Matvei Michkov is The Right Way
A lot of the discussion around number 39 has been impossible to tether from one term… minutes. To include all of its subsidiaries. It’s a little hard to talk about what he’s actually doing on the ice itself without removing that term, but that’s what we’re going to do.
We’re going to talk about the hockey player and what he does on the ice without mentioning deployment, the lack of it, or the justifications thereof.
From this point on, I won’t even mention the term minutes. Where appropriate, you’ll read the term hour. Sometimes, it’s simply most appropriate to control for the minutes someone’s playing. When I do, that won’t come with any sort of implication beyond the direct meaning of the actual words on the page. No innuendos, no ulterior motives.
Let’s get the numbers dump out of the way up front.
Starting with what’s happening with him on the ice, and the short answer for that is… offense. A lot of it.
On the season, Michkov has a 55% share of expected goals according to Evolving Hockey. Much of that is due to the absurd rate at which he’s generating chances, up just over 3 expected goals per hour. The Avalanche and Hurricanes are the only teams who are replicating that rate of generation.
In other words, when Matvei Michkov steps on the ice, it’s a peek at what the high-octane offenses are doing around the league.
Owen Tippet is the only Flyers forward who comes close, at just under 3.
There’s an interesting dichotomy in the numbers where Michkov’s expected numbers in Evolving Hockey are much better than they are on Natural Stat Trick. As I understand it, the former uses the NHL’s tracking data. In instances where they differ significantly, the former is generally more reliable.
That seems to be holding true here. Michkov’s actual goal generation on the year has come at a pace of 3.09 per hour, which would closely match his expected output by Evolving Hockey while vastly exceeding his Natural Stat Trick numbers.
Remarkably, however, Michkov’s offensive dominance has come with a rather negligible defensive cost. He’s surrendering chances against at a rate of 2.5 expected goals per hour, which is far behind most Flyers forwards.
His defensive numbers are doubtlessly inflated by the nigh-constant presence of defensive stalwart Sean Couturier on his line, but I do think it’s safe to say that Michkov’s offensive wizardry is coming without surrendering a lot of that value on the defensive end. He doesn’t quite reach the point of defensively neutral, but he’s not a massive negative, and his offense more than compensates.
Of course, the most pressing question is… how? What are these numbers really telling us? What’s really happening?
Michkov’s greatest realization here seems to be that… he can’t be poor in his own zone if he’s simply not in his own zone.
On the season, Matvei Michkov is in the 76th percentile for avoiding the defensive zone altogether. He’s running nearly 3 percentage points clear of the Flyers as a team, who spend 41% of their total even-strength ice-time in the defensive zone.
Michkov isn’t particularly fast. He’s also an avid champion of lateral skating, even backwards skating. Yet despite all of that, his presence on the ice creates a constant downhill effect where the Flyers are always coming for the throats of the opposition.
But there’s another step to generating chances that goes deeper than simply spending time in the offensive zone. You have to actually direct pucks at the net.
For all of his overwhelming intelligence, there’s an unmistakable simplicity to Michkov’s game. At times, he’ll simply “put a puck on net” and seek to benefit from the chaos that happens as a natural consequence.
Even when Michkov doesn’t score, he still creates a rebound that ultimately leads to him getting another chance where he bounces the puck off the goalie and to the stick of Owen Tippett in the slot.
Look deeper in that clip, and you get a look at his lightning fast processor as he reads the pinballing puck perfectly and always gets a good jump on where the play is heading next.
Owen Tippett is one of the fastest players in the NHL, and despite Michkov being relatively slow, he rarely runs behind Tippett during the flow of play. He’s always level with Tippett, arriving at the spot through anticipation or instant recognition instead of velocity or explosiveness.
Michkov is one of the league’s most hyperactive skaters. He covers distance as well as anyone. According to NHL Edge, he’s in the 67th percentile of cumulative miles skated.
When you control for his minutes, he’s skating 10 miles every hour. Which puts him in the 87th percentile of the NHL, as a winger.
At even strength, Michkov skates 10.47 miles every hour he’s on the ice. The people at the top of the league? Marty Necas, Connor McDavid, Leo Carlsson, Jack Hughes, among others.
Almost all elite skaters, almost all centers.
Evgeni Malkin is the only slow skater who covers ground like Michkov.
He does that with his mind. He’s always anticipating. Always skating to where the puck is going.
