For a lot of 20-year-olds, the environment would eat them up.
Carter Hart isn't your average 20-year-old.
He's precocious and together. He's different, the exact reason why he's here already and performing for the Flyers.
So why worry and send him away?
The Flyers are losing at a perturbing clip with performances that aren't exactly conducive for goalie success. A winless skid has ballooned to eight games, patience is being tested and frustrations are growing, possibly boiling into more drastic change (see story).
With the Feb. 25 trade deadline getting closer and closer, the Flyers entered Wednesday 30th among 31 NHL teams at 15-22-6 and 36 points. The club is allowing the league's second-most goals per game (3.63), owns a minus-37 goal differential and has been outscored 96-61 since Nov. 13, a stretch in which the Flyers are 6-15-5.
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But Hart is the one who actually breathed some life into the Flyers. The team has won consecutive games just once since Nov. 13 and it happened in Hart's first and second career starts. His record is starting to take a hit at 2-4-1 as the Flyers haven't helped him much offensively, but he has played well enough in all but one game.
If his play has been fine, then the concern is the other factors - losing, frustration, etc. - possibly becoming a detriment to the development of Hart, deemed the franchise's future in net.
During a May 2018 phone interview with NBC Sports Philadelphia, Garry Davidson, the general manager of Hart's junior team the Everett Silvertips, described Hart in a way perfectly applicable to the current situation.
People that haven't met him and don't work with him day in and day out just see what he does on the ice, but for me it's that whole maturity and professionalism that he's already completely grasped. Because there are guys his age that are going to be going to the pro game that are going to have to learn all of those things and some of them will never learn it and will come up short. But he's got that already going for him.
There's been no sense of the Flyers' adverse setting becoming too much for the 2016 second-round pick in his first year of professional hockey.
"I think as long as he's playing well, I don't think that should bother him," Flyers interim head coach Scott Gordon said. "Obviously he's thrilled about the opportunity."
Hart prepares the same way through highs and lows. He keeps everything in perspective. He makes adjustments. Working with a sports psychologist since he was a teenager has helped him always see positives.
Following a 3-0 loss Monday in which Hart could hold off the Blues for only so long, the rookie said he doesn't feel like he has to be perfect through the Flyers' struggles.
"I'm not really thinking it like that," Hart said.
"A lot of these games here, we're one or two steps [from it] going our way … we're not far off. I know it doesn't look like that, but if you look at our most recent games, we're not far off. There are some games where we definitely deserved better fates and I think we just have to keep working, stick to our game and just compete."
Hart will continue to do that. He should be here until he shows us he can't.
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