John Tortorella contextualizes Matvei Michkov benching

Last night was a strange one for the Flyers. While they came away from last night’s matchup with the Blues with the win by a 2-1 margin, it was overall a bit of a sleepy, low event game. It wasn’t so low event, though, that we didn’t see a bit of drama — as the first period wore on, we quickly noticed something was amiss. Matvei Michkov appeared to have been benched.

Everyone exhales: here we go again.

John Tortorella’s benchings to send a message to his players have been well documented and well analyzed. Sometimes there is an abundance of rhyme and/or reason, sometimes there is less, and no one seems to be immune to the reaches of it. In a way, Michkov’s first benching felt like a rite of…