Everyone is watching Leaflets games know how good it is Matvei Mishkov East. Now the NHL has taken notice.

On Friday, Michkov was named the NHL’s rookie of the month for October. He played in 11 games and recorded four goals and five assists, with nine points scored in the first eight games of the season. He is the first Flyer to be selected for this honor since James van Riemsdyk in November 2009.

“Some fragments work well, some don’t,” Michkov said Friday through team consultant Slava Kuznetsov. “It’s all a work in progress.”

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The work in progress looks pretty good so far. He finished October first among rookies in goals (four), power play goals (three) and power play points (six), and tied with Logan Stankoven of the Dallas Stars for first rank with nine points.

At just 19 years old, Michkov dazzled fans with his hockey vision and determination. The Russian phenom made his NHL debut on October 11 against the Vancouver Canucks, playing nearly 19 minutes. He set up Travis Konecny on the power play for his first NHL point the next night in Calgary.

Two nights later, against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers, he scored his first NHL goal on a power play by tapping the puck into the side of the net. There were some delays, first determining if the deal had gone through, then the Oilers contesting goaltender interference, but once it became official he was able to celebrate the milestone moment.

“I think everyone in this room is maybe more excited than him, I hope,” Garnet Hathaway said after the game, which shook Michkov when the goal was awarded. “You can see the battle he’s fighting, the competition he’s fighting. And I think that kind of goal kind of embodies what he brings to the game.”

Michkov added another power play marker in the game and his first four NHL points were with the man advantage. He became the first Flyer to score his first two goals in the same game since Vinny Prospal on March 8, 1997, and the youngest to have a multi-goal game since Nolan Patrick in April 2018.

In two games against fellow Russian Alex Ovechkin, he scored a goal and added two assists for one of his three multi-point games.

“He came flying out of the blocks,” associate coach Brad Shaw said Friday. “You can see he loves having the puck on his stick. It’s an unforgiving league, a really tough league, and trying to learn a language, trying to learn how it’s played on an ice surface of that size, I think we all anticipate a few obstacles along the way. the road, but let him get out of the gates this quickly and show what he can do.

There were a few bumps and Thursday night 2-1 victory against the St. Louis BluesMishkov sat out for a few shifts. Coach Jean Tortorella said after the game that he wouldn’t go into detail about the three-team, five-on-five bench — he jumped on a power play sandwiched in between — but said it was “repetitive.”

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“He likes to play on the move, and in this league there are a lot of elements of the game, where stopping and starting is a much more effective way to defend or check or even set up offensive support,” Shaw said. “It tends to stay moving and sometimes that takes you out of the good ice you started in.”

“He’s learning. … He’s a motivated guy. You see how competitive he is, and there’s no doubt he’ll fix those issues and become a better hockey player.

One thing that has become evident is her connection to Travis Konecny. The two fiery wingers – yes, Michkov also plays with an edge – came close or connected on several occasions.

According to Natural Stat Trick, when on the ice together, the Flyers have scored eight goals on 162 shot attempts; the opposition has eight goals on 87 shot attempts. Whether it is Michkov without Konency (42.13%) or Konecny ​​​​without Michkov (39.58%), shot attempts for against are in favor of the opponent. But it’s still a work in progress.

“Travis is a great player,” Michkov said. “Something works well, something doesn’t. He probably needed a little more time to bond and create really good chemistry.

Michkov is just trying to enjoy the game these days and the experience of being an NHL player. Selected by the Flyers with the seventh pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, he arrived in the United States two years ahead of schedule after being released from his contract with the KHL’s SKA St. Petersburg. Mishkov signed his entry-level contract with the Flyers on July 1 and began his career as announced.

And while the NHL rookie of the month honor is the first stepping stone to better hardware, Michkov knows he couldn’t have achieved it without his teammates.

“I want to thank my teammates, because without them this wouldn’t happen,” he said.

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