Matvei Michkov Is Everything We Thought

Over this past summer, immediately after the Flyers selected Matvei Michkov with the 7th overall pick of the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, I wrote something titled “Matvei Michkov Has Always Been Generational.”

“To me, a generational talent is anyone whose abilities leave a mark on the sport that they’re playing. Someone so special that their play is indelible in your mind. For me, there’s always more than one person like that playing in any league at any given time.

Connor McDavid is a generational talent, and he’s the one that everyone gloms onto.

But I’ve always struggled to call Nikita Kucherov anything except generational. How could I watch him handle the puck, watch the supernatural flashes of brilliance he produces, and not have an entire generation of hockey partially defined by that experience?

I feel the same way about Nathan MacKinnon. And Auston Matthews. All for slightly different reasons. Like artists, they all leave their mark on this era of hockey.”

For my money, to be generational is not merely a demarcation of talent. There’s a separate bar to clear. It’s not a separate tier of players or an award we give out at the end of seasons or careers. It’s a moniker that should be reserved for people who change the way hockey is viewed if you just watch them close enough.

This season, Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon have both cemented my argument for including them.

No player in the world sees hockey quite like Kucherov. The degree to which he manipulates the spacing of the game is uncanny. He understands where his outlets are and where the pressure is coming from better than anyone else in the league. He’s the pinnacle of mental excellence. Even his physical talents, the transcendent technical skill with which he plays, are mostly a natural extension of his unique neurological gifts honed by obsessive practice.

Nathan MacKinnon is a physical force unlike any in the league today. Even Connor McDavid doesn’t match the raw athleticism that MacKinnon brings to the game. He brings all of McDavid’s speed and stickhandling ability, then adds in a layer of power that McDavid doesn’t. That’s not to say McDavid is weak. You don’t reach his heights by being frail, but MacKinnon is as strong as nearly any power forward in the league. He’s the apex of physical dominance.

Auston Matthews is on pace for 71 goals through 46 games of the regular season. Alex Ovechkin, arguably the greatest goal scorer of all time, had a career-high of 65. To hit 70 is a feat that has not been accomplished in the modern game, and he’s knocking on the door.

But that doesn’t, alone, make him generational.

To have his natural finishing ability and sense of timing is special. The way he can just walk into prime scoring locations, and then understand exactly how to beat a goalie once he’s arrived with the puck on his stick, is a quality that only a few players share. And yet? None of them are 6’3″ centers. He moves as well as any of them despite his size. He has one of the best sticks in the league. A premiere puck thief, and therefore someone who can wreak equal degrees of havoc on the forecheck or off of the rush.

Only having 18 assists is mostly a product of his teammates trolling as soon as he sets them up. A statistical anomaly. Underneath the surface, it’s undeniable that he’s also an elite passer and playmaker.

His well-roundedness is what sets him apart from everyone else. The best goal scorer in the NHL by a considerable margin is also bad or average at nothing. He has no discernible weaknesses unless you count having the most savage fanbase in the league to assist opposing fans in minimizing the talent that he displays regularly

In my opinion, it’s folly to ignore any of these players’ contributions to the fabric of the sport. It’s a disservice to hockey to act as if they aren’t an integral part of this league and this sport’s story ten years down the line. When you’re sitting with your kids, or anyone really, a decade or more from now… will you just mention Connor McDavid and act as if nobody else existed?

I would certainly hope not. That person would leave the conversation with such a remarkably incomplete picture of the era. Imagine not knowing about–quite possibly–the most physically dominant force since Mario Lemieux. Imagine just overlooking the 5’10” winger who used unprecedented mental abilities to dominate the game as thoroughly as men with twice or thrice his athletic abilities. And yes, imagine just passing on by one of history’s greatest goal-scorers who also happened to have no discernible weaknesses.

Each one of them has a role in carving out the story of hockey for their era. Each of them are artists who leave an impression on the game that is unique. And none of them should be reasonably excluded from the story of the modern era.

