SteelFlyers Football Videos
Should Mark Recchi replace Flyers Ast. Coach Rocky Thompson?
Photo credit: The Philadelphia Inquirer
For the past two seasons, the Philadelphia Flyers power play unit (that finished statistically the worst in the league in each of the last two seasons) has been run by former tough guy Rocky Thompson—a guy who was drafted in the third round of the 1995 NHL Draft by the Calgary Flames. And, despite playing 12 seasons as a professional only got to play in a whopping 25 NHL games. Now, in those 25 NHL games, Rocky managed to net a grand total of ZERO goals! However, to his credit he did amass an impressive 2,036 career penalty minutes as a professional!
To make this worse still, you’ll be happy to know that the Flyers thought it wise to hire this career knuckle dragger to run the power play of all things after he was let go by the San Jose Sharks for ripping off his shirt in a team meeting and challenging the then Shark’ Evander Kane to a fight. A real class act if I’ve ever heard one.
I need someone from the Flyers’ upper management to make this make sense for me because not only do I not understand the reason he was hired in the first place, but I don’t get why he is still employed given the team’s lack of production on the man advantage during his tenure. I mean, the Flyers were only effective 12.2% of the time on the power play last year, scoring just 31 power play goals on 254 attempts. Folks, that was 40 goals off the pace of the league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning. And the previous season was much of the same.
So, what’s the answer? Well, although maybe not the best option, one that would make more sense is firing Rocky Thompson and hiring a familiar face in Mark Recchi, who was just let go from his job with the Columbus Blue Jackets after joining their coaching staff in the middle of the season. Now, call it Nepotism if you want, but with the potential hiring of Mark Recchi, the Flyers would gain the knowledge of a former player whose career spanned 22 seasons in the NHL. Won three Stanley Cups and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame for scoring 577 career goals (200 of which game on the power play) and totaled 1,533 points (569 of those coming while he was on the PP.).
Now, I know Mark’s recent efforts with Columbus did not go so well. But tell me, when was the last time Columbus had a successful season? I’ll tell you if you don’t know, it was back in 2019 when their Head Coach was John Tortorella, when they went to the Playoffs four years in a row.
So, I’m not willing to put the Blue Jackets’ ineffectiveness on the power play last season all on Recchi, especially since Mark won an additional two Stanley Cups as a coach when he was with the Penguins.
What it boils down to for me is, at the end of the day, who do you think this youthful core of players is actually going to listen to and or respect? Rocky Thompson, who was never even afforded the opportunity to be on the ice during a man advantage? Or the iconic Mark Recchi, who has more power-play points than the likes of Brett Hull, Sidney Crosby, and Gordie Howe.
With that being said, Thompson has had his chance and has failed miserably. The team’s power play unit, which was once feared, is now the laughingstock of the league. And I, for one, no longer wish for him to be the guy offering up the tutelage to our players. Hell, Michkov may be the best prospect we’ve had since Eric Lindros, and I’d much rather have a guy like Recchi, who has collected a fist full of Stanley Cup rings drawing up plays for him, than a guy who possibly inspired Adam Sandler to write Happy Gilmore.
Prospect Watch: Liam Kilfoil
@LiamKilfoil via X
As this summer draws to a close, the new hockey season is already upon us, which is made evident every year by the commencement of the historic Hlinka Gretzky Cup. And one very underrated player that I would like to bring your attention to with this article would be Canada’s Liam Kilfoil.
Now, while Liam may not be one of the top prospects that everyone is focusing on in this tournament, he will prove to be an interictal part in both Team Canada’s success through the rest of this tournament (where he is already posting a near point per game average) as well as the Halifax Mooseheads future triumphs, whom he was drafted by in the third round of the 2023 QMJHL Draft.
This is largely too due to the fact that he is a multi-tool player who has proved to be equally effective and dangerous in all three zones. For one, he is defensibly responsible. A coach’s dream center, one who makes an attempt on every shift to try and get back and prevent the opposition from scoring, which is why, at just 16 years of age last season, he was afforded the opportunity to play on the Mooseheads Penalty Killing Unit.
Furthermore, Kilfoil plays with his head on a swivel, allowing him to both see and receive pucks in the neutral zone with ease, which leads to him starting multiple breakout attempts each and every game. And, with his long, powerful strides and mastery level puck distributing skills, you can bet that every time he crosses into the offensive zone with the puck on his stick, it’s going to result in his team achieving a scoring chance, if not a goal. This is why he also received ample playing time this past season when Halifax was on the power play.
