Flyers select Matvei Michkov with 7th overall pick

The pick has been made. The disappointing 2022-23 season for the Philadelphia Flyers earned them the seventh-overall pick of the 2023 NHL Entry Draft and they have selected Russian phenom Matvei Michkov.

So much ink has been spilled about Michkov’s situation. The winger has all the talent in the world – should have realistically gone in the first three picks – but with the geopolitical concerns in Russia and the player being tied to a KHL contract through the 2025-26 season, teams opted one after another to go with a different option.

Michkov spent the majority of his draft year loaned out to HK Sochi of the KHL, so that he gets top-division ice when it wasn’t available for his original club SKA St. Petersburg. For Sochi, he managed to score nine goals and 20 points in 27 games on a very, very bad team. He also spent some time in the second-division VHL, and destroyed the competition there with 10 goals and 14 points in just 12 games.

The expectation is that he will be given a full-time spot on SKA St. Petersburg next season and show off even more.

For the Flyers, this is the first pick in an extremely important draft. The first one with this management group led by general manager Danny Briere and president of hockey operations Keith Jones; and one where they specified they need to get that top-end talent. Well, they might have just got the second-most talented player in the draft class that just required some patience and conversation.

Now, the Flyers will have three seasons to get their roster figured out and other prospects developed, and do whatever else they need to do to get this thing back on track.