When Shaunavon native Braydon Coburn of the Philadelphia Flyers took to the ice to battle the Chicago Blackhawks in the first game of the Stanley Cup finals, he was living a childhood dream shared by millions of Canadians.
But even though this was the 25-year-old’s first trip to the NHL’s championship series, there was an element of déjà vu to the experience.
“It’s definitely something I dreamed about as a kid,” laughed Coburn of his Stanley Cup appearance. “I can remember winning and losing a lot of Stanley Cups playing street hockey in front of my house or at the tennis courts.  We played a lot of seventh game Stanley Cups on 2nd Street, or any place for that matter where the pavement was smooth enough to play a pick up game.”
This one, he admits however, is a little bit different than those early childhood memories.
Not too many of those street hockey games, for instance, had 22,000 foaming-at-the-mouth fans like those that packed the United Centre in Chicago Saturday night.
Braydon says that frenzied interest has been building throughout the playoffs and reached what he thought might be the peak, at least to that point, when the Flyers met the Montreal Canadiens in the semi-finals. 
“The last series was incredible,” said Braydon, who was traveling home after practice and team meetings when The Standard reached him by phone. “Especially the way the fans were going back and forth. Montreal was an absolute zoo - the place was already shaking during warm up because there were so many people in the building.”
“And then getting to Philly, it was just one giant sea of orange (as people dressed in the Flyers colours). All you could see was orange and it was so loud you could actually feel the bench moving and shaking. It was like a rumble, like a train was passing through the building.”
“It’s crazy to come into a building and see that type of energy,” he added.
“It’s really something very unique to experience.”
Braydon says that same energy has permeated the entire city as everywhere you go people want to talk about the Flyers.
Braydon admits the electric atmosphere can also be a bit nerve-racking, although he is quickly adapting to the unique environment of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“I think every guy handles it a bit differently,” he said of pre-game jitters. “For me, whenever I feel anxious, I just want to get out on the ice as soon as I can and do something to get involved. Usually, for me, it means getting physical. I try to make a hit early and get myself injected into the game that way. I’ve found that if I take the body right and make a hit, it helps get me sharp and calm my emotions down a bit.”
Braydon also says it helps to have a couple of veteran defencemen on the team like Chris Pronger and Kimmo Timonen.
“It’s great to have veteran guys like Kimmo Timonen, my defensive partner,” said Braydon.

“He’s played for so long and is so calm out there.  And Prongs has been to the finals before and won pretty much everything there is to win, whether it’s the Olympics or Stanley Cup. To watch them play with such a calm demeanour - like they have ice in their veins - really helps keep your own nerves at bay a little bit.”
The Flyers are in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time since 1997 and a lot of the team’s success this playoff season is being attributed to their strong core of defencemen that includes Coburn, Pronger, Timonen and Matt Carle.
The group has drawn praise from friend and foe alike for their remarkable play.
Kevin McCarthy, an assistant coach with the Flyers, has compared this group of blueliners to some of the best who have ever played the game.
“In all my years of coaching, in Raleigh (with the Carolina Hurricanes) and now here, I’ve never been behind the bench for a defense like this,” McCarthy told Mike G. Morreale of NHL.com. “Timmo and Prongs are obviously No. 1 defencemen on any team and definitely a top two as a pair when they kill penalties and work the power play. Matty Carle and Coby are young and only getting better.”
“It’s kind of a unique situation, how four defencemen can log those kinds of minutes,” McCarthy added. “I remember back in the ’70s, Montreal played three defencemen the whole game, so having four is kind of a luxury.”
Pronger, Timonen, Carle and Coburn were workhorses for the Flyers this season. Pronger led the team in icetime, playing 25:55 minutes per game followed by Carle (23:23), Timonen (22:52) and Coburn (21:08).
Pronger (28:48), Timonen (26:35), Carle (25:25) and Coburn (24:23) have continued to ring up the numbers with added minutes this postseason while also ranking among the team’s top four in blocked shots (totaling 162).
Heading into the showdown with Chicago, they were a collective plus 23 and had chipped in with 5 goals and 35 points during the first 17 games.
“Getting to know what he’s going to do in certain situations and what his assets are and what kind of hockey he’s going to play are important in a partner,” Timonen told NHL.com. “I know Coby pretty well, so I know what he’s going to do when he gets the puck pretty much every time. It’s not just a one week or two week thing. It takes time because you get to know different players and your partner.”
