It is September 15 and while that is almost a nothing date on the hockey calendar for most years, it is an extremely significant one for this year. For right now.
The NHL’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement will be kicking in when the clock strikes midnight. While there are already some new rules in place, such as the playoff cap and the new limit for the Long-Term Injured Reserve cap overage, all of them will come into effect when the day is over. Most of them don’t really matter all that much and this big changeover won’t have any repercussions that NHL teams haven’t already figured out — but there is one where we are seeing a slew of transactions as we approach this mid-September deadline.
As soon as the calendar flips over to September 16, the maximum length of a contract when you re-sign your own player will be seven years, and the maximum length of a contract when you sign an unrestricted free agent will be six. That means that teams around the NHL have just hours remaining to sign players to a maximum eight-year contract and we’re already seeing a lot of deals happen.
Drake Batherson re-upped with the Ottawa Senators for long-term security. The Buffalo Sabres signed young prospect Noah Ostlund to an eight-year deal that could end up being a bargain at $6.6 million per year. And most recently at the time of writing, the Washington Capitals decided to sign 21-year-old winger Ryan Leonard to an eight-year contract with a $10.5-million AAV.
So, should the Philadelphia Flyers get involved? Should they take this final opportunity to sign a player to a very long contract?
There’s only one more player eligible to receive this sort of deal and it could be a crucial one.
Should the Flyers take this opportunity to try and sign Matvei Michkov long-term?
The Flyers have already used this deadline for something similar. They signed winger Tyson Foerster to an eight-year contract extension with a $7.1-million AAV on July 1, giving the 24-year-old as much security as possible. Now, should they turn to Matvei Michkov?
Just like Foerster, Michkov is eligible for a contract extension this summer but there has not been a whole lot of rumblings about a future long-term deal that could keep him in Philadelphia for most of his career. But now, it certainly feels like it’s something that the team should at least push for and discuss with the player.
If Michkov wasn’t ill-prepared for last season and then had the disappointing season that he did, we would have probably seen pen be put to paper on a contract extension. If we saw some sort of forward trajectory for his sophomore season, it would have made the Flyers front office comfortable with committing to the player long-term. Now, they might be a little hesitant to offer that kind of deal to Michkov, with some doubts if he can reach his potential as one of the best forwards on this team.
But being a general manager in the NHL is all about taking a calculated risk. Maybe after talking with him all summer long and seeing how dedicated he is to wiping away that sophomore season, and how he has looked on the ice in Voorhees for the last couple of weeks; the Flyers feel more comfortable. It might have just taken a couple conversations about his summer and how he is looking forward to this coming season, to be completely fine committing to him at a certain dollar amount.
If Leonard is getting a $10.5-million AAV at eight years, would it be all that crazy to approach Michkov with a $100-million contract? Any top line player putting up a point per game is going to be making at least $12.5 million per year in just a few seasons — if Michkov can be that and more, wouldn’t it make sense for the Flyers to at least try?
It does take two to tango, though.
Michkov might not want to sign right now, anyways
It would make perfect sense for Michkov to reject any contract the Flyers send his way, unless he suddenly gets the Leo Carlsson deal for some reason. He wants to take the bet that he truly can reach his ceiling and be one of the best pure offensive players in the entire NHL.
Maybe he would have signed a lucrative offer from the Flyers if he had a better season than he did last year. Something the Flyers were more comfortable in offering but also large enough that Michkov himself felt like he wouldn’t instantly become a player with a bargain-bin deal and be underpaid. A respectable long-term commitment.
But now, there might not be an offer good enough from the Flyers (if they are even offering any contracts) for Michkov to take. Because if he has the bounceback season we are all dreaming of and he’s leading the team in scoring, being an insane power-play weapon, and is a true difference-maker at the top of the lineup, then he could reasonably get upwards of $15 million per year on his next contract.
On the other hand, if he settles into being a solid 65-point winger this season that has solid impact through all three zones but might not be as dynamic as one hoped, then that number would probably drop to within Ryan Leonard’s salary range — and that’s a big difference.
So, why would Michkov take anything less than what he’s striving for? The one extra year might not mean that much to him since it is highly unlikely that if he is the player that we all hope he is, that he would then be earning less in what would have been the eighth year of his extension.
Both the Flyers and Michkov are probably comfortable with taking the next few months to evaluate and to come up with contract offers and demands that they are feeling good about. More evidence is never a bad thing and since the only difference really is one more possible year to sign, it isn’t a life or death situation.
If next summer is approaching and Michkov is still not signed to a contract extension, then we can certainly worry a bit. But the most likely scenario right now is that the Flyers are waiting for a few months, for him to start his third campaign extremely well, and then start talking numbers to put pen to paper sometime early 2027. It’s just a gut feeling that that is what is going to happen and there is no real pressure to make this September 15 deadline to add an additional year to his contract.
Even if his good friend Ivan Demidov went for job security over everything in Montreal, Michkov probably knows that that eight-year deal with a $9.15-million AAV is already considered a massive underpay and was the second he signed it. The Flyers winger most likely wants to avoid that and that means showing off for a few more months and showing that he truly can be one of the best wingers in the world.
