KHL club SKA St. Petersburg is once again loaning Philadelphia Flyers top prospect Matvei Michkov to league rival HK Sochi, according to multiple reports out of Russia. St. Petersburg loaned Michkov to the basement-dwelling club near the beginning of last season as well.
The Flyers’ seventh-overall pick in 2023 has skated just 6:12 this season, only playing in one out of St. Petersburg’s four games to begin the 2023-24 KHL season. SKA has also effectively benched another young talent, Minnesota Wild prospect Marat Khusnutdinov, despite recording 41 points in 63 games for them last year.
The move returns Michkov to a club where he should immediately play a top-line role. As an 18-year-old, Michkov recorded 20 points in 27 games for Sochi in 2022-23, leading the team in points per game by far. Sochi has dropped three of their first four games, with their lone win coming from a massive 3-1 upset over 2023 Gagarin Cup finalist Ak Bars Kazan.
This is undoubtedly positive news for Michkov’s development (and the Flyers’ brass), returning him to a role where he can actually get playing time. He’s still under contract with SKA through the 2025-26 season, though, and this song and dance without having control over where Michkov plays is likely what some teams were looking to avoid by passing on him throughout the top five of the 2023 draft.
This almost seems like a-holes in the KHL are going out of their way to sabotage this kid’s development.
The thing about the KHL is it’s not a development league. It about winning games and championships. I have no idea if sitting Michkov or playing him give them the best chance to win. But unlike a league like the AHL, his development is not part of the team’s calculus. They will not benefit from that development, they have no relationship with the team that will. They are trying to win now.
@mattc68 – Plus, the aversion to the idea of cooperating with the NHL doesn’t help matters, either. They are worse than an independent AHL franchise, who would at least work with NHL teams to help development.
Michkov led a KHL team in points per game last season, sitting him is certainly not helping SKA win games
Also, why did SKA sign him to a 5 year contract, if they didn’t plan to use him?
Things are weird in the KHL.
@Josh – Do you think he might have uttered the dreaded words, “I wish I was playing in the NHL right now” to the wrong people?
No this is actually a good thing for his development. SKA is one of the richest teams and is stacked with good win now veteran talent. Teams like that in the KHL will loan their players to bad teams to give them playing time. Last year he was loaned to Sochi, but considering the really weird circumstances around his father’s death there I doubt he wants to go back.
This is better to give him top line playing time than to keep him. It would be the equivalent of a stacked team like Vegas somehow drafting Bedard and loaning him to the Coyotes to play top line minutes while they get to sell tickets.
They signed him to a 5 year contract because he is a very talented young player and he will have to come out to a buyout agreement when he comes to the NHL. They also are making money off loaning him. Think of it like a ELC. I get the hate for Russia, but signing good young talent long term isn’t weird.
So Black Ace, what you’re saying, is SKA has no interest in developing him as a player, just in making money loaning him to Sochi and the NHL?
If this was equivalent to an ELC in the NHL, he’d be loaned to his junior team, or the ECHL, or AHL, not another team in the NHL.
It still seems a strange system, to us here in North America. He’s obviously talented, and can produce at the KHL level, and any North American team would either play him, or trade him.
Not trying to be snarky here, just trying to understand the situation. To us North American hockey fans, it doesn’t really make sense, and seems a strange way of doing things.
@Black Ace57 – Judging by the way the KHL seems to operate, Michkov may not get the so-called promised top-six TOI. As @Josh has stated above, that team already benched a star player, so what’s to stop them from treating Michkov the same way? On a bad team, he may or may not get top-line minutes, but he’s likely to pick up bad habits and not learn how to win.
He might not get to 6 on a team like SKA, but on a team like Sochi or Riga he would. Just look at last season. You can’t claim Michkov had a good season last year and claim loaning him this season would kill his development when it’s the exact thing they just did.
SKA sucks.
There isn’t the equivalent of the AHL, ECHL, OHL, etc. There is also a big difference in what top KHL teams spend vs lower end. SKA’s payroll is about 3 times that of the poorer teams. What they do is when the player is young they loan him to a poor bad team that can play him top minutes and promote having him there. With the 5 year contract how things currently stand he would need to buy out in a few years depending how how things change or not. If things get really bad with the US and Russia then they might have a 22 year old Michkov under team control for the foreseeable future. It’s weird to me too, but that’s how they develop players.
OK thanks, Black Ace57! Good discussion. I learned something.
They have AHL and ECHL equivalents in the VHL and MHL.
They still loan players though to other teams. That’s my main point is that this isn’t strange or new for Michkov.