Mike Sielski: The Flyers let Sergei Bobrovsky get away. That mistake should teach them a valuable lesson.

PHILADELPHIA — Tired of it yet? Why wouldn’t you be? It’s become a tradition: another deep playoff run by the Florida Panthers, another terrific postseason for Sergei Bobrovsky, and another reason to revisit the worst trade that any Philadelphia franchise has made this century.

It would be cruel to bring up Bobrovsky apropos of nothing, to go out of one’s way to remind everyone that the Flyers have spent nearly 13 years paying for their June 2012 decision to deal him to the Columbus Blue Jackets for three draft picks. But reality is reality: Bobrovsky and Florida are, at this time of year, an ever-present reminder of the Flyers’ failure to solidify their goaltending — and of the steps the Flyers should take, and might finally be taking, to fix the problem.

Over the past five seasons, the Panthers have fashioned a mini-dynasty for themselves — two seasons with a plus-.700 points percentage, two straight appearances in the Final, possible back-to-back Cups — and Bobrovsky has been essential to it. Florida couldn’t finish off the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night, losing 3-0 in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, still holding a three-games-to-one lead in the series, but nobody could blame Bobrovsky. He stopped 25 of 26 shots and kept the Panthers close on a night when they couldn’t score. This postseason, his three shutouts are tied for the league best and his save percentage (.914) is higher than it was during the regular season (.906).

There has been no falloff for a goaltender who already has won a Stanley Cup, already has won the Vezina Trophy twice, already has had a Hall of Fame-worthy career — and is 36.

“He competes so hard every day,” Panthers winger Brad Marchand told reporters last week. “He’s probably the most dedicated player I’ve ever played with. With the way he takes care of himself every day and the way he recovers, everything he does has a purpose and a reason. He’s obviously an incredible, incredible goalie. He shows up in big moments. The way he’s been able to perform at that level for so long, it’s because of the work he’s put in.”

These qualities didn’t spontaneously materialize in Bobrovsky after he left the Flyers. He possessed them while he was here, and everyone in the organization knew it. In May 2013, Paul Holmgren, then the Flyers’ general manager, said: “He might be the hardest-working player I’ve ever seen at any position.”

What Bobrovsky needed was the one thing that the organization, then-chairman Ed Snider in particular, wasn’t willing to give him: time. The Flyers were so committed to winning now and so blind to the costs and challenges of that strategy in a salary-cap league that Bobrovsky was fortunate they didn’t ruin his career.

As a rookie, he’d been yo-yoed in and out of the lineup during the 2011 playoffs by coach Peter Laviolette. He’d had one poor season as a backup behind the spacey (and highly paid) Ilya Bryzgalov; how else to see the Bryzgalov acquisition but as proof that the franchise didn’t believe in Bobrovsky? He was 23 when the Flyers traded him. If there were a how-to guide for making sure that a young, promising goaltender wouldn’t develop, they followed it step by step.

All these years later, and the Flyers, at least at the moment, at least at the highest level of the organization, are no better off. Their goaltending issues fell into the realm of cliche long ago, but the situation was so bad last season — a league-worst .879 save percentage among three goalies, only one of whom credibly could be called “NHL-caliber” — that they have to allocate resources this offseason, either in a free-agent signing or a trade, just to have someone competent in net, even if just for a year or two.

That Bobrovsky has gone on to be an all-time great puts the trade alongside the other infamous blunders in this city’s sports history: Ryne Sandberg for Ivan DeJesus; Ferguson Jenkins for Larry Jackson and Bob Buhl; goodbyes to Wilt Chamberlain, Moses Malone and Charles Barkley. But it’s not as if the Flyers have been a superstar goalie away from winning a Stanley Cup since they got rid of Bobrovsky. With a couple of brief exceptions (Steve Mason for a season or two, Carter Hart before … well, you know), they’ve lacked any reliability at the position. Forget spectacular. They’ve rarely had solid.

They have to calm that upheaval and chaos for their rebuild to work, and they have a chance to do so. Yes, they’ll have to sacrifice something — a player or players, a draft pick or picks, cap space — to fill their goaltending hole this season. But they’re also optimistic about two goalies they drafted in 2023: Carson Bjarnason, who is 19 and coming off an excellent season in the Western Hockey League; and Egor Zavragin, who also is 19 and is also coming off an excellent season, his in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League.

The Flyers have a fine line to walk with them. You don’t want to push a prospect too fast, and you don’t want to give up on him too early. That second lesson is the one that they relearn every other night every spring, when the one who got away puts on his pads, clears his crease, and moves his team closer to a championship.

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