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. He has tracked down his dad’s old teammates, clung to the stories his mother shared, poured over old newspaper articles, and even rejuvenated his own career by playing in the Russian rink that sent his dad to Philadelphia.