All of that is table setting. Last summer, I claimed that a then 18-year-old kid seemed predestined to join this next pantheon of great artists whose incredible talents define an era. He’s a 19-year-old kid now, and his draft+1 season is nearing its end. The stats will change. But the story won’t. The story of this season for Matvei Michkov has been one of the tribulations, but ultimately, triumphs.

With an unprecedented amount of headwind, it would seem only natural for him to fail to live up to the lofty expectations that he carries around. But that isn’t what happened at all.

His draft+1 production in NHL equivalency remains as ridiculous as it has been for years. It looks the most similar to Auston Matthews, in model terms. His other comps are mostly a who’s who of all-time greats.

In raw terms, he has 33 points in 38 games with Sochi. Nearly a point-per-game player as an 18-19-year-old in the KHL… that simply doesn’t happen.

As I’ve mentioned before, it has led people to inspect the entire league’s quality just because it’s so unfathomable that a teenager is doing this. He’s breaking the established norms, and everyone needs an explanation beyond his brilliance.

And yet the numbers–without proper context–are almost poultry. They fail to depict what he’s done. For starters, Sochi sets new records for ineptitude every time they take the ice. They are, for the most part, a hockey team that utterly lacks competence. If there’s any aspect of the game that can be failed at, they will fail at it spectacularly.

People are rightfully enamored with the offense that Connor Bedard has managed to produce in the NHL at his age. To do it on the Blackhawks of all teams? Remarkable. And it’s a necessary part of the story. It makes his efforts seem ever more herculean.

Matvei Michkov is playing for the Chicago Blackhawks of the KHL. That means his teammates are worse than the Blackhawks by degrees of magnitude. Oh, the Blackhawks are a borderline sub-NHL squad? Sochi is a borderline sub-KHL squad.

In both cases, two electric talents drafted merely a summer ago are putting up unprecedented numbers with a team that can generously be described as incompetent.

And yet, that isn’t all the context we need to fix those numbers with. The one positive thing about Bedard playing on a desert wasteland of sub-NHL talent is that the Blackhawks know exactly what time it is. They flood Bedard with ice time (when he’s available) because they know he is their best offensive player. 19 minutes a night. It went down. It used to be 21 minutes a night: power-play 1, top-line player.

Russia isn’t like North America. In this regard, the KHL isn’t even like the NHL. They’ve certainly gotten more trusting of young players, but to call them trusting would be a grave overstatement.

Despite being the anomaly that he is? Despite leading his team in goals and points per game, and undoubtedly being the best offensive player on his squad? Matvei Michkov has played on the 2nd line for much of the season and on the second power-play unit.

One of the least talented teams in the league is playing their most talented player like a middle-six secondary scorer, because meh… he’s young. And he’s still producing more than those they put at the top of the lineup.

Much gets made of the unprecedented amounts of ice time that Michkov has received relative to other KHL prospects. And yes, he has gotten more minutes than them. But in reality, he still doesn’t get the minutes that he should.

Of course, he has gotten more minutes than them. He’s not like them. He’s outproduced them at every level and blazed a trail that is entirely without precedent in the nation of Russia. What the hell do you expect?

The story isn’t that he plays more minutes than most prospects. The story is that, despite this treatment, he still doesn’t play as much as he should.

Somehow, I haven’t even mentioned the most hilarious and impactful piece of context that we need to affix to his already historic production.

On December 6th, it came out that Matvei Michkov was diagnosed with pneumonia. It was the explanation for why he’d missed several games over the two months prior with undisclosed “illnesses.”

The truth was that he was attempting to play through a severe lung infection the entire time. Sometimes, he could fake it and make it. Other times, breathing was simply too much of a chore for him to take the ice. The carousel in and out of the lineup began around mid-October. Since then, I doubt Michkov has felt 100% in many–if any–of the games he’s played.

