as established as he is now. But there was still plenty of reason to believe he was ready for a spot. In his D-1 season, his MHL production was off the charts. He put up approximately 1.5 points per game, but actually played at a level closer to 2 points per game for the majority of the season. A month long stretch with a drastically low shooting percentage in which he “only” scored a point per game dragged down his season totals.
More impressively, however, Michkov had already played 15 games with SKA by then and totaled 5 points for 0.33 points per game. That kind of production was roughly equivalent to what Evgeni Malkin did in his draft year for the KHL, and this was his D-1 season.
It seemed like a permanent promotion to the KHL was predestined.
Instead, Rotenberg decided that his game was insufficient.
“Michkov has already scored in the KHL.”
“Michkov has the best scoring instinct in the world.”
Rotenberg isn’t going to dare question what you can show him on the most basic stat page, but he still has problems with his game. Everyone leapt to the defensive side of the equation, but that isn’t exactly what Rotenberg said. He didn’t just say defense. He was equally concerned about the offensive and neutral zones. Then pulled the classic coach cop-out of “little details.”
Coaches of all sorts don’t love defining little details. But they assure you that they’re there, so go away and stop questioning their decision. That never sits well with me. So, we’re going to visit the tape.
What “little details” in Michkov’s game does Rotenberg take issue with?
First, my disclaimer:
Roman Rotenberg has very little standing to argue hockey with Matvei Michkov. He is a coach who got installed into SKA based on his father’s relationship with Vladimir Putin. He’s the son of an oligarch who has never been told no his entire life. He thinks he knows more than he does, because that is his nature in all things. Not just hockey.
He’s punching above his weight class by trying to argue about how to read the game of hockey with one of the smartest prospects the sport has ever seen.
That said, an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy and is not actually the backbone of an effective argument. So I’m not going to comment on that beyond here.
I’m stating the odds up front: chances are, Michkov is right! But every argument that Rotenberg makes will henceforth be treated with equal weight to everyone else’s.
Rush vs. Forecheck Prevalence
I suspect that this is the most reconcilable facet of the clash between Michkov and Rotenberg. It’s largely a question of preference, but the thing is: both men are equally set in their preferences.
Matvei Michkov is a rush creator first and foremost. If he can’t skate the puck down the ice himself, then he’ll extend the play with the puck on his stick and build a complex passing pattern with his teammates to create a synergized rush attack.
It’s one of his superpowers offensively. He’s always ready to attack downhill. He’s always ready to create the most dangerous kind of offense in hockey: rush offense. He doesn’t have the speed of MacKinnon or McDavid, but through savvy and his supernatural mind for the game, he still manages to be an elite rush creator.
Roman Rotenberg is not a fan of rush offense. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s opposed to scoring off the rush. I’m saying that he much prefers a dump and chase format. The turnovers that come from puck plays at the blueline drive him up a wall, and he believes a strong forecheck can create just as much offense as a savvy rush attack with fewer turnovers.
Rotenberg would prefer that Michkov’s first read be to dump the puck in and attempt to recover it on the forecheck when he’s presented with defenders at the line.
Michkov’s first read is to beat the defense at the line. He doesn’t surrender the opportunity to create rush offense until he absolutely has to. He’s the equivalent of a quarterback who will hold the ball as long as possible to attempt to make a play, willing to accept that he may eat a sack or two in the process.
This argument came to a head when Michkov was sent to the VHL, ostensibly for development opportunities. He was still under SKA’s supervision, and my guess, was still asked to play the game how Rotenberg wished him to play it.
He stopped playing on the rush. Take a look at the tracked microstats below. The first thing you should look at: “Controlled entry %”.
That number represents the amount of times Michkov opted for a controlled entry attempt over a dump-in. The number is expressed with a red line where the center point is the average for every prospect in the data pool. Michkov fell way below average in controlled entries. He essentially surrendered the puck every time he encountered pressure in the neutral zone.
He was an above average forechecker in this environment, retrieving a solid amount of pucks per 60 minutes. Especially given that he was playing against men.
Michkov’s controlled exits remained high, and that tells me that his preseason injury was not a major contributing factor in these numbers. He still had the legs and the skills to exit the defensive zone with possession. He just didn’t even attempt to gain the offensive blueline with control.
Increasingly, this has become a popular part of modern forechecking philosophies. Exiting the defensive zone with control makes it easier to build speed when heading into a forechecking sequence.
Teams like the Maple Leafs and Hurricanes can’t get enough puck moving defensemen in their life, and this is part of the reason why. Controlled exits means more fruitful forechecking.
