Flyers’ Matvei Michkov wins NHL Rookie of the Month and thanks his teammates

The 19-year-old Michkov is the first Flyer to be selected for the honor since James van Riemsdyk in 2009.

Flyers rookie Matvei Michkov recorded nine points (four goals, five assists) in his first eight games of the season.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

Published Nov. 1, 2024, 3:10 p.m. ET

Everyone watching Flyers games knows how good Matvei Michkov is. Now the NHL has taken notice.

On Friday, Michkov was named the NHL’s Rookie of the Month for October. He skated in 11 games and potted four goals and five assists, with the nine points coming in the first eight games of the season. He is the first Flyer to be selected for the honor since James van Riemsdyk in November 2009.

“Some fragments working well, some not,” Michkov said through Slava Kuznetsov, a team consultant, on Friday. “Everything is a work in progress.”

The work in progress is looking pretty good so far. He finished October first among rookies in goals (four), power-play goals (three) and power-play points (six), and tied with Logan Stankoven of the Dallas Stars for first with nine points.

At just 19, Michkov has dazzled fans with his hockey vision and determination. The Russian phenom made his NHL debut on Oct. 11 against the Vancouver Canucks and played almost 19 minutes. He set up Travis Konecny on a power play for his first NHL point the next night in Calgary.

Three nights later, against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers, he notched his first NHL goal on a power play when he jammed the puck in at the side of the net. There were a few delays, first to determine if it went in, and then the Oilers challenged for goalie interference, but once it became official, he got to celebrate the milestone moment.

“I think everyone in this room is maybe more excited than he is, I hope,” Garnet Hathaway, who shook Michkov when the goal was given, said postgame. “You can see the battle he has, the compete he has. And I think that kind of goal just kind of epitomizes what he brings to the game.”

Michkov added another power-play marker in the game, and his first four NHL points were with the man advantage. He became the first Flyer to score his first two goals in the same game since Vinny Prospal on March 8, 1997, and the youngest to have a multigoal game since Nolan Patrick in April 2018.

In two games against fellow Russian star Alex Ovechkin, he scored once and added two assists for one of his three multipoint games.

“He came out of the blocks flying,” associate coach Brad Shaw said on Friday. “You can see he loves to have the puck on his stick. This is an unforgiving league, really tough league, and trying to learn a language, trying to learn how it‘s played on this-sized ice surface, I think we all anticipated a few bumps along the road, but for him to come out of the gates that quickly and show what he can do. He’s got a knack for east-west sort of through the top of the zone and finding lanes that I’m not sure I’ve seen a guy, especially a forward, have that ability.”

There have been some bumps and in Thursday night‘s 2-1 win over the St. Louis Blues, Michkov sat for a few shifts. Coach John Tortorella said postgame he wouldn‘t get into specifics for the three-shift benching at five-on-five — he did hop on for a power play sandwiched in between — but said it was “repetitive.”

“He likes to play on the move, and in this league, there are a lot of elements of the game, where stopping and starting is a much more effective way to defend or check or even set up support offensively,” Shaw said. “He’s got a tendency to stay on the move, and sometimes that drifts you maybe out of the good ice that you started in.

“He’s learning. … He’s a driven guy. You see how competitive he is, and there’s no doubt that, he’ll sort those things out and become a better hockey player.”

One thing that has become readily apparent is his connection with Travis Konecny. The feisty wingers — yes, Michkov also plays with an edge — have either come close or have connected a number of times.

According to Natural Stat Trick, when they are on the ice together, the Flyers have scored eight goals on 162 shot attempts; the opposition has eight goals on 87 shot attempts. When it’s Michkov without Konency (42.13%) or Konecny without Michkov (39.58%), the shot attempts for vs. against are in the favor of the opponent. But it still is a work in progress.

“Travis is a great player,” Michkov said. “Something is working well; something is not. Probably needed a little bit more time to bond together and get the really good chemistry.”

Michkov is just trying to enjoy the game these days and the experience of being an NHL player. Selected by the Flyers with the seventh pick in the 2023 NHL draft, he arrived in the U.S. two years earlier than expected after being released from his deal with SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL. Michkov signed his entry-level contract with the Flyers on July 1 and has started his career off as advertised.

And while the honor of NHL Rookie of the Month may be the first stepping-stone to bigger hardware, Michkov knows he couldn’t have achieved it without his teammates.

“I want to [say] thank you [to] my linemates, because without them, it would not happen,” he said.