By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 
In recent years, patience has been a virtue for Flyers fans. Starting on Friday night, the reward for waiting begins.
Last season, the Flyers brought the first of the long-awaited prospects to the NHL with the call up of Shayne Gostisbehere, who turned in an impressive rookie season.
This season, Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny arrive, making their NHL debut on Friday night.
It is indeed a youth movement of sorts for the Flyers, who are as young as ever as their 50th season begins.
The youth on the Flyers roster goes much further than the four players with a whopping 111 career games to their resume. The overall age of the team is very young. Granted, that is going to be aided by adding two 19-year-olds to the fold, but even some of the team’s most established veterans are entering the prime of their careers.
Overall, the average age of the team is 27.6 — including suspended players Brayden Schenn and Radko Gudas.
But the Flyers forwards have an average age of 26.9, with the oldest being 32-year-old free-agent acquisition Boyd Gordon. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Matt Read are the only other players 30 or older among forwards.
Defensively, it is a predominantly young group. The average age is 28, but that includes 38-year-old Mark Streit and 34-year-old Nick Schultz. Andrew MacDonald is also 30. Even with MacDonald factored in, the average age of the Flyers defensemen without Streit and Schultz is 24.8.
But the youth movement goes beyond age. Provorov and Konecny have been superstars at development camp the past two seasons, the tops of a talented group of prospects. They have garnered a lot of attention, and that was especially palpable during the preseason when they would be announced in the starting lineup.
They are already fan favorites, and they haven’t even played a single shift in an NHL regular season game.
The wait for the youth that was to come, that was supposed to round out the core formed with Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, Wayne Simmonds and Schenn, is starting to arrive. It's not a team in waiting anymore, it's a team on the rise, and that has expectations in an unusual place.
On one hand, this is a team that made the playoffs last season, remained mainly the same team throughout the offseason and added through prospects when camp rolled around. On the other, by adding those prospects, this is a young team that will certainly have growing pains along the way, but has the potential to be better than last season.
But the growing pains are something Flyers fans will be able to live with. These are the kids they want to see. They wanted to see them a year ago. And now that they're here, the youth movement is on for the Flyers, just in time for the franchise to turn 50.
But hey, age is only a number after all.
