The NHL have been slowly unveiling the individual award winners throughout the last several days and the one single award that a Philadelphia Flyer had any chance of winning in, was handed out Tuesday and it was not a particularly close finish.
Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson ended up being crowned the top rookie of the NHL season with the Calder Trophy — and he had his family surprise him with the award — but that is not the important part. We of course knew that the Calder finalists were San Jose Sharks center Macklin Celebrini, Calgary Flames goaltender Dustin Wolf, and Hutson. Leaving out Flyers star rookie Matvei Michkov out of the eventual race to earn the achievement.
Now that the Calder was actually handed over and its winner announced, we get to the real meat of the issue: The voting results.
Hutson won with a total of 1,832 voting points, Wolf came second with 1,169, and then Celebrini finished third just ever so slightly behind the Flames netminder, with 1,104 total points. Michkov finished fourth with 645 points.
The 20-year-old Flyers winger was the only other player even coming close to contention, as fifth place went to the player that gave up on playing hockey in Philadelphia and still will not tell us why, Anaheim Ducks winger Cutter Gauthier, with a measly 92 points and not even earning one single top three vote.
Final voting results for the 2024-25 Calder Trophy: pic.twitter.com/nsK0fyUj0g
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) June 10, 2025
More interesting than where Michkov finished is how the voting went for him. Unfortunately, he did not receive a vote to actually win the award from any member of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association. His voting broke down as: Eight second-place votes, 26 third-place votes, 151 fourth-place votes, and then six votes for fifth place.
And thanks to the PHWA having transparent ballots, we get to see which specific writers voted for Michkov in each slot.
So, shoutout to the eight writers that thought Michkov should finish second for the Calder: Stu Cowan of the Montreal Gazette, Kevin Kurz of The Athletic, Wayne Fish of the Allentown Morning Call, Anthony Mingioni of Center Ice Philly, Anthony SanFilippo of Snow The Goalie, Jordan Hall of NBC Sports Philadelphia, Andrew Knoll of Southern California News Group, and Ken Campbell of Hockey Unfiltered.
Of course, it is more interesting looking at the writers that are not based in Philadelphia. So, thanks for recognizing supreme talent.
All in all, this placement was deserved, though. Hutson broke historic records as a rookie defenseman, Wolf almost brought his team to a surprise playoff appearance as a rookie, and Celebrini was just otherworldly in all three zones and most likely would have won if he didn’t miss time due to injury. If Michkov didn’t have that slump in production leading into the 4 Nations Face-Off break, then he could have certainly finished higher in the voting. It was just a difficult class to participate in.
Looking forward, will the Flyers have another Calder contender soon? Most likely not this year — the early and assumed frontrunner months before the season gets starts is Canadiens winger Ivan Demidov — with the only Flyers rookies possibly being Jett Luchanko. But, maybe if they get James Hagens at sixth overall, or the prospect selected with that pick, comes and plays his first full season in the 2027-28 season, then we can start talking about it as more of a possibility.
Now is the time in the Flyers rebuild where we start looking for potential Calder winners in the coming years. Maybe, just maybe.
