It’s time to grade Matvei Michkov.

Speed: 6.75/10

6.5–7.25: Above NHL average, but unlikely to project to high-end or elite status at the NHL level.

Michkov’s speed/skating concerns are mainly one of the supremely high standards that smaller players are held to.

To be Michkov’s size and not have your speed brought into question? It essentially requires you to have the skating stride of Connor McDavid, or at least something close.

Michkov isn’t that. But his skating speed is of little to no concern in my book.

When he really wants to separate from opponents, he does so without much trouble. When he needs to recover a loose puck in the offensive zone, he reliably gets there early enough to make the first touch.

There are times when he doesn’t. They’re plentiful enough to take elite skating speed largely off the table.

But I don’t see average speed here either.

Edges/footwork: 10/10

10: Virtual certainty to be among the high-end NHLers

Michkov’s edge work is a thing of beauty. It all helps to create a player who is a nightmare to check in open ice or along the boards.

He gets power in his pushes off either the inside or outside edge. This gives him a separating gear where his raw speed may not have otherwise. He can feel when he doesn’t have the speed to beat a defender angling off and stopping on a dime before pushing in either direction.

There’s a level of instinct that makes this possible, muddling the categories. But these thoughts would all be for naught if he didn’t have extremely high-end edge work.

Michkov is excellent at recognizing when a defender is stuck on his track while chasing him into the boards, and he uses his edges—so light as to be weightless—to effortlessly change directions and free himself.

His edge work is so good that he can use it to set up Michigan goals. I’m wording that very carefully. He doesn’t just see an opportunity to score the lacrosse goal. He manufactures that opening.

Note how quickly and how naturally he fakes popping out around the near side of the net. He fools the defender and the goalie to a degree into covering a wraparound that never comes.

Then he carves up the ice with some insanely intricate footwork to appear around the other side of the net and score the Michigan.

That’s in the KHL!

His skating reminds me of Kirill Kaprizov. He isn’t a pure speedster. His downhill skating won’t remind anyone of Nate MacKinnon. But his edges are special, and his ability to move laterally is borderline generational.

Hands: 10/10

10: Virtual certainty to be among the high-end NHLers.

Matvei Michkov’s control of the puck is special. I had no hesitation in ranking his hands a 10/10 and have no doubt that he will be one of the best puck handlers in the NHL. I came closer to giving him an 11 grade than a 10.

Watch the way he baits this KHL defender into a poke check by pulling the puck behind his back skate. It looks compromising.

He pulls the puck forward with surreal quickness, and he does it without ever looking like the puck left his hip pocket.

If he bobbled this puck at all, then this breakaway doesn’t happen. The back pressure catches up to him. But Matvei Michkov doesn’t bobble pucks. And once he’s in alone on goalies, his shot is far from his only weapon.

There’s something preternaturally deceptive about the way Michkov’s hands move. There always has been. Not only does the positioning of his hands on his stick rarely give away his intentions, but they often give people entirely false impressions.

That goalie is looking at Michkov’s hands. He’s looking for an indicator of an incoming shot. He’s looking for his hands to spread out on his stick or maybe just tighten their grip on his stick.

When he sees nothing, and Michkov doesn’t disrupt his handle at all while he’s going behind the net, the goalie reads that the play is going around the other side and starts his push to get across to the other post.

It’s an MHL goalie. Does an NHL goalie make that read so early? No. But that goalie didn’t just open the net up because he’s incompetent.

Michkov’s hands just gave off too many fakes for an MHL goalie to process.

And then they’re quick enough, precise enough, to tuck the puck in that short side opening he just created.

Vision: 9.25/10

8.75-9.5: I consider it more likely than not that this trait reaches an elite projection.

Whenever Matvei Michkov has the interest or desire to pass, he does so masterfully. Again, deception reigns Supreme. Masking intent is the basis of his offensive game, which shows up again in his playmaking.

Again. And again.

Michkov has a reputation for selfishness, stemming mainly from an over-willingness to trust his own shot. I see this as a hyper-intelligent hockey player playing the way he’s incentivized to play.

For one thing, shot quality and the zero-sum game of shot selection are relatively new concepts in hockey. For much of the game’s life, all shots were treated as good shots. Even now, we look at a team’s shot totals and use it as a means to determine who got the better of possession.

Hockey doesn’t really punish taking bad shots. So if Michkov can create his own shot at will… and he can… why wouldn’t he?

Furthermore, Michkov has spent his life as—by far—the most gifted player on his team. By a wide margin. Particularly as a goal scorer.

If Michkov chooses to take a medium-quality shot over his general linemate taking a high-quality shot, he’s probably right that he still has the better chance of scoring.

I expect him to change organically when the incentives change. The flashes are all there.

He can turn on the passing game at will. And the will should come as soon as it’s necessary.

Strength: 5/10

4.5-5.5: A limiting factor at the NHL level that will need to be worked around or improved.

I’ve always been impressed by just how little Michkov’s strength tends to matter for… anything. He’s a small kid. He isn’t fast enough to be in and out before a battle occurs.

In theory, he should be susceptible to being bullied along the walls. He should cough up pucks easily. In some ways, he still is. He does still lose puck battles, more than is ideal at the KHL level.

He will have to improve his strength. But he already works around his lack of strength extremely well and pulls it off against men.

