phillyvoice
On Monday night in Vancouver, the Philadelphia Flyers skated away with a 3-1 win over a struggling Canucks squad. The team controlled the first two periods, and 21-year-old Matvei Michkov was electrifying, setting up Travis Konecny's power-play goal with a slick move from behind the net to put the Flyers up 2-0.
But for the Flyers, a straightforward victory is rarely the whole story. What drew attention was the team's passive third-period play, during which they were outshot 13-2 by the Canucks. This came on the heels of two consecutive games where the Flyers blew third-period leads and lost, first in New York and then in Calgary.
As the clock ticked down in those final frames, the Flyers' key young players—particularly Michkov and Porter Martone—found themselves on the bench in favor of veteran depth forwards with limited offensive upside, all in an effort to protect slim one-goal leads. The strategy has worked only twice in the last three games, and even then, just barely.
What concerns Flyers fans most is the growing unease surrounding Michkov. There was little enthusiasm on the ice after Konecny's goal early in the second period; teammates casually drifted toward Michkov behind the Vancouver net after he had orchestrated the play. Later, veteran defenseman Nick Seeler was caught on the NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcast arguing with Michkov at the bench during a stoppage. Such spats are common, but given the team's 5-10-5 record and Michkov's status as the only consistent scorer, it's magnified.
Rewind a couple of weeks to a road loss in Washington, when captain Sean Couturier used the word "soft" and Seeler lamented a "me, me, me" attitude. Fans on social media quickly connected the dots, pointing to Michkov. Monday's passive postgame comments about Michkov's effort did little to quell the speculation. Notably, during the bench argument, it was the 20-year-old Martone—not any player wearing a letter—who stepped in to diffuse the situation.
"Yeah, I mean, there's actually a lot of good plays that happened before that, too, if you watch the whole thing," Konecny said of Michkov's assist. "Then yeah, when I saw him have the puck in that spot, and he kind of likes doing that, coming back to the other side. So I just knew to be ready." Head coach Rick Tocchet was equally evasive: "Yeah, he played good, like, the whole team played really well tonight. So it was a good game for everybody."
The problem is, good games have been rare, and wins even rarer. In the few victories, Michkov has been the focal point. He leads the team with 10 goals—Trevor Zegras is second with just four. Yet among the 10 NHL skaters with 10 goals, Michkov has the lowest average ice time at 15:54 per game. Stars like Tampa Bay's Jake Guentzel, Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon, and Anaheim's rising Becket Sennecke average well over 20 minutes. Martone, a preseason Calder Trophy favorite, is averaging only 14:08 with three goals, despite expectations that he would be a key offensive force.
Key Analysis
Tocchet acknowledged the difficulty of balancing development and winning: "You're trying to win games and you're trying to develop, too. It's hard to do both sometimes, and sometimes it's game to game." But the Flyers are accomplishing neither. With leads, they aren't playing to win; they aren't deploying their youngest and best players to score and learn on the fly. Instead, they're clinging to safe, conservative hockey that worked last season but is now backfiring. This approach may be causing derision and eroding the culture the Flyers have carefully built over the past several years.
They won on Monday, sure. But for the Flyers, that isn't the story. The story is a bad hockey team backing itself into monumental decisions unless players and coaches get their act together—and soon.
"It's a win, right?" Konecny said. "You can build on those for sure." Maybe not this team, though.
Originally reported by phillyvoice.