Rotenberg seems much more enamored with the Hurricanes than the Maple Leafs, though. The Maple Leafs’ successful forechecking sequences tend to lead to elaborate in-zone passing plays. The Hurricanes play a much simpler game. Only make the obvious passes and fire pucks at will.
Michkov played to SKA’s wishes in the VHL. He had an almost average amount of shot assists despite rarely ever sending pucks into the slot, which typically means he was throwing a lot of pucks up to the point.
That being intentional is obvious by Michkov’s slot pass accuracy. It’s remarkably high. Therefore, Michkov was intentionally only sending pucks to the slot when he was certain that he could complete the pass.
I’m going to touch on “first reads” a lot in this analysis. It’s important, because coaching absolutely plays a role in what the first reads of his players are. When left to their own devices, their first read could be something entirely different.
By “first read,” I simply mean the action that they’re most likely to default to. When the circumstances are neutral and both decisions are acceptable on their face, what choice does the player make? That’s a first read. A decision that’s made in the absence of extraneous factors.
Michkov’s first read is to play on the rush in the neutral zone. He wants to carry the puck, or he wants to pass the puck to a teammate better equipped to carry in that situation than he is. He insists on playing with possession unless that’s impossible. In the offensive zone, he’s always looking for ways to crack open the slot for either himself or his teammates. He’s willing to tolerate a few misses in exchange for all of the scoring chances that he creates which others can’t.
Rotenberg wants Michkov’s first read to be “managing” the puck, which means dumping it unless the play is obvious and unlikely to be challenged. He’s not willing to tolerate a few misses in exchange for the extra plays that he makes. He believes in a volume above all approach.
The thing is: Rotenberg isn’t per-se wrong in how he wants hockey to be played. NHL teams do play this style to success. The foremost example is the Carolina Hurricanes. My guess is Michkov would say something similar. He can see where that style of hockey would benefit certain players.
But it wouldn’t benefit him.
Matvei Michkov is a precision instrument, not a blunt force object. He’s a fluid, agile skater with incredible puck skills and an ability to read the game that borders on supernatural. These are his gifts.
He’s designed a game for himself to maximize those gifts. He attempts more plays than everyone else, because he has the skills and guile to make more plays than everyone else. He never gives up on a play, whether that means dangling through defenders in the neutral zone or protecting the puck down low until his preferred slot pass opens up.
For many players, that’s inefficient. It sounds awesome. Everyone likes to pretend that “they could do all that fancy stuff too if they weren’t such dedicated 200 foot players,” but they’re all full of shit.
Anze Kopitar is a great player, but he could never be Patrick Kane. And vice versa. We’re dealing with different skill stacks, and not necessarily a superior or inferior one.
Rotenberg isn’t wrong when he assumes that most players can’t play the way that Michkov wants to play. He’s right to think that he shouldn’t coach players to do these things. That said, he still has to allow players to be who they are.
Matvei Michkov is a play maker. A play hunter, even. Always in pursuit of the next game breaking moment.
What Rotenberg gets wrong is thinking that players like Matvei Michkov don’t feature as important parts of a winning hockey team.
Patrick Kane and Nikita Kucherov have 5 rings between them, and they both see hockey the same way Michkov does.
I kept it to players who share Michkov’s physical skills as well as philosophy of play. If I opened it up to everyone to who thinks like Michkov, I’d have to include Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon and Alex Ovechkin.
Those guys have another 5 rings between them.
Wayne Gretzky played in a totally separate era, but played with a very similar philosophy. That’s another six things.
Everyone in the NHL wants to think they have the skills to pull this off. Most of the time, they’re wrong. But we’re not even talking about the NHL yet with Michkov yet. We’re talking about the KHL, and Rotenberg himself agrees that Michkov is an anomaly of offensive talent.
“Best scoring instincts in the world.”
Well, coach/GM/owner/grand emperor… maybe trust him to use those instincts?
Violence vs. “Get the puck”
It’s not as if Michkov never finds himself in forechecking sequences. They’re a natural part of the game, so he finds himself forechecking frequently. Left to his own devices, many of his forechecks would start as the result of a failed controlled play rather than an overt choice.
But it isn’t just the frequency of Michkov’s forechecking sequences that bothers Rotenberg. It’s the way in which he applies himself in these forechecking sequences. Here, too, we see two divergent philosophies between coach and player.
Rotenberg believes in a style of forecheck that doubles as intimidation tactics. Frankly, I’m relatively certain that actually recovering the puck is a secondary concern to him. The primary concern to him seems to be hitting people behind the boards and “imposing yourself physically.”
