In the season after his selection at seventh overall in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft by the Philadelphia Flyers, despite having long been approximately equally valued as a prospect as #1 overall pick Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks), Matvei Michkov was beset again by trials and tribulations. His D0 year was arduous due to an injury at the hands of Alexei Emelin in an exhibition game, as well as the loss of his father. This year, he faced struggles via being loaned out yet again to HC Sochi by SKA Saint Petersburg after dressing in just one game wherein he totaled just 6:12 TOI, despite the aversion he had to returning to the club due to his father’s passing near the city. He would further have to overcome dealing with both missing a significant amount of time due to pneumonia and dealing with its long-term effects while playing for a roster that would eventually end the season 21st out of 23 in the KHL’s league standings with 53 points and a -86 goal differential. All told, with the chips stacked against him, Michkov would play 48 out of a possible 68 games in the 2023-24 seasons, receiving paltry minutes in one of them and dealing with what surely was a less than fully functional respiratory system for countless.

However, much as he shattered statistical barriers at seemingly every stop in his development prior to this year (such as his 109 points in 26 games campaign at the U-16 level in the 2019-20 season in Lokomotiv’s system, his 52 points in 50 games in the MHL as a 16-year-old in 2020-21 with SKA-Varyagi St. Petersburg, and his D0 year wherein he posted a .667 PPG in 27 games played with Sochi, via his 9 goals and 11 assists), he made his mark on the league. The impact was quick and apparent once he returned to Sochi. In his first game back with the “Leopards”, he tallied two assists in a 5-4 overtime victory against Severstal. By his fourth game, he was averaging over a PPG, as he would tally an additional assist and net his first two goals of the season in the ensuing three-game stretch (both of the latter were against Traktor Chelyabinsk and included the dramatic GWG). By his eighth game, he had had four multi-point outings, including a three-point night in a revenge 5-4 victory against SKA. His pace would remain steadily around this clip throughout the autumn, earning a KHL All-Star Game selection, though he would miss out on participating due to illness.

The situation became a bit derailed in the month of December, as his sickness limited him to dressing in just three games. Prior to that month, he had 26 points in 28 games with HC Sochi to his name. From that point on, he tallied 15 points in 19 games, marking a PPG regression from .928 to .789. The stretch after December also saw him not play at all between January 7th and January 24th, consequently missing five games in that window. At large, the final few months were a dip due to health, and the roster configuration certainly did not help. While Michkov was benched/subsequently healthy scratched for one game due to a poor defensive performance in the season and that particular area of play is something that, to put it one way, is something that comes and goes for him, it is worth examining the final +/- discrepancy between him and his most frequent linemate of the season, Artur Tyanulin. While the sample sizes are different as Tyanulin missed only 5 games, a -6 for Michkov vs. a -21 for Tyanulin does feel demonstrative of a difference in quality of play and that the top six missed him while he was gone in ways that were visible on the stat sheet.

Continuing to examine Michkov in the context of his team, he would lead Sochi in goals, tallying 19 in 47 games played, juxtaposed against second place Tyanulin’s 17 in 63. This stat actually might be the greatest demonstration of how absurd it was that he actually ended up with more assists than goals, given the team’s clear issues with scoring/finishing. He had 22 assists to his name, good for third behind Michal Kristof’s 23 (who played in 54 contests, 7 more than Matvei) and Tyanulin’s 28. His 41 points were second only to Tyanulin’s 45, the latter of which was a franchise record. However, in terms of PPG, this one is not particularly close. Matvei’s would be .872 for the year, contrasted with Tyanulin’s .714. He clearly facilitated play and offensive results better than any player they had, despite his average TOI having been in the 14:00-15:00 range for much of the year. His would be the fourth-highest among all forwards on the team by the season’s end as he saw more time on line one, though this also did not include much power play time as he was typically deployed on PP2. As a result of that lattermost point, of those 19 goals? A grand total of 4 of them were on the power play. The rest were all even strength. Some of the advanced metrics are intriguing, as well. To provide one example, as was noted by HockeyNewsHub on X, Matvei was tied with Tyanulin for the team-lead in expected goals.

In the context of league records for this particular development stage, Michkov’s final scoring statistics were enough to make him the all-time KHL/RSL leader in D+1 season goals, assists, AND points. He surpassed Eeli Tolvanen’s record of 36 points in eight fewer games played. Consequently, this gives him a pretty significant lead in the PPG category, as you can juxtapose his final rate of .854 against the next three names below him here. In the U20 context, he finished just one point behind Kirill Kaprizov’s record for single season KHL U20 points (the current Minnesota Wild superstar tallied 42 points in 49 games played with Salavat Yulaev Ufa in his D+2 season in 2016-17). Were it not for the struggles with his health, one must wonder what might have happened. All told, however, over the last two seasons, Michkov has 61 points in 77 games in the KHL. This is a remarkable feat while playing in a poor configuration, while overcoming setback after setback, in a league which is known to be low-scoring – to say nothing of his age. He can be described only as a prodigy and is a lock to be a superstar in the NHL.