Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2025-26 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
← 2025-26 edition

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

39

Matvei Michkov

Philadelphia Flyers Right Wing

26 goals and 63 points as a 20-year-old rookie, on a club that conceded 286.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2024-25PHI80263763-184680319913.116:41
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—80263763-184680319913.116:41

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

26 goals and 37 assists in 80 games — 63 points as a 20-year-old in his first NHL season, at 16:41 a night, with 8 power-play goals and 3 game-winners on 199 shots.

52.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 76th percentile. His ice went 49-55 against an expectation of 44.83-40.00 — seven goals of scoring missing and three extra conceded, which is the shape of every Flyer’s on-ice record last season and has almost nothing to do with him. The minus-18 is a goaltending statistic.

The Finesse Game

The hands are the best on this roster and among the best on any roster in this book at his age. He holds the puck through contact, he changes his mind mid-play, and he beats a goaltender from an angle a goaltender has not accounted for.

199 attempts at a median of 25 feet with 39 per cent from inside 20. The release is deceptive rather than heavy — he does not overpower anybody and he does not have to. 37 assists says the vision is real and not a by-product of the shooting.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 172 pounds and among the lightest forwards in the league. He is not going to win a puck on the wall and he does not try to; the game is played in space and he creates the space himself.

46 penalty minutes in 80 games is a rookie learning what he can get away with. He does not avoid contact and he does not seek it, and the body will have to fill out for the middle of his career to look like the start of it.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2023, and the seven clubs that passed on him did so because nobody knew when — or whether — he would leave Russia. He arrived two years early.

80 games and 63 points in a first season, on a club that finished 27th. The whole of the rebuild is now organised around him.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
  • he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

  • durable· was available

    80 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • sheltered· is started in the attacking end

    61% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it

  • playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “37 assists says the vision is real and not a by-product of the shooting.”

  • wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line

    “He is not going to win a puck on the wall and he does not try to; the game is played in space and he creates the space himself.”

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “He holds the puck through contact, he changes his mind mid-play, and he beats a goaltender from an angle a goaltender has not accounted for.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 999 minutes

Expected goals
52.8%
76th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.6%
39th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 55 against. Expected: 44.8 and 40.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
91st
Numbers
76th

The two rank him within 15 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 80 games

Top speed
21.9 mph
35th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
0.85 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
2.74 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
80.7 mph
22nd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.9

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 999 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club
PHI took 52.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.8% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 999 minutes at five-on-five — 60th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Sean Couturier52.4%53.4%51.8%
Jamie Drysdale47.2%56.2%52.0%
Owen Tippett53.0%52.8%53.2%

52.4% together, 53.4% for him apart and 51.8% for Couturier apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

287 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.