How the son of late Flyer Dmitri Tertyshny came to know the dad he never met

The shirts belonged to his father when he was a hockey-obsessed teenager in Russia with dreams of reaching the NHL. The trading cards were pulled from his dad’s collection, the ones Dmitri Tertyshny thought of when he looked at opponents on the ice and marveled at how his hockey cards had come to life. And the jersey — white with the Flyers crest stitched on the front — was the one his dad wore in his lone season after overcoming the odds to make the team.

Alexander Tertyshny stashes these treasures in the closet of his Roxborough bedroom, neatly folded and nicely stacked in a large black chest as a connection to the dad he never met.

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Tertyshny has spent his life trying to know his father, who died eight weeks after his rookie season in a July 1999 boating accident and five months before Alexander was born. He has tracked down his dad’s old teammates, clung to the stories his mother shared, pored over old newspaper articles, and even rejuvenated his own career by playing in the Russian rink that sent his father to Philadelphia.

Dmitri Tertyshny left behind a promising career with the Flyers and a pregnant wife who found out earlier that summer day that her baby — just like Dmitri predicted — was a boy.

Tertyshny never met his son, but Alexander Tertyshny, now 22, the same age as his father was when he died, said he knows his dad. And he can find a reminder every time he digs through that chest.

“It’s kind of weird to be familiar with someone and loving someone you never really met,” Tertyshny said. “But I do feel like I know him. I would love it if he was here, but I do feel like he’s with me.”

Dmitri Tertyshny and his wife, Polina, arrived in Philadelphia in the summer of 1998 with two small suitcases and no money. Their credit cards were worthless as the Russian banks collapsed while they were flying.

Tertyshny, whom the Flyers selected in the sixth round of the 1995 draft, wanted to see if he could make the NHL after playing four seasons in Russia’s top league. But nothing was guaranteed. The Flyers were planning for him to join the minor-league Phantoms while another Russian defenseman — the younger Mikhail Chernov — seemed ticketed for the NHL.

Broke and hungry, Tertyshny and his wife spent their first week in America stocking up on the free breakfast at the Hampton Inn and dreaming about cracking the Flyers. Polina Tertyshny didn’t know anything about hockey when they met two years earlier on a Russian lake, but she knew her husband could make the squad.

Tertyshny had the work ethic to make it as his wife said he was always the first to arrive at practice and the last to depart, often leaving her alone in the bleachers as all the other wives went home. Now, he just needed to believe he belonged.

Alexander Tertyshny’s first hockey stick was a foam toy the Flyers sent to his house after his father died. He used a training potty as a helmet — “My mom had to wash that pretty fast,” he said — and learned to skate before the first grade.

“He was born with the hockey stick and that’s the dream he’s been chasing,” Polina said.

Tertyshny, whom his family calls Sasha, was born at Hahnemann Hospital. His mother decided to raise him in Philadelphia instead of returning to Russia. This, she said, is where her husband would have wanted their son to grow up.

So she took him to the rink, allowing her son to play the sport that brought their family to America. Polina, a widow at 20 years old, became a hockey mom. The mother and son drove up and down the East Coast for tournaments and Polina tried to think of the advice her husband would have given.

She remembers one occasion when her son forgot a skate. Could his mother drive home? Polina, thinking fast, rented a pair from the rink, and her son played on. His feet were covered in blisters afterward but his hockey dream kept churning.

“I was kind of acting like ‘Momma Dad.’ I became a dad more than a mom,” she said. “I was the only mom in the locker room tying the skates and taping his sticks. It was tough, but we had the motivation to achieve the dream that Sasha wanted.”

Dmitri Tertyshny was sleeping during his first NHL training camp when a Flyers official woke the team for a morning run. The 22-year-old spoke little English and didn’t understand what was happening, which is why he boarded the shuttle in flip-flops.

They arrived at the course and someone handed him sneakers, but they were too small and he didn’t have socks. Tertyshny wore them anyway, finished the course near the front of the pack, and ripped his shoes off to see his feet bloody and blistered. That was Tertyshny, refusing to allow anything — even a tight pair of sneakers — to stop him.

It is one of Polina’s favorite stories to tell her son — and one she remembered when the rental skates blistered his feet — as she decided when he was a baby that she would tell him everything she knew about his father.

“I was thinking: How am I going to raise a son without his father,” Polina said.

Each year her son grew older, she told him what his father was like at that age. When Alexander turned 13, she told him stories about his dad as a teenager. Last year, they reminisced about his father’s rise to the NHL as a 22-year-old. It was a way for Alexander to grow with his father.

“But now he’s the same age as his father was,” Polina said. “I’m running out of stories.”

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Chernov suffered a knee injury during training camp, opening a spot for Tertyshny on the Flyers. The long shot earned his place with an excellent preseason and called his wife, who had pushed him all summer to believe he could make the team.

“I think I made it,” he said.

The couple could leave the hotel they arrived at weeks earlier with no credit cards. Tertyshny played in 62 of the team’s 82 games, scoring two goals and tallying 10 points. Eric Lindros, the team’s captain, said after Tertyshny’s death that he was “going to be an All-Star one day.” Bob Clarke, then the team’s general manager, said he “always thought he’d be with us for a long time.”

Tertyshny, once an afterthought, had played himself into the team’s plans.

“I wonder about that all the time,” Alexander said about his father’s NHL career. “He was super excited. From what I know, he was just a super happy guy and full of life. All of his dreams were pretty much coming true.”