This is not a new philosophy in the hockey world, and in fact, it’s more of a Canadian tenet than a traditionally Russian one. Rotenberg believes that turnovers will come as a product of scaring the shit out of the puck carrier.
Michkov, however, sees the battle between forechecker and puck carrier much like he sees everything else in hockey: a chess match. He engages mentally, limiting the carrier’s options and reading his decisions until he’s forced to turn the puck over simply by having no other choice.
This is how Michkov forechecks. It’s a game of anticipation and of understanding angles. He knows the forechecker is going to avoid his F1 teammate and circle beyond the net.
As the F2 in this situation, he’s going to pressure but only in a controlled manner. He sets the angle early, making sure that the puck carrier is going to skate right into him if he continues on his track. That forces the carrier to slow down and scan for options.
Less methodical operators would bum rush the carrier now, hoping that hesitation is enough of a window to flatten him with a big hit. Or, they’d have gone for the hit immediately in the sequence instead of setting the initial angle.
Michkov sees both as offering the defenseman an out. If he commits to a track by bum rushing for a hit, he’s leaving himself exposed to a simple spin move or cutback. He sees that zealous pursuit of pointless violence as bailing out the defender from having to actually beat him in the chess match.
So he approaches slowly. Fast enough that the game is speed chess, but slow enough so that both players have time to think.
The carrier has two outlets. The first one was circling right in Michkov’s air space. Michkov removes him as an option by putting himself between the puck and the receiver and eliminating the passing lane.
The second one was ambitious, and even most KHL defenseman wouldn’t dare try it. But there was a player across the ice who seemed open for a pass.
Michkov understood that, besides natural hesitancy, his recovering F1 teammate was putting himself in that lane.
When Michkov moves to close the gap, he already knows that the defender has exactly one option. Try to get the puck to the first outlet. Michkov was waiting for that, and picked off the pass. From there? He did what he does.
Rotenberg has a visceral reaction to this style of forechecking. It looks lazy. We can be honest here and grant that Michkov doesn’t look like he’s applying a ton of effort in this sequence. And that visceral reaction happens all across the hockey world. Hockey people hate–hate–when you play the puck instead of prematurely attempting to take the body.
But Michkov is effective with this style of forechecking. Here, he manifests out of nowhere and the puck carrier is helpless. That’s a turnover which leads directly to rush offense, AKA Michkov’s dream scenario. Again, not a whole lot of visible effort. Just efficiency.
Michkov anticipates the play so expertly that he kills exits before the forechecking sequence can ever truly begin. After a rush play fails to score, the opposing team picks up the puck cleanly in the offensive zone. This is usually the part where a rush the other way comes.
But Michkov was all over the puck carrier, stripping him and sending the puck to an open defenseman before that carrier can take a single stride.
These are the real “little details” of hockey, and Michkov is a master of them. It’s the source of his power, so to speak. The reason he manages to produce in ways that are unprecedented for a prospect of his age.
Michkov is the F1 in this sequence with no visible support and two defensemen close by each other. This is a controlled breakout where most trackers wouldn’t even register pressure. Not only does Michkov pressure the defenseman, he forces him into the D-to-D pass that he read the entire time and gets a takeaway out of it. Which, naturally, leads to an assist.
That’s little details.
They get missed because everyone is focused on the hits and the bumps, which is the little details coaches often mean.
The refrain of every dangle highlight is “WHY DIDN’T YOU HIT HIM?!”
Nobody ever gets penalized for throwing a pointless hit behind the boards and being unable to backcheck on the ensuing rush attempt.
Auston Matthews is one of the most gifted puck thieves that the league has ever seen. He’s smart and slick and uses his size to win position. But this wasn’t enough for the Leafs. They needed him to “assert himself physically.”
So Matthews listened and increased his hits drastically. He went from 67 recorded hits in 73 games to 78 recorded hits in 74 games. Given the dubious nature of how hits are recorded, that’s a big increase in physicality.
His takeaway rate plummeted.
In his Hart winning 2022 season, Matthews had 92 takeaways in 73 games. This past 2023 season, he had 68 takeaways in 74 games.
That takeaway rate was indicative of how defensively dominant he was. In analytical terms, he was in the 98th percentile at preventing expected goals against. That’s Selke level defense to go with generational goal scoring and high level playmaking.
Take a look at the defensive collapse that occurred this season, falling below his 20-21 levels (when his defense started to blossom.)
You’ve heard Matthews criticized for a lot, but how often have you heard that he was hitting people too much?
Almost never, because to many people, there is no such thing. Hitting is never a mistake. Only not hitting.
