Michkov leads the NHL in shooting percentage at 42.9 among skaters with 20 or more shots, and he is taking fewer shots each year, 2.5 a game as a rookie and 1.4 now. The Flyers need the goals. The sample is 15 games, and the finishing rate is nowhere near his first two seasons.
All stats, and every league ranking, are through the Flyers' Oct. 28 game at Washington, read on NHL.com, Hockey-Reference and the NHL's stats feed on Oct. 30, 2026 (ET). Opinion is labeled as opinion.
Matvei Michkov has 9 goals and 2 assists in 15 games, and he got the 9 goals on 21 shots on goal. That is a 42.9 percent shooting rate, the highest in the NHL among skaters with at least 20 shots. Next is Colorado's Artturi Lehkonen at 41.7 percent on 24 shots, then Ottawa's Tim Stützle and Florida's Carter Verhaeghe at 32.0 percent, each on 25 shots. Michkov is tied for fifth in the league in goals, with four other players at 9, behind Kirill Kaprizov (14), Leon Draisaitl (12) and two players with 10, Lehkonen and Auston Matthews.
Credit the goals. They count, and he is 21.
Michkov's first two seasons were 26 goals on 199 shots (13.1 percent) in 2024-25 and 20 on 163 (12.3 percent) in 2025-26. Before this season he was at 46 goals on 362 shots, 12.7 percent. At that rate, 21 shots produce about 2.7 goals. He has 9. That arithmetic is mine, and it means roughly six goals he would not have had if he had finished like himself.
The other number is shot volume. Michkov averaged 2.5 shots a game as a rookie, 2.0 last season and 1.4 this season. Ice time does not explain it: 16:41 a game in 2024-25, 14:50 last year and 15:53 now. He has had one shot or fewer in 9 of 15 games, and no shots at all against Seattle on Oct. 13 or Carolina on Oct. 11. Three straight seasons of a falling shot rate is a trend, though 15 games is too few to call this year's number permanent.
Five of his nine goals came on the power play, and the Flyers have eight power-play goals as a team. Four came at even strength. So 5 of the team's 8 power-play goals came off the stick of a player shooting a rate more than three times his own history (42.9 against 12.7, our math). The Flyers have scored 29 goals in 15 games and sit at 3-8-4 with 10 points, and nine of those 29 are his. Opinion: that is a lot of offense riding on one hot stretch.
At 5v5 the NHL has Michkov at 11.6 minutes a night. Of his offensive-zone and defensive-zone starts, 57.3 percent came in the offensive zone, a favorable assignment. Even so, the Flyers have 42.2 percent of the shot attempts when he is on the ice, 2.2 points below the Flyers' rate when he is off it, and 33.3 percent of the goals. His on-ice shooting-plus-save percentage (PDO) is 97.5, below the 100 that usually marks an even run of puck luck. So the 5v5 results are not being flattered. His own finishing is the one number running far above normal.
His plus-minus is minus-9. I would not hang that on him alone, because the Flyers are minus-21 in goals as a team (29 for, 50 against). Plus-minus leaves out goals the Flyers score on the power play, and he was on the ice for 7 of those, so it understates how many goals happened with him out there. At even strength the Flyers are 7 for and 15 against with him. That fits the shot-share number above.
Opinion: some of this is skill, most of it looks like luck, and 15 games cannot separate the two. The skill is a finishing rate of 12 to 13 percent in each of his first two seasons, 12.7 combined over 362 shots. I would treat every point above it as luck until a bigger sample says otherwise. The sample is small: one more shot that misses moves him from 42.9 to 40.9 (our math). I could not open Natural Stat Trick, so there is no individual expected-goals (shot-quality) data here, and that is the kind that would say how good the looks were. Without it, I can't tell you whether his shots are lower quality or just fewer.
What worries me is what is left if a rate like this comes back down: a player averaging 1.4 shots a game. At 12.7 percent he would need about 71 shots for nine goals, roughly 51 games at this season's pace (our math).
Michkov, picked seventh overall in 2023, is on a $950,000 cap hit, before potential performance bonuses, that expires after this season, with restricted free agency on July 1, 2027, according to the Flyers' NHL.com contract analysis. Opinion: his next contract will be argued from either nine goals in 15 games or from 20 to 26 goals a year, and nobody wants to be the person who pays for the first number.
Four things would make this look too harsh, and all are checkable. First, his shots per game climb back to the 2.0 he averaged last season, or the 2.5 he had as a rookie. Second, the Flyers' 5v5 shot-attempt share with him on the ice rises from 42.2 percent to at least the team's average. Third, individual expected-goals data shows his looks are better than the shot totals suggest. Fourth, his finishing settles in the 12 to 15 percent range and the goals keep coming anyway. Check all four again at 30 games.
The Flyers got a 3-1 win they needed in Vancouver. NBC Sports Philadelphia's cameras caught Matvei Michkov and Nick Seeler in a heated exchange on the bench. Twelve days after Seeler talked postgame about a "me, me, me" team, and named nobody, the tape is already sitting next to those comments. A fractured room, or a pulse? The people in it have not said.
Dylan Larkin will not waive for Philadelphia. So the reported plan is for the Flyers to help his trade happen anyway, ship out Owen Tippett, eat a contract, and walk away with a top prospect and a first-round pick. Clever. Also, completely unconfirmed.
The Flyers own their 2027 first-round pick and, for now, Toronto's too. The cap room is projected, and one of the two numbers rests on a salary cap the league has only estimated.
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