The argument over Matvei Michkov and dump-and-chase has one hole in the middle of it: the coach everyone wants to burn at the stake already agrees with Michkov. Rick Tocchet watched the viral clip, nodded along in public, and said he wants his young winger holding onto pucks. If you're looking for the guy who told Michkov to rim it in and go chase it, that's the old regime.
The quote comes from July 2025, when an on-ice interview clip went around, translated from Russian, with Michkov explaining what he was told when he first reached the NHL: "cross the red line, rim it around the boards, and run to fight for it." His verdict: "I'm not a fan of dump-and-chase hockey. I'd rather carry the puck in under control, make a clean pass, and enter the zone with possession. If you dump it in, now you've gotta go battle for it. There's no guarantee you're even gonna win that puck back." He called it "exhausting hockey" because "you burn so much energy battling for the puck that you've got nothing left for the actual attack."
That instruction belongs to John Tortorella's grinding system, the one under which Michkov still put up 26 goals and 63 points in 80 games as a rookie. Tortorella was gone with nine games left in 2024-25, and Tocchet took over in May 2025. The clip only blew up as a Tocchet story because it surfaced after he was hired.
When Tocchet got asked about it, he sided with his player. "I'm going to bust his [chops] when I see him. But, yeah, I know what he's saying. I mean, he wants to hold on to pucks, and he's got that talent, and we've got to allow him to have that creativity." He went further: "I want players to hold onto pucks and make plays, 100%. We want to play that way." The premise of the whole fight, that Tocchet insists on dump-and-chase while Michkov's talent sits wasted under a dinosaur, falls apart once you check what the coach actually said.
The tactical question underneath this is a real one, though. The case for dumping it in is simple: cough the puck up at the blue line trying to dangle through two defensemen, and you've handed a skilled NHL team a clean break the other way. Battling for a loose puck deep in their own end beats that every time. Tocchet's approach says exactly this. Carry it when you've got speed and a play on, dump it when your skates are sideways and there's nobody to hit. "If you want to play late in the middle of June and win a Stanley Cup, you can't play that way," he said about forcing low-percentage plays with no speed behind them. That's how good teams enter the zone, and it's a long way from the blanket mandate the debate imagines.
What's actually wrong in Philadelphia is simpler than that. As of their loss in Detroit on October 15, the Flyers were 0-6-3, the worst start in franchise history, one of only two winless teams left in the league. In one seven-game stretch they scored eight goals total, and four of those came in their last four games. Controlled zone entries won't put more pucks in the net. Finishing power will.
The "Michkov is being wasted" storyline runs into a problem here. Through that Detroit loss, Michkov had scored the Flyers' only goal of the night, his third of the young season, which made him the team's leading goal-scorer and tied him for the team lead in points. The player supposedly strangled by the system is the one still burying pucks on a team that can't. You cannot waste a man and have him lead you in scoring at the same time.
Michkov's second season still went badly. In 2025-26 he dropped to 20 goals and 51 points in 81 games with his ice time cut to under 15 minutes a night, then managed a single assist across eight playoff games as the Flyers were knocked out in the second round. Something there needs fixing. Pinning it on a dump-and-chase mandate the coach openly rejected is the lazy answer.
The dump-and-chase fight is a comfortable thing to shout about while the Flyers can't score. Tocchet threw out the exact system he's being crucified for before anyone pressed record. Point the anger at an offense managing eight goals a week. This coach already got the scheme question right.
