Do Flyers Give Matvei Michkov Enough Playing Time? There's a Website For That

Amid all the controversy surrounding the player this season, one Flyers fan has decided to build a website devoted to a single question: How much is Matvei Michkov playing?

Through 21 games this season, the answer is 16:08 a night. That ranks Michkov sixth amongst all Flyers forwards, placing him behind veterans Trevor Zegras (18:26), Christian Dvorak (17:58), Tyson Foerster (17:06), Travis Konecny (17:01) and Sean Couturier (16:17).

The Michkov Ice Time tracker is an independent project with no affiliation to the player, the Flyers or the NHL, but it does, however, log and track his minutes game by game and period by period, compares him with teammates and with other forwards around the league, and runs a live box during games that updates every 90 seconds.

There are slight, one-second discrepancies with official NHL ice time totals, but overall, the purpose of the project stands, and the site is very blunt with its position: “We think Michkov should get more ice time. It's simple.”

So far, the data shows a volatile workload that swings. Michkov's season high is 21:35, which came in a 4-3 overtime loss to Columbus on Oct. 27, and his low is 12:54, which came in a 4-1 loss against Carolina on Oct. 11. He has played 18 or more minutes in just four of 21 games this season, most recently logging 20:44 Wednesday in a 3-2 overtime loss at Edmonton.

Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet recently claimed that the Flyers' young players are "getting their time," but that clearly hasn't been the case, at least not nearly consistently enough.

Michkov's minutes are up from last season, when he averaged a career-low 14:50 under Tocchet, but remain woefully short of the 16:41 he averaged as a rookie under John Tortorella in 2024–25.

Most of the increase has come on the power play, where he averages 3:17 a game, compared with 2:10 a year ago. His even-strength time remains virtually unchanged at 12:49, up from 12:39. Of course, the 21-year-old phenom doesn't kill penalties, so he has not played any shorthanded minutes to further buoy his ice time.

The offensive production, however, has followed. Michkov has 10 goals and 15 points, including five power play goals, and is scoring 1.8 goals per 60 minutes, up from 1.00 last season.

Moving away from raw stats and rates, there are a few interesting wrinkles included in the tracker.

First, in its running season-long graph of Michkov's ice time, there are bars shown to represent when the Kevin Weekes trade report broke the internet, and when the halfway point of the season is.

Of course, Michkov played 20:44 against Edmonton in the very first game after those trade rumors, which the Flyers strongly denied, went viral.

Additionally, the tracker pits the Flyers star against other forwards around the NHL, where we can see that Michkov's (listed ice time on the tracker) 16:07 puts him in the same category as players like Yegor Sharangovich (16:08), Sam Steel (16:09), Alex Kerfoot (16:10), and Michael Amadio (16:03).

Sharangovich, Steel, Kerfoot, and Amadio have a combined 12 goals this season, whereas Michkov has 10 by himself.

Ice time is not a verdict of performance level, of course. All it does is reflect matchups and a coach’s read of a particular game, and a tracker can show how much a player plays without explaining why. But for fans who suspect Michkov deserves better, the site provides a live running count.