December 17, 2024
Kyle Ross/Imagn Images
Flyers star rookie Matvei Michkov has 27 points through 29 games so far this season.
The Flyers don't have much center depth.
Sean Couturier is at the top as the veteran two-way option, then Scott Laughton, Noah Cates, and Ryan Poehling are the checkers underneath, with Morgan Frost as an offensive spark when he's not marred by inconsistency.
It's not a particularly imposing group – and far from Colorado showing up with Nathan MacKinnon, Edmonton with Connor McDavid, Pittsburgh with Sidney Crosby, and so on.
The Flyers need to build themselves up through the middle, and drafting prospects like Jett Luchanko is only the start of what's going to be a very long work in progress.
After Monday's practice in Voorhees, though, John Tortorella was posed a question: Would the Flyers ever consider moving Matvei Michkov inside from the wing?
"No, we need to find a center to play with him," Tortorella said of the star rookie. "Frosty is with him right now. It's been up and down. I'm not sure if that's the right marriage, but in my mind, no."
The thought itself isn't too far-fetched. The 20-year-old plays an offensive game that leaves him all over the ice looking for chances, is still developing for the long haul, and in terms of recent history, well, Claude Giroux did end up being the left winger the Flyers were looking to pair with him for all that time in 2018, and the payoff was a 102-point, Hart Trophy-caliber season.
Michkov at center, though, that'd probably be a bit of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Michkov is a very active offensive player and has shown pretty clearly now that he can and will try to create opportunity from anywhere. But working off the wall is arguably when he's at his best, especially when he tries to make a move and peel off of it for a quick shot to the inside.
That type of game is best suited operating from the wing.
"He's kind of a rover as a forward anyway," Tortorella continued. "He's not going up and down his wing and playing. He usually ends up most of the time on the left side, as far as leaving the zone and trying to find a stretch play."
The combo of Owen Tippett, Frost, and Michkov has been one of the top-six lines the Flyers have been rolling with of late.
Tortorella reiterated that he feels Frost has been too inconsistent to leave him as Michkov's full-time center going forward for the rest of the season, but did confirm that they would stay together for Wednesday night's game in Detroit.
As for the next steps at the position, well, that's going to be a very long work in progress.
"Our organization, we know that we need to find some answers there," Tortorella said. "If it doesn't come from within, we've got to find it somewhere. That's why we're drafting centers. We're hoping [Luchanko] maybe develops into one of those centers for us."
A few other Flyers thoughts...
Sam Ersson returned from injury just over a week ago and has played in three games since – Dec. 8 vs. Utah, Dec. 10 at Columbus, and Dec. 12 at Minnesota.
For the time being, the Flyers are carrying three goaltenders on the roster. They're not going to stick with that, but last week, before the team played Detroit at home, Tortorella was direct about the order: Ersson is the No. 1, Aleksei Kolosov took over the No. 2 spot, and Ivan Fedotov dropped to No. 3.
Ersson was down for about a month from Nov. 11 up to his return on Dec. 8, and during that stretch, Kolosov went 3-1-1 with an .889 save percentage, though with steadily progressing poise. Then last Thursday against the Red Wings, the 22-year-old netminder stopped 25 of 26 shots, including a late one sliding from across the crease that preserved a one-goal lead.
KOLOSOV WOWWW#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/tq44rJCfyc
— Flyers Clips (@Flyers_Clips) December 13, 2024
A decision is coming on what to do in goal, but not just yet, Tortorella said after practice on Tuesday. He, general manager Danny Brière, and the Flyers front office are talking about it, but part of the hold up is they want to see if Ersson can stay healthy first before making a call.
The Flyers, overall, are doing all right. Not great, but all right.
As of Tuesday, they're 14-13-4 for 32 points, and just outside of the early Eastern Conference Wild Card picture behind Ottawa (with 32 points but with one more regulation win at 15-13-2) and Tampa Bay (16-10-2 for 34 points).
The Flyers have won two of their last three, and over their last 10 games, have stayed pretty steady at 5-3-2 amid a Metro division and conference picture that has a few clear front runners and then a bunch of teams all stuck in the middle of the pack behind them.
There are definitely parts of the team that need to improve, but guys like Michkov, Travis Konecny, and Travis Sanheim have been good, while others like Laughton, Tippett, and Jamie Drysdale have been playing better.
If the Flyers can put a consistent enough effort together, they might have another shot at pushing for the playoffs again, but again, they'll need to stay consistent while getting the help of other teams (like Ottawa, Tampa, the Rangers, and Pittsburgh) stumbling around them.
The odds might be a better than you would initially think, at least by MoneyPuck's model, which has the Flyers with a 49.9 percent chance of making the playoffs as of Tuesday afternoon.
The Athletic's model wasn't as generous, only giving the Flyers an 11 percent shot – but hey, still a shot.
The Flyers are rebuilding. They've stated this repeatedly, but also maintained that their path to doing so wasn't in stripping the whole operation down and starting from scratch – in other words: tanking.
With Tortorella, and then Brière and Keith Jones at the top, they were going to re-establish their culture as a good place to play, steadily get younger with a priority on development while keeping good veterans in the mix, and compete as much as they could while accumulating as much as they could.
They're not a Stanley Cup contender, not yet, but they're not woefully bad either, yet still have Michkov to watch right now and other promising prospects in the pipeline, along with as many as 12 selections in what is projected to be a strong draft coming up this summer.
The Flyers are moving along, slowly but surely, but every step of the way, there's been criticism from certain parts of the fan base that what they're doing isn't going to work, that they need to completely bottom out for a couple of years to go for a chance – keyword: chance – at a top pick.
Thing is, that approach is hardly guaranteed to work either, and if an organization isn't careful, it can trap a team in a uniquely hellish pit of despair.
Just ask the Detroit Red Wings, who the Flyers will be facing again on Wednesday night, and the Buffalo Sabres, who are crumbling in a 10-game winless rut.
Both teams have been bad for years now. The Red Wings haven't made the playoffs since 2016, and the Sabres not since 2011.
The Red Wings have been punting on seasons for the past several years, and while they do have some key pieces like Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond, they've failed to take off. They were thought to do it last year and crashed down the stretch, then have just been stumbling down the runway in this one.
As for the Sabres, they've hit the reset button so many times, through Sam Reinhart, Jack Eichel, and now Rasmus Dahlin, Dylan Cozens, and Owen Power that the thing might not even work anymore – or, like Reinhart, Eichel, and even Rasmus Ristolainen here in Philly now, got shipped away and did much better elsewhere.
This was really just a long way to saying the Buffalo Sabres are bad. Don't be the Buffalo Sabres.
The Flyers will be in Detroit on Wednesday then are coming back home to play the L.A.Kings on Thursday and the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday.
After that, they'll be on the road over the Christmas and New Year holiday from Dec. 23-Jan. 5 – of note, they'll be in Anaheim on Dec. 28 in their first time facing Cutter Gauthier since the infamous trade of the former top prospect.
The Wells Fargo Center, meanwhile, will be occupied.
Disney on Ice is coming, and Disney on Ice is non-negotiable.
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