September 15, 2026
Rick Osentoski/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Flyers winger Matvei Michkov seems to have taken a lot of steps this summer to ensure he won't struggle again like he did for much of last season.
As Danny Brière spoke to the press upstairs to set the stage for the start of Flyers training camp later this week, most of the players were down below on the ice for an informal captain's skate to get ahead of it.
Brière had more than a few questions to field about the status and expectations for Matvei Michkov, the budding Russian star who has tons of skill and loads of potential, but who also struggled heavily through his sophomore season after falling behind the eight ball in his conditioning, which never fully allowed him to catch up.
And Brière did have answers.
The Flyers general manager is optimistic. He believes Michkov matured significantly from last season, and that the 21-year-old took his training way more seriously this offseason while he was back home in Russia.
"He's got a pep in his step," Brière said Tuesday morning from the conference room at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees. "He feels good. He looks good. So I'm excited about Matvei's season."
But it wasn't just Brière's words that did the talking.
A look out the conference room window to the right of Brière at the dais showed Michkov flying up and down the ice through Tuesday's run of makeshift drills.
He looked far slimmer, even with the pads on; his stride looked cleaner, lighter, and a couple of steps quicker; and the motions in between, from his shot to crossovers and shifts in direction, all looked a lot more effortless.
As far as anyone can tell, the former seventh overall pick learned his lesson from how he reported to Voorhees last September.
As far as head coach Rick Tocchet can tell, after what became a publicly turbulent first year coaching Michkov, the young forward is on a "vengeance tour" that began the second the Flyers' breakout playoff run ended back in May.
And as far as Brière can tell...
"It's all part of his maturity level, taking a step," said Brière, who made Michkov his first draft pick as a full-time GM more than three years ago, with a lot of the Flyers' rebuilding hopes leaning on it. "I mean, you saw what he did even during the Olympic break. He decided to, even though he didn't have a lot of time, he completely changed what he was thinking of doing. [Instead of] just going on vacation and having fun, he decided to take care of himself, and it showed in the last stretch of the season, which I think mentally was a good thing for him to see, 'Hey, I took care of myself. Look at the impact I was able to have.' I think he went with that mentality into the offseason, with instead of 10 days to do it, having three or four months.
"That's kind of what you see in how he looks at the moment, and how he just walks around with a different swagger than he had probably two years ago."
If, out of the gate, Michkov looks closer to how he was two years ago as a rookie, or even better, beyond it, that will be an immediate victory for a young Flyers team that now has to figure out how it follows up last year's playoff breakthrough.
Matvei Michkov did finish the home stretch of last season strong, but fell back to overwhelmed during the Flyers' playoff run.
Kyle Ross/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Michkov arrived to the Flyers ahead of schedule in the summer of 2024, after his camp worked an early exit out of his pro contract in Russia and then to huge fanfare in Philadelphia, when an apathetic fanbase was in desperate need of a potential star for its hockey team to get excited about.
The Flyers were still bad that season, and ended up needing to fire former coach John Tortorella before it was over, but a rookie Michkov offered a spark of hope. He led the team with 26 goals, made creative, highlight-reel plays, and exhibited a knack for the spotlight in the big moments that all spelled he would be a future offensive dynamo – and to Tortorella's credit at the time, the polarizing coach who had a notorious rep for being tough on young players, never seemed to have much issue turning him loose.
But last season, with Tocchet behind the bench, was a different story.
Through the first half of the schedule, Michkov wasn't all that noticeable on the ice and was kept under limited minutes, which annoyed a lot of fans who wanted to see the player lined up to be the team's next star take another step toward it.
Tocchet eventually relented, on multiple occasions and after repeated questions about it, that Michkov wasn't in the shape he needed to be, and by December, Michkov even owned up to the fact, vowing to use the Olympic break in February as an accelerated training camp to catch up.
He kept his word, and came back as a 22-point scorer through the Flyers' last 26 games to contribute to their playoff push. But once there, Michkov fell back to invisible, and was even a scratch for Game 5 of the first round against Pittsburgh and then for that last Game 4 of the second round against Carolina.
There was frustration in that, a bit of worry about Michkov's future and ultimate ceiling from the outside, too, that Tocchet and Brière tried to ease with their exit press conference before breaking for the summer.
But maybe above all, there was a chip on Michkov's shoulder, that was evident from the fact that he was still going onto the ice in Voorhees as exit interviews were still going back in May; with an interview he later did in Russia that circulated through the Flyers' social media sphere this past week, where he admitted to dropping nearly 30 pounds from 205 down to 176; and now that he's here back in North America, and visibly looking leaner.
Matvei's weight ended up being one of the main topics in the interview. He talked about it himself, how much he weighed, how much he's lost, the Philadelphia coach flying in to Russia, and that funny InBody body‑fat test story 😂
— Uggg (@Uggg_uggg) September 10, 2026
This one was hard. I spent way too long on it pic.twitter.com/UhrXJ2PhTB
It is about Michkov maturing, Brière said Tuesday, but probably just as much about proving doubters wrong now, too.
"That's his nature," Brière explained. "So I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him wanting to prove that last year was just a little hiccup and he's gonna bounce back. I mean, that's what I expect from him."
And ultimately, what a large part of the Flyers' future is still banking on.
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