So, with all this being said, expect Kilfoil to use the experience he gained last season playing in the Q, along with the knowledge he will gain from playing in this tournament, to far surpass the nine goals and eleven assists that he was able to compile last season, for experience breeds confidence! With this newfound confidence in his game, I think we will see Liam be more willing to resist his initial urge to pass the puck this season and instead hold on to it for a fraction of a second longer, allowing the play to develop further, thus creating more opportunities for he (the puck carrier) to hurl the puck at the net himself.
And, if Kilfoil can do this much like he did in the four playoff games he competed in last season, where he tallied three goals. He will not only become a more complete player but see his 2025 NHL Entry Draft stock rise.
Both Short and Long Term Options that Could Better Help Michkov Down the Middle
Photo Credit: St. Louis Blues Press/ HC Dynamo Moscow
As we all heard by now, the reports leading up to the draft were that the Philadelphia Flyers and their General Manager Danny Briere wanted to move up to within the top five to be able to select their star prospect Matvei Michkov’s friend and now former teammate Ivan Demidov.
But the Flyers evidently balked at the asking price it would have taken to do so. Ivan (who was then later graciously selected by the Montreal Canadiens 5th overall) possesses the kind of elite stick-handling/puck-distributing skill set that would have paired perfectly with Michkov’s unreal finishing ability. He played in 30 regular season MHL games this year in Russia, where he scored 23 goals and 37 assists for 60 points while maintaining a +47 average on the season. And, if that wasn’t enough, he, like only the greats know how to do come playoff time, was able to take it to another level and tally 28 points in 17 playoff games while finishing with a +19 average for the postseason.
Now, I get it. Columbus reportedly wanted Philadelphia to give up multiple first-round picks that they possessed from this past draft, a player from the Flyers’ active roster, and potentially more. Still, you can’t get something for nothing.
I mean, to get one of, if not the greatest player to have ever worn a Flyers jersey “Eric Lindros” the team had to give up then-draft prospect Peter Forsberg, roster players Mike Ricci, Ron Hextall, Steve Duchesne, Kerry Huffman, future considerations —which eventually became Chris Simon — two first-round draft picks, and $15 million.
So, don’t tell me that you would be mad if the team managed to pull the trigger on a similar deal for the chance to land a player that could potentially give the Flyers their best duo since Lindros and LeClair last stepped on the ice together way back in the year 2000.
The Flyers had the draft capital to make it happen but were reluctant to pull the trigger when it came right down to it. So, instead, they decided to reach for a guy in Jett Luchanko (who wasn’t projected to go until much later in the 1st round). Not to mention them deciding to then accept a deferred payment from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for their second first-round selection in this year’s draft, which they received from trading Claude Giroux to Florida multiple seasons ago now in the terms for Edmonton’s own 2025 1st round pick.
Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems like management was just mad that they couldn’t get who they wanted for what they were willing to pay, so they just went through the motions the rest of the weekend and decided to stockpile their chances for the 2025 Draft.
But I’m not here to just complain. I’m here to present a way that the Flyers could gain a shot at redemption in both the short and long term.
SHORT TERM (Nikita Alexandrov)
In the short term the Flyers are looking for help down the center of the ice. For years now, Philadelphia has put a strong emphasis on their forwards being defensively responsible in an effort to hide just how bad their defensive core has been during that time. But in order to make that game plan a reality, they have managed to draft, sign, and trade for practically the same type of player down the middle. Take, for instance, the men who lineup in the dots currently for this franchise. Sean Couturier, Morgan Frost, Scott Laughton, and Ryan Poehling. They are all cookie-cutter molds of the same type of player whose primary focus is winning faceoffs in order to gain puck possession and then hanging back in order to limit their opponent’s chances of scoring goals.
While this ideology sounds nice in theory, and did manage to aid their defense a bit last season. It resulted in their offense suffering exponentially, with Philadelphia scoring just 231 goals last season, which ranked them 20th in the league.
Now, I don’t care how many Selke Trophies Coots wins before he hangs up his skates for the last time. If the team is now going to be forced to pay him $7.75 million annually until the year 2030, then I’m going to need him to light the lamp more than the 11 times he did last year. And, for that matter, the same goes for the teams’ other centers that collectively averaged just 12 goals apiece last season.