Beneath the moments of simplicity, Michkov has retained his doctoral degree in dissecting defenses both with and without the puck in the offensive zone.
The Flyers have 204 shots as a team in the inner slot, which is comfortably behind the league average of 243. They’re not a team that gets to the “dangerous areas” with regularity.
Matvei Michkov didn’t get that memo.
On the season, he has 19 high-danger shots during his minutes according to NHL Edge. The average number for an NHL forward is 14. Now, this isn’t per hour or anything of the kind. It is a purely cumulative statistic. His playing time matters. You can use your imagination to decide how much.
Comparing Michkov to his peers who are scoring in bundles this season… Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard, and Cutter Gauthier… might be even more illuminating.
Those 3 players have 21, 24, and 20 high danger shots respectively. It’s hard to get to those areas as a young player in the NHL, and yet Michkov does it as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Now we get away from numbers for a little while and talk about how.
I’ve described Michkov as a supercomputer, and he’s already downloaded the patterns of the NHL into his central processor.
Michkov touches the puck once, and yet you see his advanced understanding of the offensive play across nearly the entire clip. It starts at the breakout, where you can’t even see Michkov on your screen at home.
Cue the memes about Michkov being off the screen while the puck is in the defensive zone, but especially in this instance, it’s serving a purpose. Since Michkov has bull-rushed through the neutral zone already, Vegas defenders are forced to stretch out and cover him that far back.
Once Andrae makes that first pass to the second player stretching the ice, Trevor Zegras, it’s game-on.
After Zegras makes the play to buy time on his puck touch, there’s a wide-open lane for Owen Tippett up the middle.
We’ve seen this Tippett play a hundred times before. He’s going to steamroll that middle lane and fire a wrist shot off the glass or the post during the 1 on 1 with the defenseman.
Except, no, because Michkov simply doesn’t stop moving. Like I said, he’s hyperactive. Now you can see where the numbers are coming from.
After posting up at the left-wall on the blueline, Michkov realizes that he won’t actually be relevant to the play here, so he’s already moving towards the middle of the ice before Zegras even touched the puck.
Now, because of Matvei Michkov’s preternatural anticipation, Tippett has a 2-on-1 to work with.
The next thing Michkov does is read space. There’s an art to going fast enough to stay ahead of the back-pressure without going too fast and closing your window to receive the puck prematurely.
Michkov executes that art to perfection, as he usually does. There are several instances you can pause the video and see Michkov as a viable option on that 2-on-1.
Tippett misses him with the pass, leading the target by too much, which is fine. It’s the process that counts. Besides, the play isn’t over. And Michkov isn’t done outwitting the defense.
After failing to get much of a stick on the loose puck, Michkov cuts inside of number 23 on Vegas and scans Tippett behind the net. It’s at this point that Matvei makes his read.
Tippett is coming too fast and Theodore thinks he has more time than he does. Tippett is going to get a clean strip. Michkov reads all of that with one scan. It’s brilliant, supernatural anticipation.
He could’ve stormed right for the back post, but playing behind Theodore would give him opportunity to disrupt the play. He’s giving Theodore a ton of credit here. Sometimes, he gives defenders too much credit. Assumes they’ll play perfectly when they definitely won’t.
But sometimes, you get sequences like this.
He goes lateral—which has some defensive purpose in not diving too deep, too soon—but it mainly serves the offensive play when he cuts across Theodore’s face and then dives for the net.
Michkov gets low and prepared for contact. He was totally ready to carve out a small shooting pocket for himself while Theodore was on his hip, but that ended up unnecessary because his read was so perfect that he beat Theodore to the spot cleanly. A brilliant skater got moved right around through the power of anticipation.
He doesn’t score. You’re not always going to score, but when you get extremely dangerous chances with this kind of regularity, goals are inevitable.
Expected, even.
Michkov generates a lot of expected goals and therefore scores actual goals.
Like this one.
Sometimes, Michkov is playing chess at a grandmaster level, and sometimes it’s much easier. Credit on this goal was given to Michkov for the deflection, and the way he got inside position was less about his supernatural brain and more about pure strength and a taste for violence.
Matvei Michkov comes in from the top of the circle to throw himself back into an unsuspecting Luke Hughes. The bump knocks the latter off course. Michkov loves playing on the edge like this. It’s part of why he takes so many penalties. He’s always testing the limits of just how much contact the ref will allow.
