Matvei Michkov has answered every question except one: Do the Flyers need John Tortorella to coach him?

Regardless of where the Flyers stood in the standings — if they somehow made the playoffs, if they barely met the meager expectations of a rebuilding team — there was always one dynamic, one relationship, that promised to determine whether they could call this season a success. The final judgment on John Tortorella’s tenure as the Flyers’ head coach wouldn’t come down to a miraculous Stanley Cup run or a career year from a veteran player. No, Tortorella’s most important assignment this season was simple: Make sure Matvei Michkov wasn’t a bust. Make sure the Flyers hadn’t wasted the seventh pick of the 2023 draft on a kid who couldn’t cut it in the NHL.

Those doubts and concerns seem silly now, mostly because Michkov rendered them so. Twenty goals and 50 points in 70 games through Sunday, his skill and hockey sense obvious even to a layman, still just 20 years old — he has unfurled the finest season for a first-year Flyers forward in a quarter century.

For a club that hasn’t won a game in regulation in a month, that has just one player, Travis Konecny, whose offensive talent is anywhere close to his, Michkov has been the best reason to think that Danny Brière, Keith Jones, and the rest of the Flyers’ leadership might turn the franchise around someday.

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“I love his mental toughness,” Jones, the team’s president, said Saturday in an interview on 94.1 WIP. “It’s extremely impressive. He doesn’t pout. He goes and plays. He represents so much of what I believe makes a hockey player great. I believe he’s going to be. I think it’s going to take time. I can’t wait to watch him in five years. I love what he’s done already. … I couldn’t be more proud of the things he has done. I’m so proud.

“He recognizes that the league is even a little more difficult than he thought before he arrived. He’s mentioned that to me before, and he also recognizes how much work he’s going to have to do this summer to fill in some of the gaps, to get better in some areas. What we’re going to see is he’ll be an even better-conditioned athlete when he returns next year. This kid gets it. He is ultra-competitive and very intelligent when it comes to the game of hockey. Those players don’t come around very often.”

The irony of Michkov’s strong season, though, is that it hasn’t done much to clear away the fog around his coach’s future. It would seem simple enough: Michkov is on the right track, and no other criteria by which one might evaluate Tortorella’s performance matters as much. So there shouldn’t be any mystery about his status.

Yet to hear Jones pile so much praise on Michkov was to wonder whether the Flyers trust Michkov to grow and develop and reach his considerable potential no matter who his head coach is. Even after Jones gave a direct answer to a direct question — Q: Do you think Tortorella will be back next season? A: “I do.” — he was quick to note that nothing has been settled or solidified.

“I think he’s done some really good things for us,” Jones said of Tortorella. “I have a very good working relationship with him, as does Danny, but there are always conversations. Everything is always being evaluated because we want to be the best in the end.”

The entire interview Saturday was laced with that kind of equivocation from Jones whenever Tortorella’s name came up. The most controversial moments of the Flyers’ season have arisen whenever Tortorella has either benched Michkov during a game or scratched him from the lineup entirely. Was this tough-love treatment really the best thing for Michkov? Jones admitted that he himself was second-guessing Tortorella at times.

“There are times you might see something and go, ‘I wouldn’t have done it that way,’” he said. “But you see some of the things that happen following that, and you go, ‘I get it.’

“I can’t tell you that everything he does, I get excited about immediately. But for the most part, most things tend to be in a way that helps the player in the future. We’re in good standing as far as that goes. But everything is being watched.”

Yes, Jones and Brière are watching Tortorella, and perhaps Tortorella is keeping an eye on himself, too. He turns 67 in June. Next season will mark the last year of his contract. Would he walk away then? Would he walk away now? Would Jones and Brière and Flyers governor Dan Hilferty take the decision out of his hands?

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“I think this has been something that’s taken a toll on him, the losing lately,” Jones said. “There’s no question that affects any head coach. That part, I think he’s handled very well. It has been a challenge. There’s no doubt about that. But he has done an outstanding job with our players in keeping us relevant over the last couple of seasons until the latter part of the year, when some things that are entirely out of his control have been put into place. I appreciate what he’s done.

“I understand that fans get frustrated sometimes, especially when Matvei might be sitting on the bench for a couple of shifts or missed a couple of games early on. I understand it. But normally what he does works in the long term. I think he’s really done a good job for us. That type of stuff, whether he’s here or not — those types of decisions won’t be made on a whim. They’re going to be really thought out well before anything happens. I don’t foresee anything like that happening in the near future.”

How near is “near”? The Flyers have 10 games and three weeks left in their season. They’ve already learned all they need to know about Matvei Michkov, about the player primed to be their centerpiece. Maybe they’ve also learned, and been reassured, that he’ll grow to be a superstar even if John Tortorella isn’t behind the bench.