Late Monday night, with most eyes either elsewhere or asleep back on the East Coast, the Flyers won their first game in a week, 3-1, over in Vancouver.

But that hardly seemed to matter to most Flyers fans.

Because going to bed Monday night, they put down their phones or shut their laptops with a building list of aggravations toward head coach Rick Tocchet, his limiting playstyles, his perceived glaring issue with shelving his better younger players late into close games, and his even longer perceived dislike of young star Matvei Michkov, all on top of a growing dissatisfaction with a Flyers team that hasn't done much to recover itself from a brutal 5-10-5 hole...

Only to wake up Tuesday morning to a viral clip of Michkov arguing with veteran Nick Seeler by the bench, and passive postgame remarks about the Russian winger who has been the only one consistently scoring in an orange and black sweater.

Then came Tuesday's bombshell, which, no matter what happens from here, violently rocks the Flyers' trajectory – and probably even trust: Michkov has started looking past Philadelphia. He has a "preference to have a fresh start elsewhere," per ESPN hockey insider and analyst Kevin Weekes.

"Given the Flyers' difficult start to the season, some internal discord, I'm told from multiple league sources that it's the preference of star forward, young forward...Matvei Michkov, it's his preference to have a fresh start elsewhere given those factors," Weekes said in a video he uploaded to his Twitter/X account.

And that's a problem, no matter how you look at it. Because either way, something has gone wrong with the Philadelphia Flyers for a report like this to even get out there – to even get to this point.

Weekes' report didn't come with the clarity that Michkov's camp has formally requested a trade, and per fellow ESPN reporter Emily Kaplan, along with several other Flyers beats (like AllPHLY's Charlie O'Connor), the Flyers themselves haven't received one, and weren't even aware of Michkov's just-reported preference.

Even so, Michkov will be a restricted free agent after this season, and hasn't had any clear progress toward a long-term contract extension.

There's a clear out for him, either now or in another several months, which is more than enough time for everyone who just bought a Liberty Bell gray No. 39 jersey to sprint through all five stages of grief, while potentially tearing down the Flyers' entire rebuild at the situation's very worst.

And even if it's not that bad, it probably is still bad.

The Flyers losing 15 of their first 20 games in consistently listless fashion has squandered much of the goodwill they've built up among the city with last year's playoff breakthrough.

The scrappy, young, and underdog team that Philadelphia fell for barely six months ago is gone, and in its place has been an aimlessly skating and easily shaken roster that keeps trying to grind out one-goal games, only to frequently fold.

The Flyers have been at a severe lack of goal-scoring firepower and commanding playmaking across the board, save for Michkov, who came into this season with the most to prove because of his tumultuous Year 2.

His 10 goals, so far, lead the team in scoring by far, and whenever the Flyers have notched wins and positive momentum in the past month, Michkov has been the focal point for nearly all of it.

Take Monday night in Vancouver as the latest example. Michkov was flying across the ice all game, shrugging off checks, handling with the puck on a string, and generating chances that kept the Flyers crashing toward the Canucks' net.

But it came with a disconnect, which could be picked up on just from watching.

Michkov, on a second-period power play, slipped a nifty pass to Travis Konecny that the veteran winger was able to shoot and score on from the short-side angle for a 2-0 lead. The celebration, though, was mild. Surrounding teammates on the ice barely cracked a smile or gave a lackadaisical stick raise.

Later on in the period, Michkov and Seeler were captured arguing during a stoppage by the NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcast, with 20-year-old rookie Porter Martone being the only one to step between the two in an attempt to defuse the jawing. No player with a captaincy letter on his chest was shown interjecting.

Then postgame, after the Flyers won, mind you, remarks from Konecny and Tocchet about Michkov's effort were passive and quick to deflect to the team's collective performance.

A day and a mighty spin of the rumor mill later, the thought is out there now that Michkov might've had enough and is eyeing his way out.

And for the Flyers, that's a total disaster, no matter how you look at it.

Take it from this perspective: Michkov struggled for much of last season, had his conditioning harped on publicly by Tocchet numerous times, took ownership of it and played better down the stretch, but then got overwhelmed in the playoffs and was even scratched for two postseason games.

He learned his lesson on the way out, reported back from the summer looking way leaner and faster, and then jumped out as the budding offensive star the Flyers needed, even when pretty much everything else was going wrong for the team, just to be dismissed or even criticized for it by his more senior peers.

Michkov did the work. He put in the effort. But it's not what his team wanted. What kind of message does that send, not only to fans, but to incoming prospects, and even the rest of the NHL?

Then there's this angle: Three years ago, general manager Danny Brière and team president Keith Jones took a massive gamble with the seventh overall draft pick, electing to take the Russian Michkov with it, thus making him the face of their rebuild plan, but while full knowing that he wasn't expected to come over from Russia for another several years at the time.

But his camp found an exit out of his KHL deal early, Brière and Jones drove up to JFK International Airport in New York to pick him up, and the organization rolled out the figurative red carpet for him, with all the hope in the world that he was going to be the Flyers' future star for the next decade plus.

And now Brière, Jones, and the entire front office are likely sitting there on a Tuesday night, scrambling to figure out how they're going to quell sudden word of their best player – right now – and really, the linchpin to their whole grand plan possibly looking for the exit, when they didn't even seem to know this was a possibility based on immediate reporting.

Christopher Hanewinckel/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The Flyers have so much of their future poured into Matvei Michkov.

They can't sit and ignore this. It won't blow over, and the second they do try to address it will be the second that brings some pressing and ultimately telling questions: What's happening in their building? Do they really have the culture to foster positive player development? Can Tocchet continue to coach this team in the state that it's in? Was picking Michkov three years ago a mistake to begin with, not necessarily because of the player, but because of the environment he was brought into?

And ultimately: Why should fans keep any benefit of the doubt that Brière and Jones' plan to build an eventual Stanley Cup contender will work, when there's so much negative buzz – that may have reached a boiling point – around the foundational piece to all of it?

This puts jobs on the line – Tocchet's, Brière's, Jones, the list is just getting started.

This stands to rewrite the entire breakdown between the organization and former top prospect Cutter Gauthier, who gave the Flyers and their fans a villain to rally against at a time when there still wasn't much to get excited about, but while still having to accept that he's over in Anaheim now posting hat tricks at a record clip.

This puts an entire era of the Philadelphia Flyers in jeopardy – that might've had only one flash-in-the-pan playoff run to offer. The exact thing Brière and Jones wanted to avoid.

And this might even put the entire faith of a once-fervent fan base at permanent stake – because you can't feed them a crumb of hope, just to put them through another decade of mediocrity.

This is a disaster for the Flyers. No matter how you look at it.

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