In this case, nobody’s going to call that interference. But he does need to understand the limits more. He needs to be willing to let a play go, and not trip a guy or high-stick a guy going for a home-run steal.
All of that said, Michkov’s contact-embracing style brings plenty of benefits.
Hughes is out of his play as soon as he takes that bump. He never gets a good position on Michkov, who tips the puck and collects another goal and another high-danger shot. Michkov is always fighting for an inside position, and battles for positioning like he’s Lakers Shaq carving out space for a catch at the rim or the low-post.
Getting to the net is one thing. A harder thing is finishing when you get there. It’s actually harder to finish when you get too close to the net. The holes become difficult to exploit.
At 5 on 5 Michkov, is one of 16 players in the NHL to both average 0.89 individual expected goals over the last 2 seasons and finish at a rate over 0.9 actual goals per hour.
Since he really got used to the league, around New Year’s last season, the numbers are more staggering.
Matvei Michkov is one of 7 players with 1 or more expected goals at 5v5 every hour who also finishes at a rate of 1.1 goals per hour or above. The other 6?
Alex Ovechkin, Seth Jarvis, Alex Debrincat, Cole Caufield, Nathan MacKinnon, John Tavares.
He’s 3 years younger than the next youngest guy.
Very few players ever have actually combined Michkov’s chance-finding ability with his innate finishing skill.
What separates Michkov from other in-tight scorers is that he doesn’t actually stuff the pad very often. His hands are so precise that, even with back pressure draped all over him and the goalie right in front of him, he can read the hole in the goaltender’s coverage and then precisely exploit it.
It’s funny. All this talk about Michkov’s game. All these words dedicated, and yet I haven’t even mentioned his playmaking.
Michkov is a playmaking visionary. People think about the shot setting up the pass, which makes intuitive sense. That’s how Connor Bedard operates, and I don’t think anyone in the NHL will be able to match him in that exploit in very short order.
Bedard is the best technical shooter on earth, and his shot is such an omnipresent threat that he convinces teams to overlook the threat of his playmaking.
With Michkov, he reverses the polarity. He uses his playmaking to set up his scoring.
For all the talk about Michkov’s skating making him unable to blow by defenders routinely, nobody understands that better than Michkov himself. That vulnerability has been logged and accounted for with staggeringly methodical precision.
Take this sequence as the shining example.
Michkov uses his anticipation to read the Devils’ breakout pass before it arrives and picks it off.
Nobody knows better than him that it’s unlikely that he beats 2 defenders to the net in a foot race. So he doesn’t try.
He’s already calculated that the open ice will be on the weak side, so he throws a pass with anticipation to Sean Couturier.
When the puck changes lanes, cracks form in the defense. Michkov slips through the crack and receives a return pass. It’s a pointblank chance at the net.
The goalie got that one. He nearly didn’t.
In order to even begin to exploit Michkov’s slow skating, teams need to account for layers upon layers of protection that he’s cultivated. His brain is his first defense.
But even when you actually get to him, he still has a slew of tricks to make sure that catching him is not deterring him.
His next layer of defense is his skill under pressure.
When Mattias Samuelsson actively pushes Michkov under the net and out of the dangerous area, that should’ve been the end. But it isn’t.
McLeod is a very responsible defensive forward, and he makes the understandable mistake of believing that he’s about to strip Michkov clean. That’s why his stick is out of position. He accounted for the fact that he was dealing with almost anyone else in this league, but he wasn’t. And he got burned for not recognizing that Michkov has a preternatural gift for making plays under immense pressure.
Some of it is just a superpower, for which there is no real category to describe the things he does. This play should’ve been dead several times over, but Michkov has such special hockey reflexes that he keeps the play alive near the offensive blueline by kicking the puck off the boards to his own stick as he fell.
Michkov’s skill-level is sometimes underappreciated because of the way he expresses that skill. It isn’t usually the traditional high-pace dangle through the neutral zone. Instead, he uses his skill level to turn puck protection into an artform.
There was no deception here. There was also no space. Michkov simply challenged any of those 3 defenders to take the puck from him, and they all proved unable. It’s the purest expression of skill in a sense, handling the puck better than the defenders can handle their sticks.
His moves off of the boards are simply on another level. As far as reactive handling moves go, I’m comfortable saying he’s on a level of his own.