While he loses battles more than would be ideal, he’s unnaturally good at making plays with the puck once he gets it along the wall.

Just check the “boards to middle plays” data. Given how often the puck in board battles, is only average among prospects, that’s absolutely insane.

Michkov already plays above his weight in contests of strength. Just ask Dmitri Simashev.

Simashev’s support got there first. His team won the puck, but this was no fault of Michkov. It showed good physical habits that will only become more effective as he puts on weight.

Balance: 8/10

7.5-8.5: Above NHL average, and potentially projectable to become elite at the NHL level.

Michkov’s balance plays well above his weight. Like Kirill Kaprizov, he uses his elite edges to anchor himself into the ice and ride through contact while he’s protecting the puck.

Protecting the puck is a surprisingly large part of his game.

He shields the puck through contact and stays attached, then makes his play.

Just go ahead and skim the number of clips in this article where Michkov has a defender on his back. It’s as though he believes he’s Draisaitl down there.

In reality, he’s just that hard on his skates. Just that slippery. He will play through contact at the NHL level—lots of it.

Offensive instincts: 11/10

11: Generational. Could be high-end in the NHL right from their draft season. One of one.

In order to explain my score here, I’m not going to break down the film. I could, but merely showing you examples of his intelligence feels inadequate. Instead, I want to tell you a short story.

Some of this, you may remember.

Back when Michkov was scoring ungodly amounts of goals at the VHL level, he was catching a lot of flak for the way in which he was scoring.

It was a lot of pond hockey nonsense. It was him practically making a statement: “I’m too good for this league.”

At least, that’s how I interpreted his actions. I said as much for months.

Admittedly, I should have been more confident. I posited it as a possibility—A MERE POSSIBILITY—that Matvei Michkov could completely change his game at the drop of the hat.

Shame on me. That’s exactly what he did. As soon as he was provided with different stimuli, the second he had to adjust to the KHL, he adapted his offensive game to the task.

Give-and-go plays in place of elongated carries. Plays to take the puck from the boards to the middle ice.

All the little stuff that people thought Michkov neglected, he suddenly mastered.

Because that’s what Matvei Michkov is. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime hockey prodigy.

Whether or not he’s a generational prospect is a discussion for another day, but he’s certainly a generational offensive thinker and tactician.

If he were forced to adapt to the NHL in October, I’m reasonably confident he’d do it by December.

Instead, he’s going to get another 3 years to hone his craft.

And by the time he comes to America? It won’t be Matvei Michkov adjusting to the NHL.

The NHL will have to adjust to Matvei Michkov.

Defensive instincts: 4/10

3.0-4: Potentially crippling flaw at the NHL level

Defense may as well be a foreign language to him. This kid is NOT going to be winning any Selke trophies. If there was such a thing as the Anti-Selke, he may get a few votes for that.

It’s a problem that’s exasperated by his being a child playing against men. And given who he is, a risk-taking and high-flying offensive winger, I don’t expect him to ever be anything more than a neutral on defense.

But he has a very realistic path toward being so good offensively that it doesn’t really matter.

Compete level: 9.25/10

8.75-9.5: I consider it more likely than not that this trait reaches an elite projection.

Michkov’s hardness on pucks and general willingness to play through contact are only buoyed by his genuine eagerness to hit bigger players.

That play against Simashev was one example. Here’s one against the bigger and significantly older Simon Edvinnson. Michkov flattened him.

His tenacity seems to begin as soon as he leaves his defensive blueline. He still floats a bit defensively. As if he’s caught between trying to use his instincts to read and kill plays before they happen or playing earnest man-to-man defense.

The result is a fair bit of floating. And the only thing keeping this category from being a 10 or even 11.

But even against KHL, he will go to the high-traffic areas with aplomb. He’s excited to get to the inside, daring grown men to flatten him if they can.

Michkov is very well aware that hockey is a contact sport. It seems to be what he loves about it.

Shooting: 10/10

10: Virtual certainty to be among the high-end NHLers.

There are things that Michkov can do as a shooter that even many NHLers can’t do. His hand positioning is seemingly paying homage to Nikita Kucherov, sneakily one of the league’s best shooters.

His wrist shot has beaten goalies with regularity in every level he’s played in. And he’s played in every level of hockey but the NHL if you see the KHL and AHL on similar tiers.

His hands are so good that he can elevate the puck at point-blank range with a defender on his back.

Since this has to be part of Michkov’s game everyone knows already, I feel no need to dive much further into this score.

There’s one thing everyone agrees he has in abundance. Shooting ability.

Conclusion:

Matvei Michkov is worth the wait for any team at the top of the draft that has been struggling to create offense. As sacrilegious as this may sound to some, there’s the potential of Michkov being an even greater offensive force than Connor Bedard.

I wouldn’t hang my hat on that, but here’s what I’ll say confidently: they’re absolutely on the same tier.

As an overall prospect, Matvei Michkov scored an 8.325. That puts him firmly in the category of a franchise cornerstone.

But his offensive potential alone is the real driver. He has the highest offensive potential in the data set, scoring a 9.28. He narrowly edged out Bedard’s 9.25.

Most importantly, both clear the 9.0 threshold required to be considered generational offensive talents.

So here’s my question: How high would you draft a prospect of Bedard’s talent, even knowing there was a chance that he may never play a game in North America?

My guess is: pretty high.

Mandatory Credit: Washington Hockey Now