How the son of a late Flyer came to know his father
Tertyshny’s left his son memories, and drive to play
PHILADELPHIA — 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 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 bedroom in Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood, neatly folded and nicely stacked in a large black chest as a connection to the dad he never met.
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.
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.
NHL dreams
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, who the Flyers drafted 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.
Alexander Tertyshny’s first hockey stick was a foam toy the Flyers sent to his house after his dad 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 Tertyshny said.
So she took him to the rink, allowing her son to play the sport that brought their family to America. Polina Tertyshny, 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 Tertyshny tried to think of the advice her husband would have given.
She remembers one occasion when her son forgot a skate. Could his mom drive home? Polina Tertyshny, thinking fast, rented a pair from the rink, and her son played on. His feet were covered in blisters after but his hockey dream kept churning.
Stories of dad Dmitri Tertyshny was sleeping during his first NHL training camp when a Flyers official woke the team for a morning run. The 22year-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 Tertyshny’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 dad.
“I was thinking how am I going to raise a son without his father,” Polina Tertyshny said.
Each year her son grew older, she told him what his dad was like at that age. When Alexander Tertyshny turned 13, his mom told him stories about his dad as a teenager. Last year, they reminisced about his dad’s rise to the NHL as a 22-yearold. It was a way for Alexander Tertyshny to grow with his father.
“But now he’s the same age as his father was,” Polina Tertyshny said. “I’m running out of stories.”
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. “I think I made it.”
Take care of Sasha
Dmitri Tertyshny kissed his wife’s stomach before flying to Canada in July of 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 Tertyshny 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 16week ultrasound.
“He never called,” she said.
Tertyshny was 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 onto the boat. But it was too late. Tertyshny bled to death.
She raised her son in Philadelphia while completing her bachelor’s degree in interior design. Her husband gone, she found work in the city with an architecture firm. The money from Tertyshny’s NHL career lasted long enough for his wife to finish school. And then it was on her to provide.
“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.”