So, in my opinion, in order to give Michkov the best opportunity to succeed this upcoming season, they need to switch it up a bit and get Matvei a potential offensive threat down the middle to play with. To do that, I would suggest the Flyers try to pull off a sign-and-trade deal for the speedy St. Louis Blues restricted free agent, 23-year-old Russian dot dweller Nikita Alexandrov. Nikita, who is a former 30-goal scorer during his time in the QMJHL, was originally drafted back in 2019 in the 2nd round by the Blues but, however promising, Nikita found himself last season often being labeled a healthy scratch since the Blues were pretty loaded down the middle and were afraid of trying to send him back down to the AHL (where he was averaging a point per game) for fear he would be quickly snagged off the waiver wire.
However, despite the high probability that Alexandrov will be dealt a similar fate this upcoming season, with no significant changes occurring in St. Louis’ lineup this off-season. The Blues still decided to extend a qualifying offer to him this off-season so they would not lose Alexandrov for nothing.
Although I can see the logistics in that, they still seem reluctant to offer him the type of term and salary he believes he is worth. This leads me to believe that Nikita, who carried a cap hit of just $816K last season, could benefit from a change of venue, much like Owen Tippett did when he joined the Orange and Black from the likes of the Florida Panthers.
Therefore, I think the Flyers should hurry up and take advantage of the Blues’ lack of space for Alexandrov on their NHL roster and offer a trade for his rights for nothing more than a couple of already-drafted prospects who are no longer progressing in the Flyers system. St. Louis is likely to take whatever they can get for him at this point, considering they just lost one of their other young Russian center prospects, Mikhail Abramov, to the KHL because he, too, was in the same situation and did not want to spend another season in the minors without even getting a fair shot at the NHL level to prove himself.
I believe taking a shot at acquiring Nikita Alexandrov from the Blues would be a low-risk, high-reward type move. If it works out, it would not only give Matvei Michkov a faster, more offensive threat to play with than any other Center on this team but also a fellow Russian that he could play with to help him better understand what is expected of him in practice and in games until he has the chance to better learn how to speak the language.
Long Term Option (Ivan Ryabkin)
Suppose that doesn’t work out. It was only meant to be a stopgap anyway. The real solution would be to utilize any of the three first’s or three second-round picks that the Flyers have acquired for next year’s draft and package them up to draft a fellow Russian player who, once paired with Michkov, the duo could prove to develop into one of the best in the league. And that player would be none other than the next Russian phenom 2025 Draft-eligible center Ivan Ryabkin.
Ivan, who just turned 17 years old in April, played the majority of the year in the MHL this past season, where he managed to score 24 goals and 34 assists for 58 points in 44 games played, which may not be the two points per game average that Demidov managed in that league this year. Still, Ryabkin’s draft year is this upcoming season. He has already proved himself in the MHL, so chances are you will see him receiving some playing time in the KHL next season. Especially since he plays for a lesser team in Dynamo and not the stacked Red Army Team that Demidov was only able to crack the KHL lineup with for four times this past season.
Ryabkin plays a similar game to Demidov in that he is able to use his soft hands and strong hockey sense to maneuver himself to a possession where he can best set up his teammates for a goal. But unlike Demidov, Ryabkin has been known to play a bit more aggressively in the sense that he’ll follow that pass up by crashing the net for the chance to put back a nice juicy rebound. And this is just my opinion, but didn’t the team always seem to make the playoffs when they had one of those types of guys on the roster? You know, players like John LeClair, Mike Knuble, Wayne Simmonds, and Scott Hartnell, to name a few.
So, if I’m Danny Briere, I’m not taking no for an answer next summer when calling teams about the possibility of moving up to select Ryabkin. They have the draft capital to make any move they want a reality. So, why not go get Michkov, someone who deserves to play with him? Every great player in this league who was/is successful is successful because he has a significant number two guy. Lemieux had Jagr, Crosby has Malkin, McDavid has Draisaitl, and the list could go on and on, but you get the point. One man cannot do it all on his own. Hell, even “The Great One” had Jari Kurri, who scored 71 goals in 1985, to help Wayne and the Oilers get past Ron Hextall and the rest of the Flyers.
So, if the Flyers really think Michkov is going to be the best player to wear an Orange and Black jersey since “The Big E” (Eric Lindros), then please don’t hesitate next time to go get him someone he can play with.