November 22, 2024
Matvei Michkov met with the media in Voorhees earlier this week, fielding questions through team consultant and interpreter Slava Kuznetsov.
His English is picking up, and his Flyers teammates are helping him learn bit by bit, but the 19-year-old winger (still relatively fresh out of Russia) said the language barrier is heavy. It's going to take time to fully break down.
And when it comes to head coach John Tortorella, more patience and an altered approach to coaching Michkov that isn't quite his style.
The Flyers and Hurricanes had the national TNT broadcast on Wednesday night, and pregame, Tortorella got on call with the studio panel.
Paul Bissonnette asked Tortorella about how he has been communicating with Michkov day-to-day. Tortorella gave a pretty illuminating answer:
"It's been a little difficult for me because the way I like to coach is if something happens, I'm hitting that right away – on the bench, in practice, whatever it may be. I'm not going back and waiting and going through the coach's handbook, trying to figure out how to handle that situation or whatever arises. So I think it's pretty important coaching. It's spontaneous coaching. I can't do that with [Michkov] because he just doesn't understand.
"I tried it on the bench one night. There was a situation that I'm trying to explain, and he's 'Yeah, yeah-ing' me, but he really doesn't know what I'm saying. So what we've done here is we started using [Egor Zamula as an interpreter], but Zamula's game started going downhill, so we just left him alone as the interpreter. We just wanted him to play. What we're doing here now is once a week we have an interpreter and we sit down in my office and we go over things. I want to listen to him, he has to listen to me, and it's easier that way." [TNT]
Torts speaks to the boys about his coaching approach with Matvei Michkov pic.twitter.com/9EzBuZT9Pv
— NHLonTNT (@NHL_On_TNT) November 21, 2024
You can probably narrow down the points of where that situation might've been – like when Michkov got benched for a good stretch of the first period on Halloween, or in the leadup to him getting healthy scratched for a couple of games in the days that preceded the move.
But the bigger takeaway here is that everyone within the organization is adapting to make sure that Michkov can develop into the star that Philadelphia's been hoping for, including Tortorella.
"He speaks better as we've gone on here, but I don't think he totally understands some of the things we're going through," Tortorella continued. "So we're trying to be careful about it. We're going to try to slow it down and do it once a week with him."
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Tortorella added in the TNT interview that the Flyers coaching staff is continuing to stress to Michkov not to worry about making mistakes. He's a skilled offensive player, and the Flyers with the way they're built right now, badly need that offense. They'll reel him back in if and when they need to – and already have.
"We've gone through a number of things as the season started here and had some disagreements along the way," Tortorella said later in the interview of Michkov. "But that's healthy. I think everybody gets all amped up about it, but that's healthy.
"He's being honest with me. I'm being honest with him, and you get to the point and you solve problems quicker that way.
"He's got some jam to him. He has opinions, and I'd rather have a player that way than someone you're trying to suck it out of, right? It's going to be fun to coach him. He does some special things."
It's just going to take time to make the most of it.
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