Last night was a strange one for the Flyers. While they came away from last night’s matchup with the Blues with the win by a 2-1 margin, it was overall a bit of a sleepy, low event game. It wasn’t so low event, though, that we didn’t see a bit of drama — as the first period wore on, we quickly noticed something was amiss. Matvei Michkov appeared to have been benched.
Everyone exhales: here we go again.
John Tortorella’s benchings to send a message to his players have been well documented and well analyzed. Sometimes there is an abundance of rhyme and/or reason, sometimes there is less, and no one seems to be immune to the reaches of it. In a way, Michkov’s first benching felt like a rite of passage, albeit one that we might not have expected to see so soon.
But if there was concern that Michkov was falling deep into the doghouse and would have to scratch and claw his way out and back into the coach’s good favor again, it was quickly assuaged when we saw Michkov right back out there in his regular spot to start the second period. So, it seemed, the benching was not a major event, but a moment taken to teach, to let Michkov watch, and then keep it moving after a little while.
This was something Tortorella more or less confirmed after the game:
He’s a 19 year old kid playing in the best league in the world. I think he’s beginning to see what the national league is, as far as the speed, as far as the time and space, all the things that come with it. There are going to be some major struggles within 5-on-5. We expect that. Where I’m going to have to teach, and in that teaching moment, I’m not going to tell you what it’s all about, but if we keep on seeing the same mistake, and it just completely is not concentrating on a certain part of the game… I’ve been very honest with him about that. He’s going to miss some ice. He’s gonna watch the game. It’s not me screaming at him. It’s telling him this is how it works. And if I think other guys are going and you’re struggling in certain situations and it’s repetitive, you’re gonna have to sit and watch for a little bit. That’s all that was. He’s had some struggles. You don’t play four games in six nights over there, he doesn’t play against competition like he plays here. So there are going to be some major struggles in his 5-on-5 game. Power play, I feel very comfortable he’s going to do some things there. So I’m going to have to watch him. And just like any other younger player, or really any other player in that room, he’s going to be held accountable as we go through these games, and we’ll see where it goes.
It’s true that Michkov’s play has slipped a bit in the last couple of games — not that he’s been poor on the whole, but it hasn’t quite been to the same level that we saw in the very beginning of the season. It’s all a big adjustment for him, and the growing pains are to be expected. Tortorella isn’t worried about his ability to work through them, nor should we be.
“He’s a great kid,” Tortorella went on, “He wants to do so well, but it’s a lot. It’s a lot for him. The power play has been good. I think it’s struggled a little bit in the past few games, but 5-on-5, that line really hasn’t been that great, and he has struggled 5-on-5. But when it comes to situations that we’ve gone over and he still totally doesn’t understand, some part of that for me was, I don’t think he really understood, and we needed to get him in between periods. But I didn’t want to sit him a period. I didn’t. I just wanted him to sit, relax, think about what I said to him. I think he missed two or three rotations, but we put him back out there. That’s the way it’s going to be. He may miss games, who knows? I don’t know what’s going to happen. But that’s part of the development of a 19 year old kid. “
Just as much as Tortorella’s job is to build Michkov and his game up, at times the job is to settle him back down as well. The teaching moments this season are going to be plentiful, that much feels a certainty, but Michkov has already shown himself to be very coachable (and a quick study, to boot). The team knows that some patience is needed in developing him, and the bumps in the road shouldn’t be a cause for concern.
