Philadelphia Flyers fans received the best news on Sunday afternoon. According to multiple reports, top prospect Matvei Michkov is going to be leaving the KHL two years earlier than expected and join the NHL for the 2024-25 season.
The 19-year-old winger was originally supposed to stay with the KHL’s SKA St. Petersburg through the 2025-26 season, and then head to Philadelphia to start his NHL career, but the team is letting the player buy out the remaining two years of his current KHL contract and start the next chapter of his career.
But why is Michkov suddenly able to do this?
According to a report from The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun, Michkov is being granted his release “based on compassionate grounds” as the player’s father passed away a year ago. Interestingly enough, in the first report where the potential of Michkov coming over first began, SKA chairman Alexander Medvedev mentioned his father’s death as a reason why he could be heading overseas sooner than later, to not be reminded of him while playing in Russia and make the grieving process more difficult. Now, it looks like that played a major role into allowing Michkov to head off to the NHL.
Additionally, Lebrun reported that J.P. Barry and Pat Brisson of the top hockey agency group, CAA Hockey, secured the rights to represent Michkov a few weeks ago and have been working with what might be Michkov’s new agent, Paul Theofanous, on his release. Once the contract buyout has been official, Michkov “should be on this side of the ocean and joining the Flyers” in one to two weeks, depending how long the immigration visa process takes.
Theofanous becoming Michkov’s new agent makes sense. The agent’s current clients in the NHL are the likes of Minnesota Wild star Kirill Kaprizov, New York Rangers winger Artemi Panarin, and former Flyer, current Stanley Cup Finalist, Sergei Bobrovsky — in addition to a handful of other lesser-known Russian players scattered across the league.
It will be an interesting couple of weeks for this team, no matter what. And, oh yeah, the 2024 NHL Draft is on Friday.
