(Kate Frese/SB Nation)
By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Two years ago around this time, the star athlete in Philadelphia wasn't a potential MVP quarterback or a behemoth 7'2" center or a slugging first baseman turned outfielder. It was an American-born defenseman who took the college route and went virtually unknown for so much of his journey.
It was on Dec. 15, 2015 that Shayne Gostisbehere had scored his third overtime game-winning goal in a matter of three weeks. He was the talk of the town.
That was only the beginning in a year that featured a 15-game points streak, an NHL record for a rookie defenseman, and a nomination for the Calder Trophy. But the year that followed was not nearly as successful, and it proved trying to the young defenseman.
Gostisbehere was the first of the Flyers young core of blueliners to make the jump the NHL, and he journeyed back to through his first two seasons in the NHL, his path to being drafted and his childhood in a Players Tribune piece posted on Wednesday simply titled, "You Might Know Me as Ghost."
Part of the story was already a familiar one to Flyers fans. Gostisbehere told the story of his sister, the figure skating phenom with dreams of the Olympics, cut short due to a hip injury. He told the story of being a hockey fan in Florida, growing up near Sunrise where the Panthers played and watching Pavel Bure play and wanting to imitate his style. He wrote about how his grandfather Denis, a French-Canadian, had a love for the game and would take him to Panthers games.
But then he went into some of the parts fans may not know. The inner thoughts of a young player on top of the world in one season and dealing with struggles in the next.
Gostisbehere's rookie season was certainly unlike any other in Flyers history. He was a highly-regarded player when he was called up, but not on the radar in the league as one of its future stars by any stretch. Gostisbehere himself noted in the piece that growing up, he wasn't even the best player on his own team in many of his developmental years, as many kids with NHL goals and dreams are. But he constantly improved year after year, which helped get him more attention.
In that rookie season, Gostisbehere scored 17 goals and added 29 assists for 46 points in just 64 games. Eight of his goals came on the power play. Five were game-winning goals, four in overtime. He scored one in Florida in March in front of family and friends for the first time.
"I remember March of my rookie year, we played in Florida — my first time playing in that rink," Gostisbehere wrote. "We lost 5-4 in a shootout, but I scored late in the third to tie the game. I looked right up to the stands, section 101, where my grandfather and I used to sit — where I used to listen for Bure’s stick taps."
But back to that incredible run to start his NHL career, the three overtime game-winners in short order. Gostisbehere remembered his drive back to the hotel where he was staying at the time and the craziness that he was suddenly a star in one of the most passionate hockey cities in the league.
After the third one, I was driving back to the hotel I was living in (because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get sent back down), and I saw one of those electronic billboards on the Walt Whitman Bridge:
'GHOST DOES IT AGAIN, ANOTHER GAME-WINNER.'
"My exact reaction was, 'What the f*** is happening right now?'
"A month earlier I was nobody, for real. Suddenly I was somebody — and I was somebody in NHL. That entire rookie year was so special. The Philly fans are amazing. Everybody I met knew how to pronounce my name — that’s how you know the love is real. I remember seeing the 👻🐻 signs in the crowd, I loved that.
"But, yeah, that rookie season I fell in love with Philly. And I felt ❤️ the right back."
But just as he was riding high and enjoying the ride, his rookie season came to end and with came an injury and offseason surgery that was needed.
Players suffer from wear and tear all the time, especially in an 82-game season. In Gostisbehere's case, it was 64 games plus six more grueling playoff games in the Flyers first-round series against Washington.
When Gostisbehere got the diagnosis, he was stunned.
"I was reminded again how unpredictable life can be," Gostisbehere wrote. "I had a hip injury, and when the team doctor gave me the diagnosis, I couldn’t believe it — it was the exact same injury my sister had all of those years ago.
"I knew how far technology had advanced since she’d had her surgery, and I was in better hands with our medical team than she was back then, but still I remembered the look on her face when she tried to skate again. It was hard not to think about it."
Gostisbehere recovered in time for the start of the 2016-17 season, but didn't have the same success and was even a healthy scratch at times. Gostisbehere's own words about those "benchings" provide a little light on the situation, or at least want the Philly fans to try to understand it the way he did.
"I know people made a lot of me being a healthy scratch last year. It was tough to deal with, yes, but I understood it," Gostisbehere wrote. "When my shooting percentage went from 13% to 3% — and nothing was seeming to go my way — that’s when I got how hard it was to be an NHL player. And being able to step away from that, for even a single night, can really help."
Fans in Philadelphia are very much a "what have you done for me lately" bunch. You could be the best player in the game one day, but if you aren't playing up to expectations, you will hear about it. And there are no exceptions.
Gostisbehere admitted it was tough to deal with.
"I won’t lie, though. I had to delete Twitter off my phone," Gostisbehere wrote. "During my rookie season, I loved scrolling through my mentions and interacting with fans, but when it wasn’t going well it was hard. You can only read 'you’re a one-hit wonder' so many times before you go crazy."
Gostisbehere also addresses this season. It's been another tough one.
Gostisbehere has been on the end of some selfish moments — bad penalties that ultimately hurt his team. He's recognized this following these games and admitted he has to be better and more disciplined and not let frustration take over.
Off the ice, Gostisbehere also started his own foundation, The GhostBear Foundation, with the mission to "provide support and encouragement to organizations motivating young athletes aspiring to have professional, or collegiate, hockey careers. Our efforts focus within the communities of: South Florida, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Schenectady, New York." The three communities of focus represent all phases of Gostisbehere's life — his current career in Philadelphia, his hometown area of South Florida and his college days at Union College, located in Schenectady.
But in addition to the off-the-ice triumph and the on-ice defeats and frustration that have come, Gostisbehere writes of the hope that things will be better than they were a season ago, the leadership of Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek and Wayne Simmonds in the locker room, the impressive growth of Ivan Provorov and more. But above all, he notes that the team's goal is to improve, to show their potential and to make the fans proud.
"We know our division is tough, but we’ve got confidence in our room that the sky’s the limit for us," Gostisbehere wrote. "We’ve been tested this year and we’re working on things — still trying to find our game. We want to make the Philly fans proud. We don’t take their support for granted."
You can read Gostisbehere's piece in its entirety over at Players Tribune.
