The Philadelphia Flyers are relying heavily on Matvei Michkov panning out to be a very good player that could even flirt with stardom and be the best player on their team going forward. But unfortunately to start this season, he has played extremely poorly. Concerns about a sophomore slump has only been accented as the season has gone on and we’ve been trying to look for signs of last year’s rookie sensation still on the ice.

Michkov looked slow and not just in his skating but thinking the game slower too. It let to a lack of production as the 20-year-old winger had just five points through his first 10 games and started the season on a three-game drought. All throughout that opening stretch too, he barely shot the puck or even made a play — he appeared to just be out there and that let new head coach Rick Tocchet to limiting his minutes, which of course caused some stir amongst the Flyers fan base.

Thankfully, Michkov has started to turn his season around. Saturday afternoon, he scored his second goal in as many games and while he’s still barely over half a point per game, he looked so much more like the crazy Russian winger we’ve come to love last season. Especially on his goal against the Ottawa Senators, where he managed to battle through contact from Jake Sanderson, sees a route right to the slot through the faceoff circle and wires it past Linus Ullmark.

A little Michkov Magic. 🪄#OTTvsPHI | #LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/eKHQojvV16

— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) November 8, 2025

That’s something we haven’t seen at all this season from Michkov — the poise and confidence to pull something off like this, let alone just attempt it, is something that has been missing from the first dozen or so games.

And now that we have caught this glimpse and while the concerns aren’t totally gone but we can at least think that we will see regular Michkov during every game in the coming weeks, Michkov felt free to share more about his disastrous offseason training, or lack thereof.

Matvei Michkov took almost the entire summer off from hockey

As Michkov started his season poorly, within the first few days, head coach Rick Tocchet revealed that the young winger dealt with an ankle injury through the summer and that caused a setback to his training and it will take him some time to get to full speed. It made sense — it was something to point at as the reason why Michkov was playing so poorly.

But now that there is at least some improvement and return to what we’ve come to know as the status quo, Michkov felt comfortable sharing more details about his summer after answering a question about how he’s feeling currently.

“Every game, I feel better and better. Hard start of the game, like mostly ever game — hard work, it’s all going to come soon,” Michkov told the media after Saturday afternoon’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Senators.

“Truly, I was rested for four months, no hockey. Training was not the same. In the beginning of the season, I lost concentration but with every game, I’m feeling better and better.”

On its face, a player saying that he took four months off of hockey during his summer, even while nursing an injury during part of that, looks bad. A player giving the reason of taking the entire summer off as to why he played poorly for the first 12 or so games of the season is not something you really want to hear coming from the star youngster, in which the future of your team somewhat relies on.

While other players were maybe taking a couple weeks off and then getting right back to work in preparation for the new NHL season, it sure sounds like Michkov was just kicking back and waiting until the latter part of the summer to kick his training off — and then his ankle injury happened. The possibility of that being the case and then tie in his quasi scandal of being involved in a car accident in Dubai over the summer and it doesn’t paint a great picture. That would be the nightmare scenario but it most likely isn’t the truth.

Due to the language barrier, Michkov couldn’t expand further into what he meant by taking four months off of hockey, but we can at least theorize and give him the benefit of the doubt. Michkov has only ever done training on the ice — every offseason growing up and through his developing years he would be working doing hockey-related activities.

So, instead of doing that again, Michkov “took four months off” of that aspect of training and instead spent the vast majority of his time in the gym to gain some mass before the season began. That is most likely what he meant by taking the four months off.

Michkov probably didn’t just completely let his summer go to waste but maybe he could have framed it just a little bit better.