PHILADELPHIA – It took about a month for Matvei Michkov to catch on to Flyers coach Rick Tocchet’s system but the young Russian is making up for lost time now.
After scoring just one goal in October, Michkov wound up leading the team in November goals with seven, including two in Saturday night’s 5-3 win at New Jersey.
Actually, heading into Monday night’s game against Pittsburgh, Michkov had scored those seven goals in just 11 games.
Michkov, who turns 21 on Dec. 9, has scored 34 goals, making him only the fourth Flyer ever to reach that total before the milestone birthday.
Tocchet has been encouraged by the way Michkov has improved his conditioning since an injury hampered his training this past summer. He’s starting to look more like the player who, as a rookie, led the Flyers in goals last season with 26.
“He just wants to work on stuff that he’s got to get better at,” Tocchet said after the morning skate. “Which is a good thing. He’s looking at other avenues of scoring.”
Those seven goals didn’t just happen by accident. He’s been working at his overall conditioning both on and off the ice.
“He’s using his body, his positioning way better than he did three weeks ago,” Tocchet said. Also, moving him onto a line with Sean Couturier and Bobby Brink has helped, too. “To be honest, putting him on the left wing (his natural shooting side), he’s not skating backwards as much. When he’s skating backwards, he looks slow. He’s had way more plays since he’s been on the left.”
Now in his second year in North America, Michkov is starting to get a better handle on English, too.
“As a coach, you have to be careful not to give too much information,” Tocchet said. “Especially when you have the language barrier. If you give too much information, the poor guy doesn’t know what’s going on.”
>Zegras seeks improvement
Even though Trevor Zegras had a five-point lead in team point scoring heading going into Pittsburgh game, he’s always looking to improve his all-around game.
“I think when he’s going good, as a coach you want to leave him alone,” Tocchet said. “But you also want to show him stuff (on video) when he’s doing good stuff. As coaches, it’s when do you want to get involved and when you don’t. For me, there’s a couple keys with him when he’s on his game and when he’s not.”
Zegras went into Monday night leading the team in power-play goals with three.
“We just watched a video, a couple little things on the power play,” Tocchet said. “For him, he likes to hear the information. Or he’ll go, ‘hey, ‘Toc,’ what about this?’ I like that. It’s not just a one-way conversation.”
Of equal importance to Tocchet, when a player such as Zegras commits an error, he makes himself accountable.
“He made a mistake on the third goal (at N.J.),” Tocchet said. “The whole world knows it. I don’t need to go down and tell him. To put him back out there is big. And I think he had a big shift when I threw him out there.
“Those are the things to grow for the young guys. A guy like him, he knows if he does make a mistake, he knows he can’t make a trend of it. This year, if he’s made a mistake, he’s corrected it pretty quickly.”
>Konecny overall game picks up
One number that jumps off the team season stats sheet is Travis Konecny’s plus-7. That was tied with Tyson Foerster for second behind Noah Cates’ plus-8.
“His game is starting to come,” Tocchet said. “Less turnovers, making more solid decisions. . .there are times when he’s taken the puck to the hole. Before he was looking to pass. I’m seeing a lot more conviction in his game. He’s playing inside instead of playing outside.”
Konecny has always had a knack for good decision-making. The problem is it hasn’t always been consistent.
“You want to support the puck, you want to make the right decisions,” the coach said. “But you have to attack. Like we don’t want to back up.”
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