Braydon is considered a stay at home defenceman who skates very well with some strong passing ability.
Pronger, for one, a future hall-of-famer, has been impressed with Braydon’s size and mobility.
“Coby just moves the puck quickly to the forwards, allows them to do their jobs and then supports the attack from there,” Pronger told Morreale. “He’s a big guy that’s tough to beat one-on-one.”
No one, however, should be surprised by Coburn’s progress.
He’s excelled at every level he’s played at dating back to his minor hockey days in the Southwest when he often played up in older age groups.
After joining the Notre Dame Hounds program at Wilcox, he was selected first overall in the WHL’s bantam draft by the Portland Winter Hawks.
A few years later he was drafted in the first round again, this time as the eighth overall pick by the Atlanta Thrashers of the NHL in 2003.
During Braydon’s time in the WHL, he also competed in two World Junior Championships for Team Canada, winning silver in 2004 and gold in 2005.
The 2005 squad is considered by many to be the best national junior hockey team the country has ever assembled. Also on the roster that year were current Flyer teammates Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, along with several Chicago Blackhawks, including Brent Seabrook.
Braydon spent several years in the Thrashers organization, splitting time between the NHL and the Thrashers’ minor league affiliate, the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League (AHL).
Ironically, while playing for the Wolves, Braydon found himself in the Calder Cup championship series against a team from Philadelphia.
“I remember a few years ago, it was my first year out of junior playing for the Chicago Wolves,” recalled Braydon. “We were in the American Hockey League finals and we came to Philly and played the Phantoms. That was an insane experience. The crowds were wild. It was really my first taste of something like that.”
He was dealt on February 24, 2007, at the trade deadline, to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for defenceman Alexei Zhitnik.
The trade has often been identified by many hockey experts as extremely one-sided in Philadephia’s favour.
Braydon, after joining the Flyers, quickly emerged as one of the league’s bright young defensive stars and went on to team with Timonen to help shut down the explosive Alex Ovechkin in a memorable playoff encounter with the Washington Capitals two years ago.
Since then, the Flyers have endured some mixed success.
But nothing can compare to the  swings in fortune the team experienced this season.
After struggling out of the gate early this year, the Flyers replaced their coach and it looked destined to miss the post season. In fact, Philadelphia only secured their spot in the Stanley Cup playoffs with a shootout victory over the New York Rangers in the final game of the regular season.
“We had a coaching change early in the season, and struggled at first with the new system,” explained Braydon. “At one point I think we were about 14th in the standings and things didn’t look very good for us. But with the players we had in the dressing room we knew we had a better team than that and we always had confidence in ourselves.”
As a seventh seed in the playoffs, the Flyers dispatched the 2nd ranked New Jersey Devils in the first round. Then they mounted one of the most incredible comebacks in NHL history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit (and a 3-0 hole in the deciding game) and eliminated the Boston Bruins in a best of seven second round matchup.
The low-key Coburn was quick to credit a “team effort” for contributing to the Flyers run this season. He was more interested in talking about the team success and great locker-room chemistry than he was about his own personal accomplishments.
“We have a great group of guys on the team,” said Braydon. “Everyone has a role on the team and everyone has to make a contribution for us to be successful.”
“I’ve been lucky enough to sort of work myself into some playing time,” he added. “So when I’m out there, I’m focused on doing my job and working as hard as I can to be a good teammate at both ends of the ice.”
Braydon still maintains that quiet, unassuming, small-town humility. 
It is the same sort of personal trait he carried with him as a young man growing up in the community.
Always quick with a compliment for other people, but almost uncomfortable when the topic of discussion turns to his own personal accomplishments, Braydon remains the likeable “kid next door” - albeit one that now measures 6’5” and weighs 220 pounds.
Willing to share a few behind the scene personal experiences about his time in Philadelphia - and curious about recent ongoings of his old hometown with questions that ranged from topics such as the new clubhouse development at the Rock Creek Golf Club to the recent success of Hayley Wickenheiser celebration - Braydon remains a small town boy at heart.
It is the same sort of qualities that earned Braydon the WHL’s Doug Wickenheiser Memorial Trophy in 2004 as humanitarian of the year.
He is grateful for the opportunities he has enjoyed throughout his career, including his early minor hockey days, and recognizes the privilege he enjoys as a player in the NHL, and more specifically, one that is now vying for the Stanley Cup.
“It’s really neat to be part of something like this and I definitely feel really lucky to be in this spot,” said Braydon.