He’s been a shell of himself athletically. Every explosive movement he makes could send him into a fit of coughs and otherwise rob him of his ability to breathe properly.

Despite that, he has still managed to produce at a level befitting a special prospect. He’s playing with a handicap, tying his athleticism behind his back because bursts of movement cost him air, and still carving his name into D+1 history books.

But it’s like I’ve said. Production and talent isn’t the end-all, be-all when you’re identifying generational players. There’s an artistic element to it all.

Matvei Michkov isn’t the perfect hockey player. He’s pretty undersized and he’s fast but doesn’t exactly break the sound barrier with his speed like the true elite skaters in the league. His relationship with defense would correctly be described as “come and go.”

He doesn’t throw bone-crunching hits… at least not that often. And that’s led to some people describing his compete levels as “average,” or somewhere below that. To me, that’s just missing the forest for the trees. Matvei Michkov is one of the most tenacious, competitive players under the sun. He just applies it differently than others.

He’s ruthless in his desire to create offense. He seems to play hockey to shove the puck down the other team’s throat. He’s intelligent in his attack, but he’ll do anything to get to the part where he’s attacking.

Sochi is down one here. There are 12 minutes left in the game. They were down by multiple goals, but Michkov had already intervened before this with a gorgeous assist to help make it 3-2 in this third period.

Michkov is manning his side of the blueline like a winger typically would. A shot attempt by the other team misses the net and the rebound wraps around the opposite side boards. By this time, Michkov is already bolting. But he isn’t just bolting to the neutral zone. He’s bolting towards the neutral zone on the other side of the ice.

He already read that his teammate would be contesting a puck with a pinching defenseman. If he makes himself available, then his teammate can get him the puck with a simple chip up the strong side wall. Then he has the puck with speed and space. There’s only 1 defender above the play.

As I said yesterday, the sequence seemed… unmistakably Flyers. At least the 23-24 iterations of the team. But Michkov reads and executes the offensive side of the game in a way that’s different from anyone currently on the roster.

Naturally, this lone defender has an aversion to being sent to the House of Highlights and giving up breakaways so he affords Michkov a wide berth. Michkov doesn’t try to beat the defender with pure speed and take a shot from an angle that the goaltender has already choked off.

Instead, he pulls up and uses the space that the defender has given him. While he’s fending off that lone man, he’s waiting for his teammates to join him in the rush. He hits Tyanulin with a pass that wasn’t quite perfect, but good enough. The goaltender chokes off the cross-crease attempt.

But goalies have a hard time controlling rebounds when they’re flying from post to post. So the next man in simply pockets the loose change.

Bang. Tie game.

If the play seems unmistakably Flyers-esque, it’s probably because that’s intentional.

That’s an old NHL coach referencing a prospect who he has never met and likely never spoken to. That is ridiculous on its face, but what he’s saying is even more totally beyond normal. He’s describing the construction of a team play style meant specifically to benefit a single prospect in Russia. A team play style that they’re implementing now, to make the team “ready for Michkov.”

This is where we get to Michkov not being a perfect player. Because the truth is, you kind of do need to construct a team whose goal and intent is to maximize him.

This was a poll that kind of caught fire, and as a resident propagandist for both Carlsson and Michkov, allow me to provide a unique answer. In short: it depends.

If I’m throwing Carlsson or Michkov onto a random team at the age of 24, then I’d take Carlsson. Leo has a unique–uncanny–mixture of abilities. He’s such a versatile talent that you can shove him in whatever system and make him play whatever role you want, and it will have little to no impact on his general quality as a player.

Want him to be a defensively responsible center? He can do that. Want him to be a puck transporter above all else? He can do that. Want him to run offense off the cycle and play an intelligent, facilitating from the half-wall? He can do that. Want him to wreak havoc around the net and play-make at the goal line or finish off netfront plays? Yeah, you guessed it. He can do that too!

