Matvei Michkov‘s sophomore season was a rocky one. After an impressive rookie campaign in which he tallied 26 goals and 63 points as the 2023 seventh overall pick, Michkov did not get off on the right foot with Rick Tocchet and staff at last year’s training camp. Reports of an offseason ankle injury, combined with criticism about showing up for the season out of shape, opened the door for heavy criticism from fans and media alike.
A tale as old as time: first impressions are lasting impressions, and from the very start of the Tocchet era, Michkov was tasked with righting the ship and overcoming adversity to reach his potential.
Through his first 55 games, he had just 13 goals and 16 assists. Then, after the NHL’s Olympic break in February (Russia was barred from the Milan Cortina Games entirely, so Michkov didn’t play, but he used the pause to reset), he came back a different player, with 7 goals and 15 assists over his final 26 games. “After the break I started feeling the game better,” he said.
The underlying numbers backed that up. At five on five, his expected goals against rate dropped from 2.54 per 60 minutes as a rookie (41st percentile) to 2.27 per 60 (92nd percentile), and the shot and scoring chance rates he gave up per 60 both fell right along with it, a sign the player who couldn’t keep pace in October had turned into a far more responsible player in both directions by spring.
Zoomed out over the full season, the Flyers allowed just 54 goals with Michkov on the ice, down from 83 the year before, while his on-ice shot share climbed from 54.8 percent to 56.4 percent.
If not for Matvei’s resurgence, the Flyers very well may have been on the outside looking in come playoffs. Philadelphia beat Pittsburgh in a hard-fought first round that went the full six games, though Michkov was a healthy scratch for Game 5 as Tocchet searched for the right mix. He returned for Game 6 and made it count, picking up the primary assist on Cam York’s overtime winner that clinched the series.
He played the first three games of the second round against Carolina before being scratched again for Game 4, the series-ending sweep loss. Across the full run, Michkov finished with one assist in eight playoff games, a tough personal ending to a season that had been trending in the right direction, even if that lone assist came on the biggest goal of the postseason.
But a series win, real postseason minutes, and a coach willing to give him another look after benching him is more foundation to build on than the box score alone suggests.
It’s worth remembering what Michkov, a teenager, did to earn people’s belief in him in the first place. As a 19-year-old rookie, he led all Flyers regulars in points per 60 minutes (2.83), ahead of Travis Konecny and former Flyer Bobby Brink. Among the entire loaded 2023 draft class, he ranked first in points per 60 among anyone with real minutes, ahead of Connor Bedard.
His 26 goals and 21 primary assists put him in the company of exactly two other teenage rookies since the 2007 to 2008 season to hit both marks: Auston Matthews and Elias Pettersson. His scoring rate put him in shouting distance of Flyers franchise legends like Peter Forsberg and Claude Giroux. And down the stretch of that rookie year, from February on, he was third in the entire NHL in five-on-five points, behind only David Pastrnak and Robert Thomas, per Justin Giampietro with The Hockey Writers.
The biggest question mark surrounding Michkov’s offseason was how he would respond to the adversity and criticism he faced during the 2025-26 season, and all signs point to big things ahead in year three. In his exit interview, Michkov didn’t hide from the disappointing finish. “I’m not happy with my game in the playoffs.
I’m a player that the team expects me to score and make plays, but at the end of it, it was eight games and just one assist,” he said. Asked directly about his relationship with Tocchet after the benchings, he kept it simple and professional: “Very simple work relationship. A good relationship.” He was just as direct about what comes next: “Next season we need to go even further,” he said, adding that every player on the roster, himself included, must work harder.
It was a notably mature, accountable tone from a player only 21 years old who could have easily pointed fingers instead.
In an interview with Daria Tuboltseva with RG.org, Michkov detailed his offseason work and the lessons he took from last summer. “What did I learn from last season? That you need to prepare well for the season, not treat it carelessly,” he said.
“There was no vacation at all, because an important season is ahead. I need to play well; I want that myself. So, I need to keep my body in shape at all times.”
He backed the words up. Rather than take time off, Michkov spent the summer working through training cycles in Perm, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and dropped in on Artemi Panarin‘s camp for extra reps with one of the league’s best pure scorers. The Flyers were serious enough about it to send a coach to Russia for two weeks to oversee the process directly: three sessions a day, every day, morning gym work, on-ice practice, evening conditioning.
Nutrition got the same treatment, and Michkov was refreshingly candid about how long it took him to buy in. “I put on a Whoop band once. It showed me 20 percent recovery.
I haven’t worn it since,” he said, before turning serious. “It’s important to eat right so you have the energy for training and recovery. All great players come to this sooner or later.
So I have to stick to it too.”
He’s set to return to the Philadelphia area in early August, ahead of training camp opening on September 17. Along the way, he’s stayed plugged into his new home. He praised teammate Trevor Zegras‘ new four-year extension worth $36.5 million, saying the team is “basically built around” him, and even weighed in on LeBron James joining the 76ers.
It’s the kind of offhand comment from a guy who, two years ago, could barely order dinner in English.
Michkov punctuated the summer with a reminder of exactly what the Flyers are waiting on. At the Match of the Year charity exhibition on July 25, an annual event at SKA Arena in St. Petersburg organized by Alex Ovechkin, Mikhail Sergachev, and Artemi Panarin, Michkov scored a hat trick. He tapped in a backhand feed from Maxim Shalunov for his first, beat goaltender Maxim Dorozhko with a shot from a tough angle off another Shalunov pass for his second, then capped it off with a highlight-reel lacrosse-style “Michigan” goal for his third.
Naturally, he shrugged it off. “It just happened that way,” he said. “The pass came to my backhand, so I had to lift it and, well, that was it.
I’ve tried it in games, too, but no luck in the NHL so far.” It’s just an exhibition, but it’s a reminder that none of the tools that made him an elite rookie ever went anywhere, and that he’s already thinking about bringing that same flair into a real NHL game.
It’s easy to lose sight of how young Michkov still is, and how much he’s had to handle off the ice while doing all of this on it. He’s still only 21. He arrived in Philadelphia alone in July 2024 at just 19, without speaking English, and his mother and brother did not join him for another month.
His skating coach effectively served as his translator around the clock, and for most of his rookie year, his entire English vocabulary for ordering food was “steak, pasta, and Sprite.” He’s talked openly about how disorienting he found American social norms compared to the directness he grew up with in Russia.
That’s the backdrop for everything that looked like a slump last season. He wasn’t just adjusting to Tocchet’s system, to NHL travel, to bigger and stronger defensemen. He was building a life in a new country while doing it.
This season, by his own account, that part has gotten dramatically easier. His English has come a long way, teammates like Noah Cates have gotten in the habit of slowing down and simplifying things around him in team meetings, and his family is finally settled nearby too.
None of that erases last season’s shortcomings, but it puts it in a very different light. This is a player who was already scoring like a franchise cornerstone as a teenager, who found his form again the moment his conditioning caught up to him, and who has spent an entire summer fixing the one issue standing between him and his coach’s trust. Year three looks less like a referendum on his future and more like the moment Michkov stops being a story about potential and starts being the player the Flyers drafted him to be.
Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images