The most exciting athlete to pull on the colors of a Philadelphia sports team recently is Flyers rookie Shayne Gostisbehere and every indication is that the defenseman will become a main cog in the club’s suddenly revamped timeline toward a total rebuild.
Mind you, you will never hear general manager Ron Hextall speak of a speedier path to regain an elite status in the NHL, but the Flyers can’t stave off the hints of a future that will be brighter at a faster pace than initially expected. In fact, the club should be embracing the expectations of a turnaround.
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Gostisbehere enters Tuesday night’s game in Carolina with a 15-game point scoring streak -- a rookie defenseman record -- and the longest for any defensemen in the NHL since Chris Chelios’ 15-game streak in 1996.
Ghost has made virtually every one of his dozen goals count in terms of tying a game or putting the Flyers ahead. And he’s scored four (FOUR!) overtime goals in what amounts to less than half a season of play.
Gostisbehere not only deserves to be in the race for the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s best rookie, but he should be near the front. And unless there is a dramatic drop in his level of play, he should truly be, at the very least, a co-favorite to win the award.
It will be hard to argue against 22-goal scorer Artemi Panarin of the Chicago Blackhawks, who had a hat trick last week in a big win over the New York Rangers. However, Panarin does benefit from playing with a guy named Patrick Kane.
And wouldn’t it be just the Flyers luck if Kane – the same guy who they lost in the draft lottery to Chicago in 2007 -- was the reason a rookie of the year award did not go to Gostisbehere.
But, if Gostisbehere continues on this torrid pace, he will move to the front of a talented freshman class that includes Panarin as well as Dylan Larkin (Detroit), Jack Eichel (Buffalo), Max Domi and Anthony Duclair (Arizona), and Connor McDavid, whose season was upended by a shoulder injury.
You really don’t need any analytics to see how much Gostisbehere has meant to the Flyers. Almost immediately, he turned the club’s power play into a threat and at the same time, made Giroux an even bigger threat. Opposing teams can no longer swarm toward Giroux on the power play because Gostisbehere is a lurking option.
Ghost also made the Flyers a much harder team to pin in its own zone because for the first time in a generation, the Flyers have a defenseman who can simply take the puck and break through almost any forecheck or semblance of a trap.
As good as the other rookies might be, none has had the impact on a team or organization that Ghost has had in Philadelphia.
But the real hopes of the Flyers and their fans go well past the talk of a Calder or future Norris trophies. Instead, they are focused on seeing Gostisbehere as the anchor of a defense that could feature prospects Ivan Provorov, who is scoring at a better than a point-a-game pace in juniors, Travis Sanheim and others.
Over the course of about three months, Ghost has breathed new life into a hockey fan base in Philadelphia that had been ready to sit and wait patiently for a season or two while the club got its blueprints in order.
Instead, Ghost has accelerated everything.
The odd part of this whole transformation of expectations is that hockey is not a game where one player can usually around fortunes so quickly. Unless the player in question is truly a generational talent such as Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux, a whole lot more needs to be blended into the roster to see a recipe for success.
Gostisbehere landed on a roster with a proven and steady star in Giroux, solid complimentary scorers in Jake Voracek and Wayne Simmonds and a defense so thin that Mark Streit was likely their top player.
Ironically, it was Streit’s awful pelvic injury that led Hextall to abandon his slow-and-steady game plan for bringing up Ghost and add him to the lineup.
Once there, Gostisbehere immediately became not only the club’s best defenseman, but maybe its best player.
And credit coach Dave Hakstol, who has allowed Ghost to use his offensive skills while not playing in the fear of being stapled to the bench when and if he made a mistake.
Despite the fact that he is perhaps the smallest defenseman in the NHL, he is so crafty with positioning and stick checking that he regularly separates opposing players from the puck.
And that is the definition of a check.
It won’t be long before Gostisbehere – and the prospects that follow – turn the Flyers into a sustained and serious threat.