Leo Carlsson is the most versatile player in this draft and one of the most versatile and sophisticated drafted in recent history.

However.

If I can use either Carlsson or Michkov as the first central piece of an entire team, then I will choose Michkov.

Matvei Michkov, when he’s allowed to play his unique brand of hockey, flashes the potential to be the best player in the world. Or at least contend for that title, given that projection also requires projecting others.

He cheats for offense because he’s a kid who’s still learning to pull back on the reigns. But he’s also anticipating at such a high level. He’s hunting for opportunities to catch pucks in stride and attack defenders with a speed differential.

While I certainly wouldn’t confuse him for the physical specimen of Nathan MacKinnon, he has the relentless mentality of MacKinnon. He will attack at all costs and with absolutely zero regard for risk. He’s always looking to put defenders in a precarious position where they have to defend him 1 on 1. The dilemma he creates is different from “Nate Dogg,” but the way they look to create it is similar.

He forces his defenders to react, and when he has built up speed, failing to react is a reaction all the same. He’ll just drive right through you, even while he’s athletically compromised.

Giving him space is just as bad as challenging him. He doesn’t allow himself to be caught taking a 1v1 where he doesn’t have the advantage. Some electric puck carriers, like his countrymate Ivan Demidov, will chase the blow-by at all costs and run into walls because of it.

But Michkov reads when you’ve given him too much room, pulls back, and makes a play to a teammate to secure quality possession for his team. There’s no such thing as springing a trap on him.

Now you’re stuck in defensive zone coverage, hoping Michkov doesn’t dissect you from there, instead of taking the puck the other way after stonewalling his initial rush attempt. He doesn’t allow you to race the other way very often. He manages to make all of these creative plays without putting the puck in danger frequently, a testament to his game-breaking and singular intelligence.

Michkov tries too hard to get there at times, but his control of the neutral zone is uncanny. When he has the puck in the neutral zone, the play is virtually guaranteed to flow in the proper direction. Even when the odds are thoroughly stacked against him.

He has no speed here, and his back is turned to the weak side of the play. A forechecker is breathing down his neck immediately. There’s no room to make a move or try to beat his man 1 on 1, but somehow, Michkov sees a teammate on the weak side. He cuts back and floats a pass over sticks.

His tree of reads, the things he processes before he goes into a 1 on 1 engagement, is truly endless. There’s always an answer. Somewhat like a European prodigy in another sport, Luka Doncic has a counter for everything. There is no coverage or defensive strategy that he doesn’t have an answer for.

It’s over time. Playing 3 on 3 means his support options are limited. The defenseman has chosen to draw a line in the sand. He hasn’t set a tight gap, but rather, a loose one that he wants Michkov to close. The typical answer is to pull up and find a teammate, but there’s nobody to find that has a quality look at the net. His one option is a little drop pass to a teammate who will be forced behind the net.

So Michkov cuts to the slot himself. He baits the poke check along the way and puts the stick under the defenseman’s extended triangle with a move between his legs. Then he powers through that defender’s stick for the initial shot attempt. (As an aside, a healthier Michkov has remarkable core strength.)

The comparison that Michkov most often receives is Nikita Kucherov. Given their build, skill level, and intelligence? It’s a good comparison. The best one that you’re going to find. But even here, there are differences.

Kucherov plays with, in some sense, a conservatism. He wants the puck, but he typically tracks back to collect the puck and make a pass to others. He’s easy to play with on breakouts for your defensemen because you can just hurl a puck recklessly up the strong side boards, and if that’s his side? Well, then he’s going to guarantee you an easy exit with a crazy outlet pass to Point or whoever else he’s playing with so that they can carry ahead with speed.

Michkov can make those same plays. He’s willing and able to do that. As he matures, I suspect that he’ll do more and more of it out of necessity. But also, as he plays with centers that resemble Brayden Point more than whoever Sochi sticks in the middle of him, he’ll be more willing to be a cog in the machine.

