BOSTON – Going all the back to their admittance to the National Hockey League in 1967, the Flyers have never had a Calder Trophy winner for NHL rookie of the year.
But all that could be changing a few months from now.
Matvei Michkov is simply dominating almost every statistic in NHL freshman offense.
Two more goals in Saturday’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins, coming on the heels of a three-assist effort in a 7-5 defeat by Florida on Thursday night, have put Michkov squarely in the driver’s seat for league honors.
He already secured NHL rookie of the month honors for October.
Michkov’s teammates on the Flyers are somewhat in awe of what the 19-year-old Russian has been able to accomplish in a very short time period.
“He’s got a knack for scoring,” said Travis Sanheim after the game at TD Garden. “He wants to score goals. And he puts himself in good position to score goals. That’s just the player he is. You need to find him (on the second goal) when he’s sitting there that wide open.”
The Flyers’ Russian interpreter was not in attendance so Michkov was not available for comment.
However, captain Sean Couturier was more than willing to speak about Michkov’s talent.
Couturier set up Michkov’s first goal and it was fairly easy because the winger has a knack for shaking coverage and getting open.
“He’s a goal-scorer,” Couturier said. “And he knows where to go to get open. I just kind of knew he was gokng to be there.”
>Kolosov bounces back
After a bit of a struggle in Thursday night’s game against Florida, goaltender Aleksei Kolosov came back and played much better in this game.
“He made some huge saves to keep us in it,” Cam York said. “When he’s making saves like that, it gives us a ton of energy. Makes us want to play better for him.”
The Flyers have a second game in two days when they take on the Utah Hockey Club on Sunday night at the Wells Fargo Center. It will be interesting to see if coach John Tortorella will go to Ivan Fedosov, who had a rough outing against Florida. Tortorella never plays a goalie in back-to-back games, however, so it will be interesting to see if he has enough faith in Fedosov.
The wild card in this scenario is the status of Sam Ersson. He’s been sidelined since last month with a lower-body injury. He was still on IR as of Saturday but that status could change in about five minutes if he’s really needed.