The Next Steps.
The next steps for Michkov seem inevitable. The product of being a young player in the league and of playing a non-central role on his team right now.
Most pressingly, if he could stop taking the most penalties of anyone on earth not named Porter Martone, I’d be grateful. Full disclosure, it’s a bit of a funny bit and I do kind of laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.
But my laughing does not discount the actual problems presented by Michkov putting his team on the penalty kill once per game over his last eight games, and that is not that much of an outlier.
He needs to clean it up. If the team was a contender, I’d probably be mad, but as it is… I both recognize the major issue and get a chuckle out of it.
Looking more long-term, though, you get a lot more granular.
Just to get it out of the way, there’s simply no denying that the next steps for Michkov include playing a more centralized role on the ice. Part of that is about minutes, but it goes deeper than minutes, too. It’s about when he’s touching the puck, and how frequently he’s fed by his teammates.
Veteran teammates generally have a blind spot for young players, trusting the people they’ve been in the proverbial foxhole with for years. As an example, if Couturier has two passes open coming through the neutral zone? Instead of trusting the small-area wizardry of Michkov, he’s more likely to trust the blazing long-speed of Tippett.
There’s a lot of that in his games, especially this year. His puck touches seem to come primarily by him following the play and getting to loose pucks or being the only available option, rather than the puck being filtered to him as it is to Travis Konecny or Trevor Zegras.
His role on the power-play is terribly defined and, even when he’s on the top-unit, he’ll often be the player at the back-post or screening the goalie rather than being trusted to manipulate the defense with the puck on his stick.
These puck touches are all scoring opportunities that he simply isn’t getting. He’ll get it with time, and it’ll warrant pundits to talk about all of the nonexistent improvements in his game that led to these improved results. In reality, a lot of it is just about carving out trust from his team.
This will probably coincide when the dam finally breaks on his minutes. Yeah, sorry, under 15 minutes a night isn’t cutting it. If you want Michkov to be a superstar, we’re going to need superstar access.
For something that’s more under his control, Michkov tends to sometimes forget on the ice that he has the superpowers he does. I want to see him regularly exploiting his small-area magic. I want him to always push the boundaries, naturally learning where the limits are.
Instead, and I do think the general direction of the team is a large part of this, I think he tries too hard… at times… to manage the puck.
That isn’t to suggest he manages the puck overly well now. A cursory glance at any stats page will show you that he makes a lot of giveaways. He turns the puck over a lot. Simply, I think he’s, at times, guilty of both doing too much and doing too little. Depending on the instance.
There’s a mental consistency to his game that’s missing right now and will need to be chiseled out over the years. At times, his processor is firing on full cylinders and he’s the best player on the ice against a team with superstars. Other times, the supercomputer will simply blue-screen and he’ll be closer to the worst player on the ice.
None of this is abnormal for young players. None of it has a solution that’s any more complicated than simply cultivating experience.
The skating and conditioning aspect of his improvement is talked about a lot, but I actually think that’s less important than simply continuing to refine his mental game. That’s where he’ll make his money.
This isn’t to say Michkov shouldn’t go through with his plans to train in Voorhees and work full-time with more dedicated power-skating coaches. He might even make substantial strides over the years and turn into a well above average skater. And whatever skating improvements he makes certainly won’t hurt him.
Michkov is absolutely obsessed with being the best player in the league. Ask anyone who’s spent more than 10 minutes around him, and they’ll all say that. And being the league’s best player would require a leap in his skating while being a superstar wouldn’t.
I know plenty of slow superstars. Almost half of them, probably. But being the league’s best player, putting yourself at the apex of the superstars, requires something different.
The league’s best player, depending on your view right now, is either McDavid or MacKinnon. While I am willing to accept that them being two of the fastest players ever is something of a coincidence, it’s a fact that those two almost have no weaknesses.
There are minor things to quibble about. MacKinnon doesn’t really have the slickest array of stickhandling moves compared to other superstars, but I’d still consider him around the 15 or 20 most skilled players in the league. McDavid is an inconsistent finisher who also loses confidence (or maybe just interest) in his own shot.
But that’s more of Michkov’s problem than Flyers fans’ problems. If they end up with a top 10 player instead of the league’s best, there should be no trace of disappointment.
Not that the kid himself would take that for an answer.
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