The dark cloud over what has been a surprisingly decent start to the Philadelphia Flyers season has been Matvei Michkov’s performance. But after spending a night in Ottawa, there might be some signs of life.
Coming into Thursday night’s game, there were serious questions about whether or not Michkov would get his season going before people start to panic. Maybe, there are some that are already panicking, but after some reassurance that his molasses-slow start to his season is because he suffered an offseason ankle injury that set his training back and he didn’t start his sophomore season fully in shape, some nerves were slightly calmed.
What doesn’t help though is Michkov continuing to not show up on the score sheet and not look like the dominant rookie we saw last season. The rookie that could just suddenly turn the game on its head and will the Flyers to earning at the very least a moral victory.
While he still has just one goal and one assist to his name for this season, the 20-year-old Russian winger is slowly getting back to looking like himself. Maybe it is just a slow start, or the reported injury that delayed everything for him really affected him as much as the Flyers are saying it did, but during Thursday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators, there was visible progress.
Michkov shows signs of life against the Senators
Within just the first couple minutes of the game, Michkov swiftly took a backhand pass from Christian Dvorak to burst through the neutral zone, over the blue line up against Ottawa defender Nick Jensen and give a little stutter step and got a shot on goal from an awkward angle and under defensive pressure. Could he have maybe done something to sustain possession and potentially get a better scoring chance? Possibly. But maybe now more than ever, Michkov just needs to get the feeling of being a scoring threat this season.
One of the best scoring chances the young winger had came after Dan Vladar stole the show during a penalty kill and after Michkov served his two minutes, got the rare chance for a quick breakaway.
Incredible save here by Ullmark to keep the game tied as Matvei Michkov is sprung for a breakaway at the end of his penalty. pic.twitter.com/vivyfToZDj
— Andrew Wilimek (@AndrewWilimek) October 23, 2025
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It was the right idea. Executed as well as he possibly could — a quick forehand-backhand to lift it over the sprawling Linus Ullmark and it hit iron. It was just unlucky and nine out of every 10 times, doing exactly that in that exact situation, ends up being a goal. It just wasn’t for Michkov on Thursday.
But it didn’t stop the winger from trying and trying again. It wasn’t just a fluke of a scoring chance, Michkov was all over the puck and pouncing on second and third opportunities to try and have a game where we could point and see where his rejuvenation finally came.
Early in the second period, as the Senators were trying to break out of their own zone, defenseman Jamie Drysdale sneakily poked the puck loose off of Dylan Cozen’s stick and Michkov was perfectly trailing right behind the Senators center just in case that exact scenario happened. He got his own shot off, after streaking to Ullmark’s right side and trying to catch the netminder off-guard with a quick counter, but ended up being denied.
It is the culmination of these scoring chances that really make us confident that the real Michkov is still here. There were times where there was some doubt if he could possibly return to form this season, or it would just be a terrible down year that would cause other fan bases to point and laugh at the Flyers’ projected superstar floundering in his second year. But thankfully, there is clearly still the electric offense coming in waves off of Michkov’s stick.
During Thursday night’s game in Ottawa, Michkov led all Flyers in shots on goal with four and led all Flyers in shot attempts with seven. And when he was on the ice at 5-on-5 — during the 10 minutes he actually ended up out there — the Flyers had a 12-9 shot attempt advantage and a staggering 74.48 percent of the expected goals share, according to Natural Stat Trick.
There is no denying that Michkov made things happen against the Senators. None of them led to him getting any positive momentum towards improving on last year’s 63 points, but it was still immensely positive signs that he is on his way to tearing up opposing defenses and being a nightmare to play against in the coming weeks.
It’s all coming. There is going to be one game where Michkov just pours it on, scoring so many points that eventually lets us think he can finish on top of this Flyers team by the end of the season. Thursday night was the first significant step to that happening, and now the next one will be a couple pucks actually going over the goal line.