But given his preference? He wants to be the one who’s playing with speed. And that’s great in theory, but we shouldn’t run from what that means. It puts additional stress on your defensemen, as well as your center both on the breakout as well as in the defensive zone.

As Michkov matures, he’ll become a more sage gambler and have a more nuanced understanding of when to go and when to hold back. But he’ll always go when he sees the opportunity. It’s how he’s wired.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the Flyers are hoarding puck-moving defensemen. You need guys who can navigate the forecheck, and get the puck to Michkov.

I don’t think it’s an accident that they’re unsure of Morgan Frost at the center position. Because they’re asking their wingers to ruthlessly fly the zone (an early simulation of the Michkov experience), they demand defensive excellence out of the man in the middle. The defensive bar to clear is high, and that Frost has earned some more rope recently should tell you just how great the strides he’s made are.

Michkov doesn’t make life easy for his teammates all the time. But he does make life rewarding for them. Allow to me provide an example that you could easily see happen every single game, if not several times a game.

Jamie Drysdale escapes a forecheck instead of succumbing to pressure and advances the puck to a streaking Michkov. Michkov threatens the first man back with built-up speed and the otherworldly skill that is uniquely his. The defenseman backs off and keeps Michkov in front of him because he knows what happens if he steps up. Michkov cuts back or otherwise delays. The uniquely explosive Drysdale manifests in the lane as a trailer, beating the back-checking defense to the landmark and catching a puck with space.

That only ends in one way: scoring chance. And a fair number of times? A goal from either Drysdale or Michkov. Drysdale, or whichever defenseman, had to pull their weight to make it happen. But ultimately? They’re walking into scoring chances. Or they’re walking into playmaking opportunities which Michkov finishes off. Every defenseman and every center is going to have that stress test.

If you can do your part, you will find that the offensive side of the game is thrice as easy as it used to be. Patrice Bergeron made life easier on his linemates by lightening their defensive load and providing a constant outlet in support, but he wasn’t all that much help to you in the endeavor of making plays. Brad Marchand took care of that himself. David Pastrnak took care of that himself.

Michkov is, in some ways, the anti-Bergeron. His equal but opposite force. If you can handle your shit defensively, if you can move the puck under pressure without him babying you all the time, then he will make your life immensely easy through the neutral zone and in the offensive zone.

He’s the “Mad Russian” for a reason. He’s not the buttoned-up coach’s son who would endear himself to old-fashioned NHL coaches with his eye for conventional detail away from the puck. He’s a shark whose nose for blood is as sensitive as it gets, and who may die if he isn’t constantly in motion and relentlessly hunting for the next advantage.

Somehow, I can already imagine Tortorella watching streams of KHL games (as Briere and Jones say they do) and laughing at himself while saying, “This kid is a f******g lunatic.”

And he just might be. But he’s not just a madman. He’s a mad scientist.

And doesn’t that sound like a player who fits the criteria I laid out for “generational?”

I don’t have a crystal ball, but this kid has had “future top-of-the-league scorer” written all over him since he was 15. But more than that, he uniquely accomplishes his offensive mastery. Indelible in the mind of anyone who watches him for any extended amount of time, and especially for people who have an appreciation of the creative mind who operates on the cutting edge of the sport.

He’s the skillset of Nikita Kucherov with the relentless downhill attacking mentality of Nathan MacKinnon. He has the same sense of timing upshooting opportunities as Auston Matthews. He has a little bit of all of them in his game, but he isn’t exactly like any of them.

He’s something unique.

He isn’t the next Ovechkin, as his torrid goal scoring pace once suggested. He isn’t even the next Kucherov, as his nuclear ability with the puck and otherworldly offensive instincts would indicate.

He’s the first Matvei Michkov.

And ten years from now, the real comparison will be, “Hey. This top prospect has a little Matvei in his game.”

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Mandatory credit: HC Sochi

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