It’s been reported this weekend that Matvei Michkov — the star prospect of the Philadelphia Flyers pipeline — has terminated his contract with SKA St. Petersburg with the intention of signing an Entry-Level Contract with the Flyers. It turns out the rumors that started circulating a little over a month ago were true: that Michkov’s NHL career would be starting two years earlier than was expected when he was drafted seventh overall in the summer of 2023.
When those rumors first started rumbling, our BSH writers put out a couple of articles about how his early arrival would affect the off season’s trades and how this off season would affect the timeline. On the Flyers side of things, President of Hockey Operations Keith Jones straight up said a Michkov arrival, “doesn’t really affect our plans.”
Now that Michkov will likely be on the opening night roster for the 2024-25 season (a bonkers sentence I never thought I’d get to write), we can really hammer this point home: his arrival should not affect the rebuild timeline, and Jones and GM Danny Briere have taken every opportunity to preach patience and a steady hand. Jones said as much in the previously linked article, and Briere has repeated that the Flyers put themselves into a dire cap situation for the 2024-25 season by design in an effort to accrue future assets. There will be no splashy free agent signings, no win-now trades, and no playoffs-or-bust drive to succeed: they’re going to run it back this season, save one extraordinary internal addition.
It’s the right call, too. For those of us who watched the Stanley Cup, it’s clear the Flyers have quite a ways to go; even the shell-shocked Florida Panthers team of games four through six could probably trounce the Flyers in a best-of-seven series (as they ultimately did, winning in seven against the Edmonton Oilers). The Flyers have a lot of really good, promising young players, and a couple of players who can become the beloved crusty vets of a contending team, but they still lack those true game-breaking, elite talents that would allow the rest of the roster to slot into more appropriate roles.
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