The Flyers Are Burning Their Best Young Talent and It’s Gaining League-Wide Attention

The talk surrounding the Flyers at the moment is predominantly around the divide between head coach Rick Tocchet and his young star winger, Matvei Michkov. This seems to have been a growing issue since Tocchet returned to Philly behind the bench. If the Flyers Charities Fan Carnival is any indication, the fans are solidly on the side of Michkov. The line to meet Matvei was the longest of any current player.

Granted, Michkov admittedly took a large part of the summer away from on-ice drills, such as puck handling drills, but he stayed in shape in other ways. The talk that he came in out of shape hasn’t sat right with me since it started back in October. When training camp started, that was the narrative pushed by Tocchet, and in retrospect feels more and more like he is burying an elite prospect to either prove a point or to continue an old school development trope, at the expense of Michkov’s growth as a scorer.

Early in the season, he was not playing well, we all know that, and a large part of this was that his timing always looked like it was a tick off. He was getting to back check assignments late and taking penalties he shouldn’t. At the moment, it was an easy narrative that he hit the sophomore jinx, but it was an easy headline to bury because the team was playing well. With the Flyers struggling, and in large part offensively, now the murmurs of Flyers fans have become chants at the arena.

There was a quote that Matvei himself said last year, which is a more damming indictment of this situation than any narrative that he came into camp out of shape: “I just want to have ice time and not feel restricted. That’s when I play my best… I just hope I’ll have freedom on the ice. When I feel limited, I start focusing on the wrong things.”

His use this season points directly to this, and is a very telling sign about how his sophomore season is stacking up compared to his early-season fitness. In his young career, he has had 3 coaches: John Tortorella, Brad Shaw, and now Tocchet. All have used him in differing amounts, which has led to vastly different results. I will show the difference:

Under Tortorella, Michkov played in 71 games, with an average ice time of 16:41 per game. In this time, he also played both winger positions, and scored 51 points, 21 goals, and 30 assists, and was on a pace to score 59 points for the season. He had an average of 0.72 points per game. For a 19/20 year old in the NHL, that is impressive.

When Shaw took over at the end of the season, Michkov absolutely flourished. His average ice time was 19:36 per game, mostly playing the right wing position. In the 9 games with Shaw, he scored 12 points, 5 goals, 7 assists, and an impressive 1.33 points per game, which put him on a 109-point pace.

This season with Tocchet, Michkov has been in 53 games, with an average ice time of 14:32. He has also been asked to predominantly play the left wing position, which has pulled him out of his comfort zone and limited his creativity with the puck. Between both, his output has been vastly impacted. He has scored 13 goals and 15 assists. Those 28 points have him on a 43-point pace for this season if he continues at his 0.53 points per game pace.

What I see when I see Michkov on the ice now is a player who is too afraid to make mistakes; he’s more afraid of angering his coach than he is about losing, and that is a genuine travesty. One of the biggest complaints is that the Flyers have fallen far behind other teams when it comes to drafting and molding elite talent. The way that Tocchet is burying Michkov like he’s a late-round third-line talent is proving that point.

When the San Jose Sharks came to town, I compared Macklin Celebrini to Michkov as they had their first sophomore match-up. When you look at the players’ skill set, age, grit, and creativity, I argue that they are more alike than they are different. The main difference is that the Sharks’ coaching staff has made a concerted effort to get Celebrini as much ice time as possible. They have paired Celebrini, who was the 2024 first overall pick, with Will Smith, who was the 4th overall pick in the 2023 draft. There were growing pains early in the season, but the two have grown together and are one of the most promising duos in hockey, because San Jose has allowed them to form a bond on the ice.

The Flyers have a similar duo on the roster right now with Michkov and Denver Barkey, but it feels like Tocchet is purposely keeping them apart. Both players are elite with and without the puck on offense, and their creativity is through the roof. Pairing these two would give the Flyers a dynamic scoring line, and with Barkey being able to play center comfortably as well as left wing, it would allow Michkov to slide to the winger spot he’s comfortable at. If you pair this with added ice time, the growth of these two dynamic players will skyrocket. Am I saying we will have an East Coast version of Smith and Celebrini? Not necessarily, but we will certainly see what Michkov and Barkey can do together. The fact that these two aren’t given more time on the power play together with Travis Konecny or Trevor Zegras between them is the epitome of a missed opportunity.

If the Flyers want to shake the reputation of being an organization that can’t develop elite talent, they have to start to think outside the box and leave the old-school thought process in the past. I’m taking a defensive posture here as I say this, but I know that we want to make Cutter Gauthier the villain here, but we truly have to consider that he may have seen the way that the Flyers have not developed elite talent, and that may have made him reluctant to want to stay. While it’s impossible to know the true reason he left, the perceived handling of young talent has become part of the broader discussion. That case worked out well because the return on his NHL rights is Jamie Drysdale, who is blossoming into a top-level NHL defender before our eyes. But this isn’t always going to happen. We have to think about what this means for the other top talent in the Flyers system, namely Alex Bump and Porter Martone.

With all of this said, I’m not advocating to fire Tocchet here. In fact, quite the opposite. The way the team played early on shows that his strategy and game management fit the Flyers well. I know that the old school mentality says that Tocchet cares about Michkov and that’s why he’s being hard on him, and I truly think he cares. I just think he has a blind spot to how you can’t treat new players like Michkov with the same old school thought process to “toughen him up.” You can see it on Michkov’s face if you see him on the bench after a lackluster shift; he looks like he’s just trying to survive. Let the kid be creative, give him a little rope and time on the ice. This is all Brad Shaw did with him, and the results speak for themselves. Granted, that was a very small sample, but if you watch his shifts under Shaw, he was out there having fun being creative and pissing off the other team by being a pest.

In closing here, I just want to pose a question to Flyers fans: What happens if Michkov flames out? The talent is there, the drive is there, and the grit is there in spades. What does it say about our organization if he’s just not given the time and leeway to grow into the star player that Flyers fans have been thirsty for? I feel like Michkov is our canary in the coal mine here. In the horrible instance he fails at the NHL level, it says more about the Flyers organization than it does about Matvei Michkov.

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