The Flyers won two Stanley Cup titles in a row - 1974 and '75 - but missed out on a third consecutive victory when they were beaten by the first of Montreal's four straight Cup winners in the 1976 final. Despite missing out on that elusive third win, the Flyers of the era dominated the league as some of the great teams before and since have. They just did it a little differently.
On May 19, 1974, with Rick MacLeish scoring the only goal, the incomparable Bernie Parent backstopped the Flyers to a 1-0 victory over the Boston Bruins and a series victory, four games to two. They would go on to beat the Buffalo Sabres (with the fabled French Connection line of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin and Rene Robert) the following spring and continued their reign of terror until finally being vanquished in the 1976 final.
Terror is as apt a word as any to describe the Flyers' scorched-earth style of domination. While the greatest teams in hockey history are remembered for their speed, skill and grace in victory - various Montreal and Edmonton teams come to mind - the Flyers brutalized their opponents to such a degree that they became known as the Broad Street Bullies, named after the street on which their home rink, the Spectrum, stood.
Although the Flyers came by their reputation honestly, breaking penalty records and noses along the way, it really disguised the fact that at the teams' core were some of the most talented players of the period. Unfortunately for the purist, the names people tend to recall now aren't so much stars like Parent, MacLeish, Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber and Reggie Leach, but thugs like Dave "The Hammer" Schultz, "Hound Dog" Bob Kelly, Andre "Moose" Dupont and Don Saleski.
Flyer fans loved their bullies, and the Spectrum was the scene of pandemonium, both on and off the ice, more than a few times. The rumble of the crowd would crescendo to a roar as Kate Smith belted out "God Bless America," while visiting teams quaked in their skates at the thought of imminent and certain bodily harm being inflicted upon them.
The Flyers perfected - if that's the correct word - a style made popular only a couple of years earlier by the Boston Cup winners known as the big, bad Bruins. Those Bruin teams had their share of bangers and crashers, but they also had the likes of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito and the goaltending of Gerry Cheevers to put them over the top.
But where the Bruins of the early '70s employed crushing body checks at every opportunity, the Flyers practically invented the goon. Prior to Philly's emergence, NHL players had to be tough, but also required a certain level of skill. The Flyers, under coach Freddie "The Fog" Shero, brawled, slashed and manhandled their opposition with a parade of players more adept at using their sticks as weapons than for handling the puck.
Shero was a coach who could get the most out of what he had. A master motivator, Shero instilled the idea in his team that commitment to each other and their goals was imperative. "When you have bacon and eggs for breakfast," he once said, "the chicken makes a contribution, but the pig makes a commitment."
And the Flyers were committed (and some of them should have been). There was one thing Shero wanted all his players to do, and that was to "take the shortest route to the puck carrier, and arrive in ill-humor." Even the most skillful Flyers had a mean streak, but bruisers like Schultz, Kelly, Dupont, Saleski and Jack McIlhargey took it beyond the extreme.
While their tactics resulted in an astronomical number of minutes spent in the sin bin, the Flyers had such a skilled group of offensive and defensive players that the transgressions of their goons were easily overcome.
Led by captain Bobby Clarke, the Broad Streeters defied anyone to beat them. They killed penalties with two of the best defensive specialists ever to play, Bill Clement (now an ABC analyst) and Terry Crisp, and had some of the fastest skaters in the league in guys like MacLeish and Bill Barber, whose offensive skills were augmented in their second Cup year by Reggie Leach.
Clarke was, and, some would argue, remains one of those guys who's win at all costs mentality grated on everyone but Flyer fans. A nine-time All Star, Clarke overcame diabetes to become one of the great two-way players and a three-time league MVP, and was, as Schultz once said, "the heart and soul of this club."
If there was a single game that epitomized the Flyers, it occurred in January 1976, as their championship run was coming to an end. The Soviet Union's vaunted Central Red Army team was on a four game tour playing NHL teams, and were coming off the famous 3-3 New Years eve game with Montreal that many observers still recall as the greatest hockey game ever played.
The Russians weren't prepared for what would greet them in the City of Brotherly love. The Flyers beat the tourists 4-1, handing them their only loss of the series. But it was the way they did it that left an indelible mark on the sport, not to mention international relations.
With the game still close, Flyer defenseman Ed Van Impe blind-sided Soviet star Valeri Kharlamov with a vicious elbow to the head. Once Kharlamov was revived, the visitors fled, in mid-period, to their dressing room, refusing to return to the ice. They only came back out to finish the game when it was pointed out that they'd not receive a penny (ruble?) of the money they'd been promised.
Devoted amateurs that they were, the Russians returned to complete the game, but their resolve had been broken, like many other teams before them, and they went down to a half-hearted defeat. Poor Kharlamov must have wondered what he ever did to the Philly players. In the dramatic 1972 Canada-Russia series, he'd had his leg broken by a slash across the ankles from Clarke, which some saw as the turning point of that storied showdown.
The Broad Street Bullies proved that Conn Smythe's old axiom, "if you can't beat them on the ice, beat them in the allies," had morphed into something new. As the first expansion team to ever win the Stanley Cup, Philadelphia became a blueprint for teams lacking in talent seeking to find a winning way.
The Flyers, however, didn't really lack talent. Net-minder Bernie Parent won the playoff MVP award in each of their Cup-winning years. Clarke, MacLeish, Barber, Leach and the Watson boys, Jimmy and Joe, played hard-nosed, but highly skilled hockey, and Shero, while encouraging the nastiness, was one of the first coaches to employ European training methods, both on and off the ice in getting his teams ready to play.
The downside of it all, at least for the hockey purist, is that the Flyers signaled the onset of the era of the goon. Numerous teams have tried to emulate the Flyers means of achieving success, but none have really managed to duplicate it. These days, the goon is a part of almost every team, but has become nothing but a joke. Designated fighters square off against other pugs in what has become a silly sidebar to the games, and with no apparent reason.
What made the Flyers different was that their ruffians would target anyone for abuse, leaving the opposition intimidated, often before the game even began. It's kind of fitting that the high-flying Habs, who reminded fans that speed and skill are the true attributes of great teams, ended the Flyers reign as champions.
The Flyers did have speed and skill aplenty; it's just that it was masked by their reputation as the Broad Street Bullies.
Contributed by Wayne Christian of Darby, Pennsylvania. Flyers Fan Since 1968.
