Matvei Michkov Is the Second Best Prospect in the 2023 NHL Draft

Let's think about what I'm most likely to be wrong about

Elite Prospects keeps track of various scouting outlets’ rankings throughout the season. Adam Fantilli is the consensus number 2 prospect in this draft, and I think that’s a mistake. Matvei Michkov is the second-best prospect in this draft. Let’s use some of the statistics I have access to, diving into some contextual factors models like mine are likely to miss and investigating why I think Michkov is better than the current consensus suggests.

A Note on Michkov’s contract

So why am I higher on Michkov than consensus? Well, I should note that I am not discussing the contract concerns with Michkov. (For those unaware, Michkov is signed to a KHL deal for a few years, so while Fantilli may play in the NHL next year, Michkov will not. I just think this is for teams to consider, not people like me). I don’t have any unique insights into his contract situation, so why even bother? Additionally, I sent out a tweet asking if people prefer Fantilli to Michkov because of the contract situation or if they think Fantilli is a better prospect outright. The vast majority of the replies said they prefer Fantilli outright, so I am assuming most people believe Fantilli is the better prospect independent of the contract situation. With that being said, let’s talk about why I think Michkov is a better prospect right now.

Michkov’s Production is Next Level

So it is generally understood Michkov is a dynamic offensive player, but I think it’s being undersold how impressive Michkov’s production has been this season. Let’s use Max’s (@woumaxx) NHLe translation factors to adjust for league difficulty and view the 2023' NHL draft classes scoring rates.

I must preface all of this by saying Michkov is younger than Fantilli. Differences in age make a massive difference for prospects, so we should expect Fantilli to look better than Michkov at the moment to make up for the difference in age. It is only a two-month gap, but given the gap exists, equal would technically favour Michkov, so keep that in mind going forward.

Note our data is about two weeks old at the time I’m writing this, but the general idea has not changed since then.

Despite bouncing between the KHL and VHL, Michkov is producing at the second-highest league-adjusted rate in this draft class, behind only Bedard, who is a generational prospect. For further context on how impressive Michkov’s production has been, let’s look at 20-plus years of data and see where Michkov’s current scoring pace ranks in that time.

Expanded out to include Fantilli, a few things are clear. First, the 2023 NHL draft class is insanely talented at the top, with Bedard, Michkov, Carlsson and Fantilli all having some of the better draft year seasons we have ever seen. Look at the company Michkov is keeping compared to Fantilli from a scoring perspective. Both are incredible prospects, but Michkov’s NHLe per game is 10th in the entire sample right now, just ahead of Sidney f’ing Crosby’. The pure offensive upside of Michkov would be the best in most draft classes but Connor Bedard happens to be an alien.

There’s more too, and I think this next point is even more critical. Fantilli and Michkov have been playing hockey for years, and Michkov outproducing Fantill is not new.

In a weirdly synchronous trend, Michkov has been outproducing Fantilli as long as we have data. This should be especially important mid-way through the season because this year is only like 25 games long for both Michkov and Fantilli. So, priors matter a lot when we have small samples. And, Michkov has had a very large advantage over Fantilli up until this season by the scouting community as well. It has only been in midseason rankings Fantilli has emerged ahead of Michkov in the consensus.

Another important point is it’s not just one NHLe model that suggests Michkov is the class’s second-best prospect. Byron Bader has his NHLe model, which also favours Michkov.

While Byron’s model suggests Fantilli has been producing more this year, Michkov’s superior priors that I had just discussed still give him a relatively large edge using a separate methodology. So it’s important to note even if our NHLe model is slightly underselling how good Fantilli’s current season is and overrating Michkov’s, prospect models are still likely to favour Michkov by a decent margin because there are so few prospects that have ever looked as good as Michkov did in his draft minus one season. Plus, Michkov has still been producing at an amazing clip this year.

Beyond the Models

If you still prefer Fantilli to Michkov, I know what you're probably thinking, NHLe models are great, but they can lack context, which is why you still like Fantilli more. While these models are imperfect, I want to use two common critiques levied against the analytics community and use them to say, if anything, Michkov looks even better when accounting for some factors models miss.

League Quality

So I haven’t been around draft circles long. Last year was the first draft I ever made prospect content. Luckily I remember a key talking point about Brad Lambert and, to a lesser extent, Juraj Slafkovský. Both of these top prospects had really, really underwhelming production in their leagues, so the nerds vs. scouts dichotomy actually existed for these players.

Modellers suggested these prospects were way overvalued, and yet they still got drafted high. The main pushback I heard was that Slafkovský and Lambert’s poor production could be somewhat excused by the fact that they both played in a professional league at such a young age. Hence, the fact that they were in these pro leagues at their age was a signal in and of itself, even though they failed to produce in these leagues.

Well, if that is a piece of context NHLe-based models tend to miss, what does that say about Michkov? Michkov made the KHL, the second-best league in the world in his draft minus one season! And despite playing in this insanely difficult league where young players often fail to get minutes, Michkov still looks like one of the better prospects of my entire lifetime. So given that playing in a pro league is used to excuse poor production from other top prospects, should we take it as an additional strong signal that Michkov’s amazing numbers have been partially in the second-best league on the planet?

Team Quality

There is another piece of context the hockey analytics community is constantly being accused of failing to account for, even at the NHL level where we have much better data. The factor analysts are told we fail to account for properly is team quality. You might have seen a day-long debate on Twitter about this image.

For those unfamiliar with the Jfresh charts, don’t worry too much about the specifics if you don’t want to. What’s important is that using publically available data, Patrick Kane appears to be incredibly overrated by the broader public. NHL-level models seldom show Kane near the best players on earth, even though many who watch him closely believe he still is.

Why do some people think the models are so wrong about Kane? There are two reasons, one of which is that they are underrated playmakers, but that’s a problem for another article. The other main thing people believe is not properly accounted for when statistically analyzing certain players like Kane is sure, even if their results do such, that is because we can’t properly account for how difficult it is to play on an awful team like the Blackhawks are right now.

Back To Michkov

So, what do Patrick Kanes redder' than expected player cards have to do with Michkov? Well, for those unaware, Michkov currently plays for a team called HK Sochi, who are, relative to their league, apparently one of the worst professional hockey teams in existence right now. For some context, they are dead last in the KHL, like 20 points behind the next worst team. They also have a -103 goal differential! Worst in the KHL by a mile. So Michkov’s team is awful, and just like existing in a pro league, playing for an awful team is often used as an excuse for poorer numbers than expected. And yet, through both of these pieces of context, which are likely making it far harder for Michkov to sustain elite production than for Fantilli (Fantilli plays on a stacked University of Michigan team with many first-round picks), Michkov still looks better statistically.

Conclusion

So when putting it all together, I think Matvei Michkov is the second-best prospect in the 2023 NHL draft. I am aware Fantilli is the better 200-foot player, and that matters a lot. Thus why it’s a debate between the two. That being said, I think Michkov looks like the far better prospect statistically because of his crazy offensive ceilling. Plus, if we add context to Michkov's statistics, he is producing at his board-line historic rates despite factors often used to excuse poor production. The fact that Michkov looks so good through all that adversity is enough for me to consider him the second-best prospect in this class, even over someone as strong as Fantilli. At the very least, the fact that there is a consensus that Fantilli is better confuses me. At worst, Fantilli vs. Michkov should be a hotly contested debate, and in my opinion, Michkov currently has the edge.