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PHILADELPHIA — Daniel Briere had seen enough to know that he would be seeing a lot more of this kid.

Then an alternate captain for the Philadelphia Flyers, Briere had heard the buzz about the teeny talent from that area who’d been terrorizing defenders at the NCAA level.

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But he didn’t sneak a peek of Johnny Gaudreau in game action until he tuned into coverage of the 2013 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship from Ufa, Russia.

“Everybody kept talking about how small he was compared to the other kids on the ice, and it’s funny because it reminded me so much of the same things I had heard when I was 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. I was hearing the same things about him,” Briere recalled. “And the first time I saw him play, I never even noticed his size. To me, it was the way that he moved on the ice. It’s like he was floating on the ice. His hands were so quick.

“Right away, I was just so impressed that I turned to my friend I was sitting with and I said to him, ‘This guy is going to be a star in the NHL before long.’ Just the way he moved, that’s all I needed to see to know that he was going to be a really good player.”