Matvei Michkov Wins it in Overtime Again for the Flyers

At this point, I’m legitimately running out of things to say about Matvei Michkov.

The Flyers won their third straight game tonight in St. Louis and played in their eighth overtime game in their last 12. Michkov netted the game-winning overtime goal for the third time this season, giving the Flyers a 3-2 victory.

In a game that started with the Blues honoring Jordan Binnington for being the winningest goalie in St. Louis history, the Flyers played spoiler by taking the early lead thanks to Owen Tippett.

Tippett is one of the young Philadelphia forwards who the Flyers would really love to see go on a heater. He’s one of those players where scoring comes in bunches and is a known piece for the Flyers’ future so him gaining any confidence from this score is a positive.

Tippett’s goal was assisted by Michkov, whose puck handling was on full display as he completely took the attention of Bennington as a shooting threat before dumping it to Tippett for the easy goal.

This would be all the scoring either team could muster until the third period. It was here that Flyers goalie Aleksei Kolosov finally let one by from Dylan Holloway.

Philadelphia would respond quickly though, as Tyson Foerster put the Flyers back on top 2-1 with a goal of his own. This seemed like it would be enough to give the Flyers the victory, but the Blues wouldn’t go away.

As the final few moments of regulation were ticking away St. Louis pulled their goalie and peppered Kolosov until he finally let one slip by with less than 20 seconds to go. This felt very reminiscent of the Flyers’ recent game in Nashville, where they sent it to overtime in much the same fashion. Naturally, the concern after a goal like this is that the team formerly being down now has all the momentum, but as I said above, Michkov had other plans.

The Blues started with the puck and pushed into the Flyers’ zone, but Travis Konecny forced a turnover right to Michkov, who skated down the length of the ice, faked out Binnington to the left, and backhanded it in for the win. They did this less than 30 seconds into overtime. Michkov, clearly tired of all these overtime games, had the game on his stick once again and ended it immediately.

The Flyers have now played 25 games this season and are once again above hockey .500, the question becomes what should we make of this team? By now we’ve gotten a big enough sample size to know what they are, but is it what everyone expected? They feel very reminiscent of where they were at this point last year: a gritty team that plays tough and might be over-performing from a record standpoint.

There will be those fans who say we need to be tanking in order to get higher draft picks, but this team is winning thanks for the most part to the young talent that is supposed to be here for years to come. It may be time to consider that the young talent that will be the future core of a winning Flyers team is not out there waiting to be drafted, but is on this team right now.

The Flyers will have the next four days off before a home game on Thursday, December 5 against the Florida Panthers at 7:00 pm EST. The game can be watched on NBC Sports Philadelphia.

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