Matvei Michkov

Matvei Michkov will be just fine.

I’m not exactly surprised that there’d be dialogue around Matvei Michkov’s season when he starts the season with 0 points in 3 games, which includes one of the worst hockey games I’ve ever seen him play in game 2 against Carolina. That’s fair enough.

Professional athletes are accountable for their performances, and while he was significantly stronger in game 3, those moral victories don’t count for much when dealing with players expected to produce.

In order to explain how and why this happened, though, we’ve been led to some pretty absurd conclusions from all sides.

Rick Tocchet Did It.

Now, listen. I’ve never been in the business of defending a coach. In fact, I routinely fileted the last one and regularly compared him to a whole plethora of historical villains… deservedly so, might I add.

There may come a time when I really do have to pillory Rick Tocchet for his handling of Michkov or other things, but we haven’t hit that time yet. That’s not to say his handling has been perfect.

How you lost Michkov on your bench in the final minutes of game 3 is beyond me. I understand he didn’t exactly do much to bolster his internal cache with games 1 and 2, but there’s no way you could convince me that the Flyers’ power-play is better without him on it.

Michkov was mostly back to his regular self yesterday, making passes that I could scarcely believe while watching and trapping opposing defenders in a straitjacket of indecision while they weighed the pros and cons of challenging his possession and getting burned or giving him the room to pass… and getting burned.

While he deserved what he got in Carolina, and frankly deserved less than he got, he also deserved more than he got in Florida. Both times, actually. This was the game where you find the minutes for him, and Tocchet failed to do that.

He succeeded at first, with 14 minutes through the first 2 periods, and then proceeded to get caught up in the adrenaline of potentially beating the Panthers. In so doing, he lost the future of the franchise on the bench.

The ice time being so jumbled tells me that this was less of a premeditated benching, and more of the coach going to an outrageously short bench where he selected the guys he thought were skating the best on each line and just… mixed and matched.

Tocchet has been around long enough. He should know better, frankly. That was not a recipe for winning hockey games in the long term. Now, the Flyers did win. They won because Trevor Zegras pulled a rabbit out of his hat.

Trevor Zegras also had less 5v5 ice time than Michkov, and the PP didn’t really do much to bolster his overall ice time at 16 minutes.

You simply have to do a better job at distributing ice time and managing a bench. This isn’t Michkov specific. This is coaching 101. The Flyers are paying Rick Tocchet like Jon Cooper, so they better be getting Jon Cooper.

Clearly, Tocchet hasn’t been perfect. There’s some room to criticize him. Still, I think people have taken that entirely too far.

Rick Tocchet didn’t make Matvei Michkov dump the puck in as part of a “dump and chase” system.

This has always been one of the most ridiculous things to criticize any coach for. There is no “dump and chase system.”

That simply doesn’t exist. Without boring you with the tedious details of hockey systems, even the most forecheck heavy teams… the Panthers and the Hurricanes… have players that enter the zone with control at an exorbitant rate.

The Hurricanes just signed Nikolaj Ehlers, one of the shining transition stars of the league. And they already employed Seth Jarvis, who gashes teams off the rush. The Panthers employ Sam Bennett, who might properly be classified as a “controlled entry merchant.”

There is really no head coach in the league who doesn’t prefer his players to carry the puck in rather than dump it. They prefer their players to dump the puck in rather than turn it over, but so do you. So does everyone. As you show that you can find those plays at the blueline to attack with possession, you get some latitude when you botch it on the off chance.

People have painted Rick Tocchet as some massive exception to the rule. And, in fairness, this isn’t entirely devoid of evidence.

The Canucks were one of the worst controlled entry teams in the league last year, and their rush attack was nonexistent.

That isn’t because Rick Tocchet was forcing players to dump the puck in under the point of a gun.

Quinn Hughes is a one-man army in transition, generating controlled entries at a rate comparable to McDavid or MacKinnon. He had the ultimate greenlight under Tocchet. There was no play too daring for Tocchet to stomach when it was Hughes who tried it.

You might dismiss this as unique to one of the NHL’s game-breaking talents, a generational player in my estimation. The best defenseman in the league, if you ask me.

All fair.

Except… it didn’t really stop with him.

After the JT Miller trade, Filip Chytil became a transition monster for Vancouver. A controlled entry machine, who controlled the puck on nearly 9 of every 10 zone entries. He dumped the puck in essentially never and dominated transition like nobody in the league.

Chytil has always been a great transition center, but rather than stifle that… Tocchet exploited it to no end.

I know what you’re thinking. What about… Elias Pettersson? Didn’t Tocchet try to reprogram Pettersson’s brain to be more amenable to his archaic hockey thinking? Didn’t Tocchet threaten him under point of gun to dump the puck in?

No. Pettersson just sucked in transition. I can’t be blunter than that.

He was ass when he had the puck on his stick through the neutral zone. It was free eats out there, for the opposing team.

In 23-24, all of which was coached by Rick Tocchet, Elias Pettersson was a menace in transition. He was in the 90th percentile of controlled entries, the 80th percentile in efficiency, and the 80th percentile in chances generated from said entries.

If the idea is that Rick Tocchet killed Pettersson’s creativity because he hates fun and he beats off two Panthers whenever he sees a proper dump-in… someone is going to have to explain to me why Tocchet didn’t discover this extreme aversion to skill in the first 88 games he coached EP40.

It took him 88 games and a whole summer to realize he’s a Nazi Dinosaur?

