Quick Hits: September 6, 2023
1) Flyers Daily: On today's edition of the Flyers Daily podcast, Jason Myrtetus and I complete our discussion of each of our personal picks for the most underrated Flyers in franchise history. Each of us give our picks for the most underrated defensemen, goalies and head coach. To listen to the 26-minute episode,
click here. To listen to the first part of the discussion, covering a handful of underrated Flyers forwards throughout club history,
click here.
2) Michkov and Kolosov: Flyers 2023 first-round Draft pick Matvei Michkov is expected to be in the SKA St. Peterburg lineup today for their road game against Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod. Michkov, who was a healthy scratch in each of the first two games of the regular season, is expected to be the 13th forward in today's lineup, receiving a couple of shifts per period at 5-on-5.
Coming off a 26-save shutout on Monday, Alexei Kolsov and Dinamo Minsk are back in action today to play China-based team Kunlun Red Star in a game being played in the Moscow suburb of Mytishchi (Kunlun has a "home" rink in the Moscow area as well as a rink in China). It has not yet been officially announced whether Kolosov or former Ottawa Senators goalie Dylan Ferguson will get the start in net. Ferguson started the team's opening game this past Saturday.
3) Today in Flyers History: Selivanov Traded Shortly After Being Drafted
Bob Clarke returned to the Flyers as general manager (following a stint with the Florida Panthers) on June 15, 1994. With the 1994 NHL Entry Draft just nine days away, there was insufficient time to tweak the draft preparations done by outgoing general manager Russ Farwell and the scouting staff. Thus, Farwell stayed on temporarily until the final pre-Draft meetings.
The Flyers did not have first-round (due to the Eric Lindros trade) or second-round picks in the 1994 Draft. In the third round, they selected hard-hitting shutdown defenseman Artem Anisimov, who was the Russian junior national team partner of offensive defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky. For a while, it looked like Anisimov was headed to an NHL career. In The Hockey News' 1995 Draft Preview issue, which included a top prospect review for each team's farm system, the Flyers had two four-star rated prospects. One was Finnish defenseman Janne Niinimaa. The other was Anisimov, whom the publication compared to NHL defenseman Darius Kasparaitis in both playing style and upside. Unfortunately, a 100 percent ACL tear in 1996 ruined Anisimov's development trajectory. He was never the same caliber of player again, and he never played in the NHL.
In the sixth round, with the 140th overall pick, the Flyers chose another Russian: 23-year-old winger Alexander Selivanov of Sparak Moscow in the Russian Super League. He'd been a high scorer in the RSL and was coming off a season in which he was third in the league in goals (30) and seventh in points (41).
The Flyers did not own Selivanov's rights for long, however. On September 6, 1994, the Flyers traded Selivanov to Phil Esposito's Tampa Bay Lightning for a fourth-round pick (Slovakian two-way winger Radovan Somik) in the 1995 Draft. The deal was largely made at the behest of Esposito. The Flyers were higher on Swedish winger Patrik Juhlin (a 1989 draftee who was a year older Selivanov but was coming off an excellent performance at the 1994 Olympics and had become a very solid player in Sweden's Elitserien) than they were on the more one-dimensional Selivanov.
Selivanov stepped into the Lightning lineup after a lockout caused the cancellation of the first half of the 1994-95 season. He had 10 goals and 16 points in 43 games. The next year, he scored a career-high 31 goals for Tampa. In the 1996 playoffs, Tampa played the Flyers in the first round. Selivanov had two goals and two assists including an overtime goal in the six-game series before the Flyers prevailed.
Overall, Selivanov had a 495-game NHL career. The second-best season of his career came in 1999-2000, when he had 27 goals and 47 points in 67 games for the Edmonton Oilers. He'd been traded to the Oilers for former first overall draft pick (and former Flyer) Alexandre Daigle.
In his personal life, Selivanov married Phil Esposito's daughter Carrie They had two sons, Niko and Rocco, as well as a son named Dylan from Carrie's first marriage. Tragically, Carrie Esposito Selivanov passed away at age 43 on January 30, 2012, as a result of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
Alexander retired as a player shortly after his wife's sudden passing in order to focus on their children. He subsequently became a coach and front-office executive in European hockey including KHL head coaching and general manager stints with Admiral Vladivostok. He celebrated his 52nd birthday on March 23, 2023.
4) Sept. 6 Flyers Alumni birthday: Bill Root (1959)
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