Home / News / Philadelphia Flyers select Matvei Michkov seventh overall after rumors suggest Capitals were pursuing him

Philadelphia Flyers select Matvei Michkov seventh overall after rumors suggest Capitals were pursuing him

By Ian Oland

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June 29, 2023 1:07 am

The Washington Capitals selected talented 18-year-old winger Ryan Leonard out of the U-18 USA Hockey National Team Development Program with the eighth overall pick. But all reports ahead of Draft Day suggested the Capitals were pursuing Matvei Michkov — a top three talent who was predicted to slide down the draft board due to KHL contract and geopolitical issues.

Michkov, who wore a red suit and tie to Bridgestone Arena, did indeed slide as hockey insiders predicted, but he did not fall to the Capitals. Instead, the Philadelphia Flyers, who were rumored to be focused on Leonard, snatched up the right wing one pick before the Caps at seven.

Nearly two weeks before the draft, rumors swirled that a number of teams were not getting assurances from Michkov that he’d speak to them and that the forward was trying to control his destiny on who he’d be picked by.

“One of the things I heard too was in Russia this year, the teams that could get there to meet him it wasn’t easy to get to talk to him,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported. “You would try to talk to him, set up appointments, and he just wasn’t interested. Someone said to me the only way you could really get to talk to him was if you physically got to him right after a game and talked to him for a couple minutes.

“So, there’s a number of teams hearing that he’s coming in [for the draft] and they want the opportunity to meet with him. And, like I said, some of these teams haven’t gotten a commitment yet. So, what everybody is kind of wondering here is does Michkov have a preference? Is there a team or teams that he wants to go to and he’s kind of maneuvering it so that that happens?”

On Draft Day, Friedman said the Flyers were throwing up smokescreens on who they’d take, making the Capitals antsy that Michkov would not fall to them. The Caps making a trade with Montreal at five was suspected by other teams.

Instead all those theories went out the window as the Capitals stood pat and the Flyers apparently got their guy.

“We know he’s got a contract for three more seasons, but for us we just felt after watching him play and after meeting him, we just felt it was a talent we can’t pass up,” Flyers GM Daniel Briere said. “If we have to wait, we wait. It is what it is.”

Friedman reported after the first night of the draft was over that Michkov met with the Flyers twice and convinced the franchise that he wanted to be picked by them.

“He seemed to have a really good time,” Briere said. “We met with him a couple times. You could tell for some reason he loved the Flyers and be part of the Flyers. We saw on stage his reaction was amazing. He basically convinced us in the meeting that he wanted to be there and to be a Flyer. Our staff all felt really good about selecting him.”

Michkov expressed his happiness about the pick through an interpreter during an interview with ESPN’s Emily Kaplan.

“I’m glad to be a Flyer. I have no words,” Michkov said. “This is my dream and my dream is to win a Stanley Cup.”

Michkov is a staggeringly good young player, who managed to break an Alex Ovechkin held Russian record as a 16-year-old.

Michkov first burst onto the prospect scene with an absurd 2019-20 season with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the Under-16 Russian junior league. The Perm native amassed 109 points (70g, 39a) in 26 games, an incredible 4.19 PPG.

A year later, Michkov jumped up an age group to the Under-20 MHL level and did more record-breaking. His 56 points (38g, 18a) are the most any 16-year-old has ever recorded in a single MHL season. The list of names he jumped over to take hold of that mark includes current NHLers Nikita Kucherov (54), Pavel Buchnevich (44), Kirill Kaprizov (34), Kirill Marchenko (26), Grigori Denisenko (22), and Klim Kostin (21).

That same season saw Michkov star for Russia at the 2021 IIHF World Under-18 Championship, going head-to-head with Connor Bedard. Despite coming up short to Canada in the gold-medal game, Michkov led all players in scoring with 16 points (12g, 4a) and was named MVP of the tournament.

Those 16 points were the second-most for a 16-year-old at the U18 games, behind the 18 points that Alex Ovechkin (2002) and Mikhail Grigorenko (2011) scored in their respective tournaments. Only Ovechkin scored more goals (14) in his age-16 appearance.

During the 2021-22 campaign, Michkov made his KHL debut with SKA St. Petersburg after leading Russia to gold at the 2021 Hlinka-Gretzky Cup alongside current Capitals prospect Ivan Miroshnichenko. Michkov got into 13 total KHL games and recorded five points (2g, 3a) but once again did most of his damage that season in the MHL.

In 28 MHL games, Michkov put up 51 points (30g, 21a). He saved his best for the end of the season as his 17 points (13g, 4a) in 17 playoff games helped SKA-1946 St. Petersburg secure the MHL championship. The uber-talented winger ended up scoring the championship-winning goal with a lacrosse move.

Michkov split last season between three levels of Russian hockey (MHL, VHL, KHL) but spent the majority of his time in the KHL.

After being loaned to the KHL’s bottom-dwelling HC Sochi, Michkov was finally given consistent ice time at the top level in Russia. In 27 games with HC Sochi, he recorded 20 points (9g, 11a). Even if you include the three games he played for SKA St. Petersburg in the KHL where he was sometimes skating less than two minutes a game, his .67 points per game rate was the highest for a draft-eligible player in KHL history.

By comparison, Evgeny Kuznetsov had only eight points (2g, 6a) in 35 games (0.23) in the KHL in his draft year. Michkov even outpaced Ovechkin’s totals of 24 points (13g, 11a) in 53 games (0.45) in his draft year in what was at the time known as the Russian Super League.

Michkov has never officially played a game at an Under-20 World Junior Championship due to COVID annulling the results of the two games he played during the 2022 tournament and then Russia being banned from the continuation of that tournament and the 2023 tournament due to the invasion of Ukraine.

Those geopolitical factors limited in-person scouting and the fact that Michkov is signed in the KHL through the 2025-26 season dropped him down the draft board.

The five-foot, ten-inch, 172-pound right wing has all of the potential in the world to be one of the NHL’s top offensive talents. Now he’ll join a Capitals rival in the Metropolitan Division.

Screenshot: @NHLFlyers/Twitter

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