By Ken Campbell, Features Writer
Yeah, sure, some guys sashay into the NHL as teenagers and immediately start skating around like they own the place. Gretzky, Ovechkin, Crosby, Lemieux, Hawerchuk, Orr, Murphy, Barrasso. Freaks, every last one of them.
Matvei Michkov (Sergei Belski-Imagn Images)
For the vast majority of them, though, it’s a constant battle to continually prove they belong in The Best League in the World™. They learn pretty quickly why former-NHLer-turned-broadcaster Ray Ferraro thinks they should simply change the name of the sport to “hard.” Joe Thornton had seven points in his rookie season, eh? Jacques Martin once referred to a 19-year-old Jason Spezza as “a boy playing a man’s game.” One time during Brendan Shanahan’s rookie season, he lined up for a faceoff and the opposing winger asked the 18-year-old how things were going. “Not too good,” Shanahan replied. “I’m tied with Ron Hextall in goals.”
For a lot of guys, it looks a little like this: you follow up a streak of eight points in five games with two in your next 10. But you keep grinding. You look a little tentative, almost as though you’re afraid to make a mistake. You disappear sometimes, which at least means you’re not going to be the star of the next day’s video session. But you’re really trying to be a responsible player, even if it means sacrificing offense. You get the puck on your stick in the fun zone and make some neat moves that don’t result in anything. Then, in overtime, the puck gets rimmed along the boards and your eyes get really big – because you lead your team in overtime goals and you’re tied for the NHL record for OT-winners by a teenager. You grab the puck, rush up the ice and try a spin-and-backhand, but it’s easily stopped, and the puck gets kicked up to Auston Matthews. Seriously, it had to be him, eh? You head back to the bench and arrive just in time to see Matthews feather a pass to Morgan Rielly for the game-winner. Well, at least you didn’t eat a minus.
For Matvei Michkov, the prized rookie the Philadelphia Flyers got long before they thought they would, it’s another battle scar, another lesson in a season that has seen some wonderful highs and gut-punch lows. “It’s hard to go with ups and downs,” Michkov said through an interpreter who travels with the team specifically for him. “It would be easier if they were all ups.”
Of course it would, but that’s rarely how the hockey gods write the script. Had Michkov stayed in Russia and played in the KHL for SKA St. Petersburg for the next two seasons like everyone thought he would, perhaps he could’ve been the second coming of Kirill Kaprizov. But right now, he’s a just-turned-20-year-old playing for one of the most demanding coaches in the history of the game in one of the most unforgiving hockey markets. And even though Michkov survived John Tortorella’s infamous rope test in training camp, that doesn’t mean the coach is going to give Michkov any more of it just because he’s a superstar in waiting. In fact, the opposite is probably true. Tortorella is likely more ardent about making Michkov a complete player because he’s so special.
It’s not enough for Tortorella to see Michkov perform magic in the offensive zone and look entirely lost inside his own blueline. It’s both a blessing and a bit of a curse that they’re getting him so early in his career, but it does give them time to teach him everything it takes to be an NHL star. The learning curve is steep, but it’s also going to be accelerated this way. Whenever Tortorella talks about the process with Michkov, he has nothing but good things to say about his receptiveness, character and compete level. “I couldn’t be happier as far as where we’re at,” said Tortorella, who might surprise some people by being happy about anything. “I’m thrilled at where we’re at there. The biggest compliment you can give a player is when you call him ‘a hockey player.’ He’s a hockey player. He loves playing. The only maintenance we have with him is the language barrier.”
When asked to respond to that kind of praise from a coach who traditionally throws plaudits around like they’re manhole covers, Michkov answered by saying, “the coach knows best.” It seems to be his standard response early in his career to everything from being benched for a period or a healthy scratch to being praised for his elevated level of gumption. Michkov may be “a hockey player” by Tortorella’s parlance, but that doesn’t mean he’s a complete hockey player. When it comes to that part of his development, well, let’s just say there have been some moments.
“We are so cognizant of what we have in him as far as the ability that he has,” Tortorella said. “But he is going to learn what it is to be a pro. He is going to learn that. And he’s going to learn that there’s another side of the puck.”
In reality, Tortorella is doing with Michkov what a hundred other coaches have done with a hundred other offensive stars in the past. It’s not much different than when Tortorella crossed swords with Vincent Lecavalier in Tampa Bay, and we all saw how that turned out. There seems to be this perception that Tortorella is on a mission to “break” Michkov down, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Tortorella is clear in saying he and the other Flyers coaches give Michkov free rein to do whatever he wants when he has the puck in the offensive zone, because that’s where he is going to make his mark. And the hockey world has seen in spurts how special Michkov can be around the net. And this isn’t meant to cast aspersions on his teammates, but if his fellow Flyers were able to convert more of the sublime and mind-boggling set-ups he gives them, Michkov would probably be running away with the NHL rookie scoring lead. “It would be so wrong for us not to spend the time that we’re spending with him on that part of the game,” Tortorella said. “We would not be doing our job. And the idiots out there who are saying, ‘He doesn’t understand it,’ they can kiss my ass. We are so happy that we’ve got him right now, and we’re not going to waste a moment as far as trying to help him.”
So, we’ll put the coach down as undecided. It was not lost on Tortorella’s boss, Flyers GM Danny Briere, that Michkov responded to being scratched for two games in November by scoring a goal and an assist, along with the winning tally in the shootout, in his first game back, en route to collecting five points in three games. One thing Briere has noticed about Michkov is that the big moments don’t seem to affect him, as evidenced by his three OT-winners and shootout-winner through the first half of the season. Briere, who took four years to establish himself as an NHL regular after scoring more than 400 points in three years of junior hockey, knows a little something about trying to change minds. “With Matvei, he takes it, and he wants to prove that the coach was wrong,” Briere said. “And that’s why you see him come back and he sticks it to him, he shows him he made a mistake by benching him or sitting him, and that’s the part that I love about Matvei. He doesn’t accept it, and he wants to show you that you’re wrong. It’s pretty cool.”
With the way Michkov sees the game, there will likely come a day when he’ll be playing chess and everyone else will be playing checkers, but that day is not now. On a Saturday afternoon after a practice at a suburban Toronto rink, Michkov emerged from the Flyers’ dressing room looking a little worn down by a pointless drought. He got a little testy over a question about his linemates and later apologized through his interpreter. He talked about how, away from the rink, he’s essentially a homebody, preferring to be close to his mother, Maria, and brother, Prohor, who live with him. Less than three months before Michkov went seventh overall in the 2023 draft, his father, Andrei, left the apartment they shared in Sochi to go to a convenience store. Two days later, he was found dead in a pond. It’s easy to forget that Michkov is barely 20 and is still dealing with that. “He likes to put away the phone and do the home things,” the interpreter said. “It’s not often he has time to be with the family, because there is a lot of time on the road. But he’d like to spend the time at home with the family, in the quiet.” If Michkov wants, he’ll get his quiet. He deserves it. But on the ice, the noise is just beginning.
This article appeared in our 2025 Rookie Issue. Our cover story focuses on Dustin Wolf, the Calgary keeper who’s “jumped” in to help the team in its surprising playoff push. We also profile other sensational NHL freshmen: Macklin Celebrini, Matvei Michkov and Logan Stankoven. In addition, we look at some of the top rookies from the PWHL, the AHL and the CHL, and we preview the NHL trade deadline, with breakdowns for all 32 clubs.
It’s available on newsstands now, or you can get it in print for free when you subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/Free today. All subscriptions include complete access to more than 76 years of articles at The Hockey News Archive.