Alexander Tertyshny didn’t have much college hockey interest after graduating from Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Connecticut. So he went to Russia to play junior hockey for Traktor Chelyabinsk, the team his father played for. He spent time with his grandparents, played at the rink his father called home, and was coached by people who knew his dad.

Tertyshny, trying to spark his hockey career, skated on the same ice his father did when he was chasing his dream. He played the same position, wore the same jersey number, and had that same work ethic that used to keep his mother waiting.

After one 10-hour bus ride, Tertyshny’s team pulled into a rink for a morning skate. It was a long ride, so Tertyshny thought he would stay as long as possible on the ice before getting back on the bus. The rest of the team had showered and returned to the bus while Tertyshny and a teammate finished their work, the last ones to leave just like his dad. When they finally left the rink, the coach told the driver to hit the gas.

“We were chasing after the bus in the snow,” Tertyshny said.

Dmitri Tertyshny kissed his wife’s stomach before flying to Canada in July 1999 and whispered, “Take care of Sasha.” The couple had teased each other about the baby’s gender and Tertyshny was confident as he left his wife for the final time that a boy was on the way.

Polina was scheduled to learn the gender of the baby while her husband was in British Columbia for a skating camp. She told him to call her from his hotel room after her 16-week ultrasound.

“He never called,” she said.

Tertyshny was riding in a boat with two teammates when it hit a wave, sending him into the water. The boat ran him over and the propeller severed his carotid artery and jugular vein. His teammates pulled him back onto the boat. But it was too late. Tertyshny bled to death.

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“I still cannot get over that Dmitri is not here,” Polina said. “But I learned how to live with it. I still love him and I always will. I’m never going to forget. He was just a special man. They don’t make them anymore.”

Polina was in Russia when a Flyers scout called to tell her the news. Her baby boy was due in five months and she decided to return to Philadelphia, where she and Dmitri were planning to find a house after he returned from Canada.

“It was hard, but that was the only thing left from Dmitri and I had to carry on,” Polina said. “I had to go forward. He kept me sane in life. That’s all that was left. If it wasn’t for Alexander, I wouldn’t have made it. That’s how I loved Dmitri.”

She raised her son in Philadelphia while completing her bachelor’s degree in interior design. Her husband gone, Tertyshny found work in the city with an architecture firm. The money from Tertyshny’s NHL career lasted just long enough for his wife to finish school. And then it was on her to provide for the family.

“She’s endured,” her son said. “That’s hard to lose your best friend and someone who you wanted to live your life with. Not many people can go through that. Being pregnant made it a lot harder. She couldn’t really mourn the way that you should. She had to stay strong to have me. It takes an enormous amount of strength. She’s the best. And she continues to push through to this day.”

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Alexander Tertyshny thought about staying in Russia after his two seasons with his dad’s old team, but he knew his parents wanted him to get a college education. And now he was finally being recruited. His hockey career was jump-started in his father’s hometown.

Tertyshny landed with American International College in Massachusetts but suffered a severe ankle injury in training camp before last season. He missed almost the entire year while it healed.

Tertyshny, his ankle still throbbing, returned to play one game and displayed the same grit his father had when he didn’t let a pair of tight sneakers slow him down. Alexander decided last month to transfer to another school, but the process has been frustrating.

“The way I look at it, he overcame a lot more than I ever did,” Tertyshny said. “So whenever I think I’m having a tough time, I look at him and what he did. If he can overcome it, I think I can overcome it.”

Tertyshny hopes to soon resume his hockey career and earn his degree. He could then return to Russia as Traktor signed his rights before he returned to America. He has a chance to play for the same KHL team that his dad did.

“I just want to take this as far as I can,” Tertyshny said.

Tertyshny’s bedroom in Roxborough is almost like a shrine to his father. A framed poster hangs on one wall and a painting of his father adorns another. The puck from his dad’s first goal — a shot from the point against the Coyotes, past fellow Russian Nikolai Khabibulin — sits above his bed and his father’s old helmet is on his nightstand.

Tertyshny has a drawer full of recordings of every game of his father’s NHL career and he searches for the ones where his dad drew a penalty, knowing that the broadcast will focus for a moment on his face.

“Of course there are definitely times that I wish he was around,” Tertyshny said. “Whatever he knew, I’m sure would’ve been helpful. Just having that support from my dad. But I definitely feel him all the time and he’s a great motivation for me. He’s the reason why I play hockey and why I’m a defenseman and why I wear No. 16 or No. 5. Everything I do. Even watching video, I know the tapes and the games are from way back then and the game has changed a lot since then, but there’s still things that you can learn from. I do whatever I can to keep that connection with him.”

Tertyshny never met his father but he knows him. He shares the same hockey dream, work ethic, and even bloody feet. He has a trunk full of his belongings and 22 years’ worth of stories. He once told his mother that he wishes he could just see his dad for just one second. That would be enough.

His mother told him if he ever wants to see his father, he simply could look in the mirror. Not only would he see an almost identical resemblance to him but he’d also see a dreamer with the same goals.

“And I also tell him that his dad is looking at him through my eyes,” Polina Tertyshny said. “He moves like him. He jokes like him. It’s like an image of his father. He looks like him. He plays, he thinks, like him. When Alexander was born, I could look at Sasha through Dmitri’s eyes and I always thought Dmitri was with us.”