Philadelphia Flyers star youngster Matvei Michkov is finally looking like himself on the ice. After a rough start to his season caused by a setback in his offseason training and just not being up to full speed, the 20-year-old has now scored two goals in his last two games. And that includes a beautiful tally that he netted against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday afternoon.
But it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows as he returns to looking like the dominant force that he was for the majority of his rookie season. At Flyers practice on Sunday morning, Michkov tried to do something very cool and instead whacked a teammate in the head in somewhat hilarious fashion.
In his constant pursuit of scoring his first Michigan goal in the NHL — which might never happen since we are seeing them less and less after the very brief surge a few years ago — Michkov is regularly trying them out to show some of his skill at practices. All the way back to his rookie year under John Tortorella, the Russian phenom would pop off, attempting them while not running drills or just staying back after practice with a teammate or two and trying out the wraparound skill move.
Well, this time it was during a more organization section of practice with an actual goaltender in the crease and Michkov went for it, and, well…
Matvei Michkov scored a goal in a 2-on-1 drill. He then tried the Michigan and looked like he got Dan Vladar in the mask. pic.twitter.com/C62SvlDaVV
— Jordan Hall (@JHallNBCS) November 9, 2025
Thanks to NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jordan Hall’s ability to always have his phone out ready to record during every single practice, we get this wonderful video.
During a 2-on-1 drill actually during full-on practice (maybe a little bit more casual with some Flyers regulars missing from the ice), Michkov saw his opportunity to try out his luck at scoring a Michigan goal in a more game-like scenario. And it made perfect sense. The defenseman on this drill is playing the pass more with the 20-year-old behind the net and with enough space to pull it off, Michkov made the attempt.
Unfortunately, netminder Dan Vladar was more than aware of this possibility and quickly covered his right-side post. And thanks to his height he did end up stopping the goal but for his thanks, got whacked in the head by Michkov’s attempt.
We should still take this with a very light heart and not concern ourselves that there is suddenly a rift in the team because the hotshot sophomore did his thing he keeps on trying and instead hit one of his teammates in the head with his stick. It’s not that serious — but also Vladar visibly looked shaken up and upset at that happening, slamming his stick down on the ice and then just gliding back to the bench with his head down.
That’s all we see in the clip, so we are begging from the entire blog of Broad Street Hockey, for people to not create something out of nothing. This is just a very funny video from Flyers practice, especially since just a few months ago, Michkov said that he doesn’t really care about scoring a Michigan goal anymore and has put his attempts on pause.
“One season was enough for me,” Michkov said about the Michigan around the time the Flyers acquired the also-skilled Trevor Zegras. “I didn’t score once with it, so for now, I’ll leave it aside.”
So, yeah, maybe after hitting his teammate in the head he’ll take another break.
