Danny Briere continued his active, aggressive strategy by selecting Matvei Michkov of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) with the seventh-overall pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft. The Russian forward will play for the remainder of his contract through the 2025-26 season with SKA St. Petersburg.
The Philadelphia Flyers won’t have their top prospect for three seasons to begin a new era under Briere and President of Hockey Operations Keith Jones, and the uncertainty of Russian politics means there could be further complications after 2026. However, the potential impact of the pick outweighs the short-term loss and propels an organization that needed this kind of boost to its prospect potential.
Briere Picks Boldly
The Flyers have some valuable NHL players on their roster. Just look at the number of trade discussions that have come up since Briere announced himself open for business before the Stanley Cup was even awarded. Players like Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, and Owen Tippett could become excellent pieces on a contending team. However, they don’t have the ceiling to become superstar players for a Stanley Cup champion.
“Number one for us is getting talent…We want some 100-point players,” Jones told 97.5 The Fanatic. “In specialized situations, you need talented players that want to grab it by the horns and make something happen and have the skill set to be able to do that. We have some guys that can, but we need more, and that’s something that is really going to be at the forefront of what we’re trying to do here.”
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The Flyers will not deliberately tank to improve their draft lottery odds. They have instead decided to prioritize the growth of culture and a new standard for performance under head coach John Tortorella. Given the lack of superstar potential and the unlikelihood of drafting in the first-overall spot, they needed another way to land a top-end prospect with a talent ceiling higher than the average player selected with the seventh-overall pick. They boldly pounced on their opportunity by drafting Michkov despite the inherent risk.
Flyers Set Timeline for Rebuild
Chuck Fletcher refused to say the word rebuild out loud during his tenure as general manager. After the Flyers let him go in March 2023, Briere confidently spoke about the unchartered territory. Members of the organization, including new franchise governor Dan Hilferty, have spoken candidly about a multiyear process to reenter contention. None of them have committed to a specified window of time.
However, Charlie O’Connor spoke about how the three-year contract in the KHL “clearly sets a projected end date for the end of the rebuild” when Michkov expects to come to the NHL in 2026. The organization’s recent emphasis on player development will take shape in the meantime with young players like Cam York, Noah Cates, Cutter Gauthier, and Tyson Foerster.
Michkov will play in the second-best professional hockey league in the world against a fair amount of players with NHL experience and plenty more who would be good enough to compete for roster spots if they made the move to North America. The Flyers should not need any more than three years to dig themselves out of their current hole before they’re ready to compete. Michkov should be ready to play in the NHL immediately after his KHL contract ends. The countdown now begins for the 2026-27 Flyers.
Don’t Ignore The Risk
The nature of the situation in Russia transcends hockey, and it creates a lot of factors that the Flyers simply can’t control. This is the same organization that missed out on prospect goaltender Ivan Fedotov because of a complex situation that had more to do with global politics than stopping the puck.
The fan base has watched the Flyers plummet into their worst position in franchise history with an epic fall from grace since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. They watched the team slip out of relevance in the NHL and in the Philadelphia sports landscape gradually throughout the decade of the 2010s.
If factors outside Briere’s control sabotage Michkov’s career, he won’t get the good grace of a fan base that hasn’t seen a Stanley Cup parade in nearly a half-century. Flyers fans can commend Briere for his willingness to be bold and take a risk that could change the long-term direction of the franchise. However, that credit must also include an acknowledgment that he just risked burning the seventh-overall pick on a player who could realistically stay in Russia for his entire career.
