Flyers’ Matvei Michkov pick boldest sign yet about their rebuild and ‘new era’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — In the past, the Philadelphia Flyers don’t take Matvei Michkov.

In so many ways, Michkov isn’t a typical Flyers draft pick. He’s a dynamic offensive talent, not the two-way grinder types that have made up so many Philadelphia rosters. His NHL timeline is on the long side, terrifying for a club long proud of its win-now philosophy. Oh, and he’s Russian — and this is an organization that still revels in the domination of the Red Army team in 1976 and was long hesitant to draft or sign players of Russian descent.

The old Flyers probably would have taken Ryan Leonard, who was taken eighth by Washington, a prototypical high-energy bulldog of a forward. That would have had the entire league nodding and thinking, “Yeah, he just feels like a Philadelphia Flyer.” Not the offense-dominant, super-skilled, finesse Russian.

These clearly aren’t your old Flyers anymore.

“When you see the talent level of this player — we don’t have anybody like him in the organization,” GM Daniel Briere said Wednesday after the first round ended. “We’ve talked for how many years now about how we needed to bring more skill, more talent to our team. This was a great opportunity to hopefully develop a player that can play the kind of that role for us.”

Michkov’s skill is enormous. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman ranked him as the third-best player in the draft; his colleague Scott Wheeler placed him second. He scored 20 points in 27 KHL games this season at 18. For comparison, Alex Ovechkin scored 24 in 53 games in the top-tier Russian league at the same age. Michkov’s creativity and hockey sense is off the charts. He has the potential to be a lethal goal scorer as well. From a pure talent standpoint, he’s the most gifted player to be added to the Philadelphia organization since Claude Giroux in 2006.

It’s not a guarantee he gets there, but make no mistake: Michkov has superstar potential.

“We have to be careful with the word superstar, I think,” Briere cautioned. “If he comes and he’s a good player on our team and he can be a difference-maker, that’s all I’m asking for. If he turns out more than that, that’d be great. We will welcome that for sure.”

The Flyers were enamored with Mickhov. In the lead-up to the draft, the Flyers met with him not once but twice. There was the widely reported meeting in Nashville with Briere and basically the entire organization, but per a team source, Michkov also visited the Flyers’ practice facility in Voorhees, N.J., on Friday morning to meet with a smaller group.

“We were blown away by his personality and how much he seemed to love having a chance to be a Flyer,” Briere said.

They even tried trading up for him, convinced that there was no way he was going to slip all the way to No. 7. But no one bit. The Flyers would have to sweat it out.

“Having him fall to seven we felt was a gift for us,” Briere said.

Now, does the pick come with risk? Absolutely. There’s a reason why six other teams passed on him. First, there’s the traditionalist worry about him being a small-ish scoring winger without elite skating ability. (Michkov confirmed that he currently checks in at 5-foot-10 and 178 pounds.) And there was legitimate chatter in league circles regarding potential character concerns — a red flag that is usually taken very seriously by the Flyers, in particular.

“We asked him – we grilled him,” Briere said regarding the character questions. “We asked him some really tough questions. And we were satisfied with the answers that we got. Now, you never know. You never know for sure. But we had a good feeling.”

But the real risk, of course, is the Russian factor: both his three-year contract commitment with SKA St. Petersburg and the worry that even after that contract expires, he won’t want to — or be able to — come to North America.

The geopolitical concern is legitimate, and truly unknowable at this point. As for Michkov’s willingness to come to the NHL, however? He sure sounded like a player that wants to come west as soon as he can. He even left the door open for the possibility of leaving Russia earlier than expected.

“To be honest, I can’t say for sure,” Michkov said regarding his NHL timeline via a translator. “I do have a contract. But I’m hoping as soon as I can get out, I’m gonna be coming over.”

Michkov claims he wants to be in the NHL, both for himself and to honor his late father Andrey.

“Right now it’s important for me to finish the goal that my dad had for me, and that’s to win the Stanley Cup,” Michkov said.

“He told us he wanted to play in the NHL. He told us his dream was to win the Stanley Cup. He told us he wanted to be a Flyer,” Briere added.

That was very important to the Flyers — the idea that Michkov specifically wanted to come to Philadelphia. He confirmed as much after the selection.

“I think my biggest wish and biggest expectation is I want to come to Philadelphia, and I want to help them win a Stanley Cup,” Michkov said. “I know we’ve been waiting a long time for one. And that’s my goal, and that’s why I’m coming.”

The Flyers’ status as a big-market team with a sizable fan base and rich history helped them as well, Briere believed.

“It was pretty cool to see him respond to the question where (we asked), ‘Are you afraid to play in Philadelphia?’ And he said absolutely not. ‘I want to be a Flyer. I want to play in a hockey market.’ That’s another thing he said. So that made us feel pretty good about it,” Briere said.

If Michkov both wants to come to the NHL and wants to play for the Flyers, that only leaves the “will he be able to successfully leave Russia?” question. Which is, to be sure, a risk.

But the risk was worth it for the Flyers. Michkov stands as the potential superstar that the organization lacked, unless 2022 No. 5 pick Cutter Gauthier hits the absolute top-end of his projection. And notably, they were able to get a prospect with the potential to be the best player on a Stanley Cup contender without tanking — a stroke of luck that retroactively bails them out for the decision not to start their rebuild last summer and put them in prime position to get a franchise talent.

The Flyers were never going to win the Cup by building a team around a bunch of two-way hard workers. Pivoting to a rebuild mentality was a start, a necessary acknowledgement of the reality of their situation. But they still lacked talent — true game-changing talent.

This selection shows that they knew it.

“Time will tell and it’s a little early, but we feel when he’s ready to come, he could really be a difference-maker,” Briere said. “And that’s the risk that we were willing to take — to wait a little bit to hopefully have a difference-maker on our hands.”

Briere now has three years to rebuild the team, construct a positive culture, pick the right players for the roster and turn it into an intriguing club with playoff upside. And then, in Year 4, they hope Michkov will come over and push them over the edge into true contention.

“I guess that means we’re gonna start winning when I get here,” Michkov cracked when asked about his enthusiasm for joining a team in the midst of a rebuild.

That day — assuming it comes — would be the true beginning of the Flyers’ proclaimed “New Era of Orange,” when the club is again relevant on the playoff stage and the Wells Fargo Center is as loud as it once was. But spiritually, it feels like it started today, with a pick that stands as a bold statement that the Flyers under Briere and Keith Jones really are going to do things differently.

“We took a big swing, but we hope that this turns out to be a home run,” Briere said.

(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)