Rotenberg sees things the exact same way.
Michkov sees things the way Matthews did, and the way Mitch Marner or Jack Hughes still do. It isn’t about dealing damage. This isn’t a combat sport. It’s about recovering the puck.
Marner’s ability to dissect the breakout strategies of opposing teams, and steal the puck with pure guile? That’s exactly the kind of thing Michkov can relate to, and Marner is one of the best forecheckers in the NHL.
The Hurricanes, as a team, don’t exactly hit a bunch of people. They ranked 30th out of 32 teams in the NHL with 1,351 hits combined across their 82 games. They’re the best forechecking teams in the league.
Notice who picks this puck out of the scrum? It’s Matvei Michkov, who is the one SKA player that doesn’t go for gratuitous hits in the puck battle. That puck wasn’t even loose in any meaningful sense. Pucks get caught between players’ skates all the time, and they stay there until further notice. Not with Michkov. He uses his puck skills to pick that puck free where other players wouldn’t. And then he… does what he does.
If Michkov were unwilling to engage physically, I could see where this is an issue. But he absolutely is. I could lecture you with the dozens of examples of puck protection. The sheer amount of contact he’s willing to take is unreal. He plays with an almost masochistic excitement to take hits then keeps trucking forward like he’s Marshawn Lynch and beast mode had been activated.
But Michkov is willing to initiate physical play, too. If it serves his ends. There, he understands that Simashev is too long and too fast for him to get that puck clean. To make matters worse, Simashev had built up speed where Michkov had not. The only choice was to proactively win position and cut inside Simashev. Michkov did that with gusto, throwing a full-on reverse hit in the process. He loves reverse hits.
Physicality is a means to an end for Michkov. Another tool in his kit to be used when the situation demands it.
For Rotenberg, physicality is an end unto itself. You can see that in the players he does favor, sometimes rationally and sometimes not.
Alex Nikishin is undoubtedly deserving of a top-4 role with SKA but Rotenberg gives him even more leash than that by handing him top-pair minutes that sometimes even resemble #1 minutes. His +/- rating being 4th among SKA defensemen suggests that it isn’t an entirely objective decision to give Nikishin all of those minutes.
If you look really closely, you may be able to see the other factors that lead to Rotenberg’s decision.
You may have to squint to see it…
Now, don’t get me wrong. I would consider Nikishin one of the rational times where Rotenberg’s instincts got him to the right place. Nikishin deserves big minutes, even if his ideal spot as of last season was a #3 with PP1 duties. Perhaps, after another year of development, this is where he becomes the true KHL number 1. That wouldn’t surprise me.
He reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. And he’s done this before. He’s also reached the wrong conclusions, animated by his looking at the wrong things.
Ilya Fedotov has not left the lineup despite being a young player, and perhaps you can understand why.
While on loan last season, Fedotov finished with 14 points in 40 games and was a -12 for Torpedo. Michkov had 20 points in 27 games and was a +1 for Sochi.
Michkov was towards the top of Sochi’s roster at 4th highest and within a couple notches of the top spot.
Fedotov had the 2nd lowest rating on Torpedo while several people finished with positive ratings.
But… well…
There’s just some things you can’t measure objectively! Right, Roman?
To wrap it all up: I’m not trying to bury Fedotov. He looked genuinely good in the preseason and I can see where you’d want to give him a shot. And I’m certainly not trying to bury Nikishin, who truly is doing impressive things in the KHL as a defenseman so young.
I’m simply making the point that there’s no objective basis to say that either of those two deserve the ice time they get while Michkov is riding the bench. I’d put their resumes up against either of them. And deep down, I think Rotenberg would, too.
I think Rotenberg is using unfair subjective preferences to gatekeep Michkov and stand between him getting what he’s rightfully earned.
Rotenberg can have his preferences. All things being equal, he can prefer a more physical player. But when all things are not equal, gratuitous physicality and extreme risk aversion should not reign supreme over actual aptitude at the sport of ice hockey.
Everyone wants to say there’s subjectivity in ice hockey. To which I say: bullshit. There’s an objective and concrete goal to score more goals than the other team.
You can win with 0 hits or 100 hits. You can win after allowing 0 goals or 100. But no hockey team has ever won a game by scoring 0 goals. It’s definitionally impossible.
There’s nothing in this game of more importance than offense. Especially since, by virtue of possessing the puck, efficient offense leads to better defensive results. Michkov is unnaturally good at possessing the puck for inordinate amounts of time, and he’s unnaturally good at scoring with the puck when he has it.
Therefore, he deserves a spot in the lineup.
Mandatory Credit: KHL
