In the pages of my old Hockey Digests of the 1970's, between the Stan Mikita hockey tips and the hockey school ads, you can find a couple of pages from small mail-order businesses selling hockey themed T-shirts.
The shirts have short sayings and art work printed on them. Things like "World's Greatest Rink Rat" and "Give Blood, Play Hockey".
But the T-shirt I remembered yesterday as I watched 66 year-old Hall of Fame goaltender Bernie Parent make a special once-in-every-32-years appearance in an oldtimers/reunion/hockey celebration in Philadelphia, had a Flyers logo in the centre.
Above the logo it was written; "Only the Lord", and below the logo, "Saves More Than Bernie Parent!"
Photo: Bernie Parent waves to the 45808 fans gathered at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park.
It's not certain that the Almighty would have approved of some of the tactics used by the Philadelphia Flyers, AKA, The Broad Street Bullies. But the fact is that with a team with players such as Bobby Clarke, Rick MacLeish, Bill Barber and Reggie Leach, and the coaching of Fred "The Fog" Shero, none of it would have been possible without Bernie Parent.
When the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup in 1974, Bernie Parent was 29 years old. Although he was born and raised in Montreal, he played his junior hockey in Ontario. He was the contractual property of the Boston Bruins and played for one of their junior teams in the OHA, the Niagara Falls Flyers. As a member of that team, he won the 1965 Memorial Cup.
He was one of the dozens of hockey prospects from the province of Quebec during the 50's and 60's who played in Ontario towns. They belonged to teams like Detroit, Chicago, the New York Rangers, and Boston. Names such as Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert, who played in Guelph. Pierre Pilote who played in St-Catharines, and Marcel Pronovost in Windsor. All players, who like Bernie Parent, are in the Hockey Hall of Fame today.
Photo: Bernard Parent smiles for the camera in this 1960's Boston Bruins picture.
In 1967, the Bruins left Bernie Parent unprotected for the expansion draft (the NHL went from 6 to 12 teams) as Gerry Cheevers was chosen by the Boston Bruins hockey department to become the next number one goalie in Boston, and thus Parent was selected by the Philadelphia Flyers with their first pick.
He would play five solid, if uneventful, seasons with the Flyers before ending up in Toronto for the 1970-71 season. It was here that Parent's career took a fortunate turn that would help him blossom from solid NHL goaltender, to eventual Hall of Famer, for the Maple Leafs' other goaltender was none other than Jacques Plante. It was during his two seasons, spending every day talking to, and learning from, not only of the game's greatest goalies but also one of the game's great teachers.
Photo: Bernie Parent and Toronto defenceman Bobby Baun focus on the play in 1971.
After spending two seasons with the Leafs, the upstart World Hockey Association came calling with its rich contracts, and Parent headed back to Philadelphia, this time with the Blazers. His time with the league, much like the circuit itself, was to be short-lived, and so as the 1973-74 season began, Bernie Parent was back with the Philadelphia Flyers, and ultimately, on his way to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Parent started his second career with the Flyers by setting a new NHL record for wins in a single regular season with 47. He managed to keep a miniscule 1.89 goals against average on his way to the Vezina Trophy.
Photo: Bernie Parent in action with the Philadelphia Flyers during the 1974-75 season.
In the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Flyers romped through the first round, blowing out the desperately outmatched Atlanta Flames in four straight games. The highlight of the opening round was coach Fred Shero being attacked while walking down the street in Atlanta, resulting in a pair of broken glasses, a black eye, and a nasty cut that required about a dozen or so stitches. Why Fred Shero would be walking around alone in a hostile town when he had Schultz, Saleski, Kelly, and Moose Dupont more than willing and more than able to moonlight as bodyguards for a few minutes remains a mystery.
The second round was a much different story. The Flyers were up against the New York Rangers. And the New York Rangers had a hell of a hockey team. Ratelle and Gilbert brought speed, stickhandling, passing, and shooting on a par with what most teams could bring. Add Brad Park, widely considered to be the 1970's best defenceman this side of Bobby Orr.
In nets the Rangers were solid, with proven Ed Giacomin, a Madison Square Garden fixture, and a younger, talented, Gilles Villemure available as back should the need arise.
It was a hard fought series. Both literally and figuratively. It went the full seven games and there were moments of great hockey brilliance, but there was also the brawling, and the beatings, that were part and parcel of the Broad Street Bullies modus operandi.
Lost in the sorry spectacle of fights such as Dave Schultz pulling the hair of New York Rangers defenceman Dale Rolfe, and continuing on with a barrage of right hooks to the much taller, but less pugilistically experienced or talented player's head. As one Flyer's player said after the game, "if Rolfe had've been one of our guys, we would have all jumped in.".
Link to video of Dave Schultz vs. Dale Rolfe
With Bernie Parent countering every chance that the Rangers had, with great save after great save, and the brawlers running amok, the talent of Clarke, Barber, and Rick MacLeish was just too much for the Blueshirts to handle.
Prior to that series, the Philadelphia Flyers had a record of 1 win and 19 losses in the 20 games they had played in Madison Square Garden since the 1967-68 season. It was also to be the first time that a team from the expansion class defeated an Original Six team in a Stanley Cup playoff series. They had slayed two dragons, and found themselves just 4 wins away from a third.
