Oskar Lindblom was born in Gavle, Sweden, in August 1996, and by then his earliest hockey hero already had begun giving the Flyers reason to regret their once-chronic impatience.
Two months earlier, Peter Forsberg had been skating along the slushy ice at Miami Arena, holding the Stanley Cup above his head, celebrating the Colorado Avalanche’s four-game sweep of the Florida Panthers. After the Flyers had drafted him in 1991, Forsberg had been unwilling to come to the United States and join them in 1992—he believed he needed to mature physically before entering the NHL—and they were unwilling to wait for him.