PHILADELPHIA — Matvei Michkov is 19 years old. He was born near the Ural Mountains, in a city, Perm, that was a site and source of the Soviet Union's artillery and aircraft-carrier buildup during the Cold War. He has never played a game in the National Hockey League. Assuming that he is in the lineup for the Philadelphia Flyers' first regular-season game, in early October, he will be younger than Alex Ovechkin, than Pavel Bure, than Alex Mogilny — great Russian players all — when they made their debuts in the best hockey league in the world.

Remember that, amid the joy and the hype and the hope. Remember all that.

Remember that if you're a long-suffering Flyers fan, desperate for a superstar whose jersey you can buy and wear without worry that he will flame out or be traded. Remember that if you're desperate for a savior to carry the Flyers to their first Stanley Cup in nearly a half-century.

Remember that if you're a member of the Flyers' marketing department, desperate for someone, anyone, who can star in commercials and whose face can fill an I-95 billboard and who can be the subject of lunch-hour conversations or text threads among casual sports followers — who can be for the Flyers what Eric Lindros was for them in the 1990s.

Remember that if you're a member of the Flyers' hockey operations or coaching staff — if you're general manager Danny Brière or head coach John Tortorella or any other decision-maker who might feel his or her future is tied to Michkov's. Expectations for him will be so high as to be unreachable. He will likely need time to adjust to a new country, to a new region, to a new league, to a new life. None of that reality means that he should be coddled. All of that reality means that patience is mandatory here, at least right away.

Remember, with the revelation and confirmation Sunday that Michkov will join the Flyers this season — two years ahead of the presumed schedule — that for Brière and the front office, the hardest and riskiest part of this particular process is already over.

The uncertainty over whether and when Michkov — who was under a three-year contract with SKA St. Petersburg of the Kontinental Hockey League — would come to North America caused him to fall to the Flyers at the No. 7 pick in the 2023 draft. He wasn't a sure thing. It was possible he'd never play a game in the NHL. None of the first six teams to pick in that draft dared to take that chance. Brière did. It was the kind of gambit that has the potential to separate the Flyers from other franchises throughout the NHL. It was the kind of gamble that allows a team to take a great leap forward. It was contingent on the Flyers' weathering that uncertainty and getting some good fortune. They did.

Remember that, even if Michkov develops into the player the Flyers hope and need him to be, even if he becomes the naturally gifted goal scorer they have lacked for multiple generations, his presence alone won't be enough to complete their rebuild.

He will immediately make them more interesting. There's a good chance he'll make them better. But he is one player in a sport in which it is rare for even a singular talent to effect a turnaround for a franchise that has been floundering for as long as the Flyers have. After the Edmonton Oilers drafted Connor McDavid in 2015, it took them two years to qualify for the playoffs, seven years to advance beyond the second round, and nine years to reach the Stanley Cup Final. Michkov is one piece, maybe the most important, of a puzzle that the Flyers are trying to complete. They are still collecting and identifying and sorting out the others, still working to understand what the entire picture will look like.

Give the Flyers this: That picture is clearer after Sunday. Here comes Matvei Michkov. Here comes the kid who, in the minds of so many, seems to hold the Flyers' hopes in his hands. He turns 20 in December. He is just that, a kid, for now. Remember that, until he proves to everyone that it's time to forget it.

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