Standing between the Philadelphia Flyers and that first Cup were the Boston Bruins. And the Bruins, were heavily favoured to win. We've since heard anecdotal references to odds in the 50-1 range for the Big Bad Bruins.
For inasmuch the same way as the Flyers were doing in 1973-74, the Bruins had done much the same just a few years earlier, that is mixed high caliber talent, solid goaltending, and pugnacity into a winning combination. The main difference was that when it came to fighting, the Flyers brought it to a whole new level. Players like Cashman, Hodge, and Vadnais, could take care of themselves when the gloves were dropped, but fighting was not constantly at the forefront of their on-ice pre-occupations.
With Fred Shero, fighting was used as a tactic to win a hockey game. Both before, and now after, Shero, fighting has mostly been either a diversion, or a result of playing a highly physical game in a restricted area. Players are skating around hard, fights are going to happen thinking. Shero used it as a way to break the opponent's will to win.
In the series against the Bruins, there was much fighting, of course, but their was also some dramatic hockey. Like in the first game, played in Boston. Bobby Orr scored the game winner, a 3-2 affair, with less than 30 seconds to go in the third period.
The second game saw the Flyers leader, Bobby Clarke score the winner in overtime, after defenceman Moose Dupont, had tied it up late in third. Clarke's goal came off a Boston turnover which had been provoked by a forechecking Dave Schultz.
Bobby Clarke scores OT winner, Game 2, 1975 Stanley Cup Finals.
The Flyers jumped into a 3-1 series lead after that, taking games 3 and 4, in the Spectrum.
Game 5 back in Boston had a fairly decisive result. The Bruins controlled the play pretty much start to finish and although they trailed 3-2 at that point, it really looked and felt as though, it was now just a question of time. That the Bruins had finally figured out the Flyers and were going to take care of business in games 6 amd 7 and bring the Cup back to Boston.
So cue Game 6, 1974 Stanley Cup Finals. The Spectrum fans are frantic. Kate Smith, is brought out to centre ice to sing "God Bless America". The Flyers had 37 wins and only 3 losses in games where Ms. Smith sang in person up to that point. When you get ready to play the biggest game in franchise history, you bring out everything you have.
But in the end, it was Bernie Parent who ended up making the difference. The Bruins dominated the Flyers on the ice. They outskated them, They outpassed them. They outshot them. The Boston Bruins just plain outplayed the Philadelphia Flyers on that Sunday afternoon in May of 1974.
The Bruins came at Parent in waves, they buzzed around his net, they fired pucks at him from all angles. Some wide open opportunitues, and some pucks through traffic. Through it all, Bernie Parent stood tall.
Highlights of Game 6, 1974 Stanley Cup Finals. Philadelphia 1 Boston 0.
The image that remains in this fan's memory, is one of kick saves, both with the skates and with the pads. It's a study in goaltending styles to watch video of Bernie Parent that day. He was a classic stand up goalie. It seemed the only times that his goalie pads touched the ice were when he went down to smother a puck that he had somehow managed to control. As a goalie style, it is in sharp contrast to what is seen today, no butterfly and scrambling for Bernie. It was mostly stand very square to the shooter, use your feet, and let the pads do the blocking.
The goal that Rick MacLeish scored deflecting a Moose Dupont shot from the blueline at the 14:48 mark of the first period, turned out to be all that the Flyers needed. Nothing got past Bernie Parent that day. "He was stupendous" declared Boston sniper Phil Esposito,
And so, Bernie Parent won his first Conn Smythe Trophy as NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs MVP.
He would go on to win another the following season. This time, he also got a shutout in the clinching game, as the Flyers beat the Buffalo Sabres to take their second consecutive, and last since, Stanley Cup. Bernie Parent became the first, and until Mario Lemieux did it in 1991 and 1992, the only player to have won two consecutive Conn Smythe Trophies.
In the seasons that followed, Bernie Parent struggled with injuries, his career ultimately ending following his taking a wayward stick in the right eye in a game against the New York Rangers in 1979.
While he didn't lose sight, the injury affected his ability to focus quickly, and his depth perception was adversely affected, making goaltending impossible and forcing his retirement as an NHL player.
It's as if the goaltending position has in some way always been either the key to the success, or the Achilles heel with the Philadelphia Flyers.
There have been some good goalies go through the Philly net over the years. Pete Peeters and Pelle Lindbergh come to mind. As does Ron Hextall. But there has only been one great goalie. For two marvelous seasons seasons in the mid-1970's, Bernie Parent was the best goaltender in the world, and it's not a coincidence, that the 1975 and 1975 Stanley Cups still stand as the only NHL championships in Philadelphia Flyers history.
Seeing Ilya Brzygalov, the free agent goalie who was signed by the Flyers to a 9 year, 51 million dollar pact, sitting on the bench as he watched, along with the 45 plus thousand fans, the NHL's Winter Classic. It's not a good sign when the biggest game of the year so far rolls into town and you bench 51 million bucks.
It was actually kind of a tough afternoon for the Flyers. In addition to losing 3-2 to the visiting New York Rangers, Jaromir Jagr missed the second and third periods. Looked as though he strained or pulled something. Although he's played very, very well for Philly thus far, he'll be 40 next month and who knows how long he can keep going.
If history is any guide, you can count the Flyers out as Stanley Cup champions for at least this year. Too bad for them they can't turn back the clock and bring Bernie back.
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