I somehow doubt it. Perhaps the debilitating knee injury has had more of an effect than the magical 89th game of Rick Tocchet?

Of course, Pettersson is just one of the implicated parties. Then there’s Clayton Keller.

Poor Clayton Keller, whose creativity was murdered in the street under Rick Tocchet.

Oh, wait, Clayton Keller was a 90th percentile generator of controlled entries as a 22-year-old under Tocchet.

As it turns out, playmakers are allowed to make plays under Rick Tocchet. Your favorite 24-year-old tweener who you swear would be good if he was allowed to play with confidence might not be, but that’s because he actually isn’t good. And no coach is trying to entertain Louis Belpedio trying to be Quinn Hughes.

Besides, for anyone who knows Matvei Michkov as a player… they’d know that this debate kind of misses the point.

Matvei Michkov’s Dirty Little Secret.

Matvei Michkov is not a rush specialist. You’d be forgiven for thinking he is, because smaller and skilled forwards are almost legally required to be rush specialists. You’d especially be forgiven for thinking he is after his year 1, where most of his points came off of the rush.

But every point scored under John Tortorella came off of highly unimaginative rush plays because the forecheck was archaic and left open an absurd number of holes.

Torts ran a 2-1-2 until he got burned too many times and switched up to a 1-2-2.

He got burned because he would send 2 players to the puck carrier almost regardless of the situation and that meant, when you beat the forecheck with a pass, it was a 4 on 3 every time.

It was constant modulation between too passive and too mindlessly aggressive.

Tocchet’s forechecking system is actually quite clever. It’s almost like a 1.5-1.5-2.

The F2 has the responsibility of reading the play. When the F1 successfully pressures the defender out of making a proper pass, that’s when the F2 crashes hard to take away the little rim to the D partner.

When the F1 doesn’t create “a contact,” as he calls it, the F2 hangs back and tries to create a turnover on the second layer.

The Flyers have been much better off of the forecheck this season, and I expect that trend to last.

I also expect it to benefit Matvei Michkov way more than you think in the long term.

Michkov is not a rush player at heart. Though I think he’ll need to develop into one and has the talent to.

Michkov would vastly prefer someone else carry the puck into the zone, so he can get lost in the weeds and position himself to score on a return pass.

Auston Matthews has a similar habit, one that he’ll likely have to kick without Mitch Marner.

Michkov will have to kick it now, because the simple fact is that the Flyers are unlikely to find someone who’s as good with the puck on their stick as Michkov. He has to be the one making that decision upon entry. He’s too gifted, too cerebral.

Pawning off that responsibility on someone less gifted with the puck than he is, less intelligent on the ice than he is, is a rather foolish idea.

Playing him with Zegras would mitigate the issue, but even then, is Zegras a better decision maker on-puck than Michkov? The answer is: probably not, no.

The opportunity costs are substantially lower with Zegras, but they exist all the same. Ironically, I think that’s what Tocchet is getting at with Michkov and “playing North,” where “North” is coach’s pablum for “direct.”

I’d like to get that clarified and asked a few beat reporters to do it, but we’ll see if that happens. I won’t be offended if they simply forget.

Back to my original point, though, Michkov has always been a prodigious forecheck creator for his age. Just go watch his tape as a prospect, anywhere except Sochi who was in a very Tortorella-esque environment.

You’ll notice a kid who’s tough to handle in battles, strong on his stick and tenacious. Sometimes too tenacious, as we see. He’s known to take a couple stick infractions rather than simply not go for the steal.

And when he recovers the puck along the bords, he’s a menace. Impossible to knock off the puck at his best and with a full vision of the ice. He has the agility to spin off of defenders and work himself free, then the vision and touch to make any pass to any of the 4 players in the zone.

We’ve seen some of this work already, despite the lackluster start.

Michkov is an all-situations offensive creator, and he’s never cared if you want to carry the puck or dump it in.

He is one of the few players on earth for whom it makes no difference whatsoever.

Fat?! Injury?!

This brings me to the other reason for the slow start, as explained by fans.

Did Matvei Michkov get fat over the summer?!

Did he suffer a debilitating injury that cost him his entire summer?!

In both cases… clearly not.

Michkov is likely faster, and just as much of an active skater as he was last season. Hell, with the most recent NHL Edge update, his best game of the season was the one where he skated the least. And his worst, the one where he skated the most.

Now, Tocchet himself did say that his training was somewhat impacted by an ankle injury over the summer and that he might not be fully in peak conditioning.

Here’s the thing, “peak condition” at the start of an NHL season is a ridiculously high bar. Close to peak condition is more than good enough, especially as everyone else gets sore and tired.

Whatever minor hit there is to his conditioning, it isn’t why he played like dogshit in Carolina. And it isn’t what compelled Couturier to be the greatest player of all time, except when Michkov passed to him.

This little stretch is about as real as his “0 5v5 points through October” nonsense stretch of last season.

Michkov is not an Autumn Avenger like some people on this team, and don’t be surprised when he’s collecting bodies through the winter and spring.

Where Michkov is concerned, reality will win out.

Just give it a minute.

Gear up in the TLL Shop

Read More

Comments (1)

  1. Just looking at him you can tell he’s not himself….send him for a rehab stint….kinda embarassing…..I think the fact that he showed up that way…..did no one pick up on that in preseason

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Back To Top

Discover more from The Liberty Line

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading