45th Anniversary: Flyers Capture 2nd Straight Stanley Cup

Something that often gets overlooked about the Philadelphia Flyers teams of the mid-to-late 1970s is that apart from winning back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 1974 and 1975, making three straight Cup Final appearances (1974, 1975, and 1976) and their utter dominance on home ice, the team was a perennial Cup contentender even when they didn't capture hockey's ultimate prize. Head coach Fred Shero guided the Flyers to at least the semifinal round for six straight seasons (1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978).

For all the focus the national media in the United States and Canada placed on the Flyers' toughness, the reason the team was so successful lay in their combination of talent, work ethic, depth, outstanding coaching, a stellar general manager and the most supportive ownership int the NHL.

"We were called the Broad Street Bullies; a [catchy] name. But we had a great team," Hockey Hall of Fame left winger Bill Barber said during a recent Zoom reunion with various Flyers alumni who were members of both Cup-winning teams.

The Flyers won the Stanley Cup because they they had the best leadership. Start with Hockey Hall of Fame owner Ed Snider, Hall of Fame general manager Keith Allen, and Hall of Fame coach Fred Shero, "The Fog" was one of the sport's greatest innovators and students of the game.

Ultimately, though it's the players that make or break a team. The Flyers had a Hockey Hall of Fame captain in three-time Hart Trophy winner Bobby Clarke. They had a Hall of Fame goaltender in two-time Vezina Trophy and two-time Conn Smythe Trophy winner Bobby Clarke. They had one of the NHL's most complete wingers in Hockey Hall of Fame member Bill Barber, who may have been the best left winger of his era when two-way skills and competitiveness are added into the debate along with his scoring prowess.

Then add in players such as Barry Ashbee (an All-Star defenseman on the first Cup team, an assistant coach on the second), Gary Dornhoefer, Joe Watson, Ed van Impe and Terry Crisp. All of them were also leaders in various ways.

In fact, a look at the Broad Street Bullies roster reveals numerous future NHL head coaches (the Stanley Cup-winning Crisp, the Jack Adams Award winning Barber, Ted Harris), assistant coaches (Ashbee, future goalie coach Parent), acclaimed scouts (Simon Nolet, a member of the first Cup team) and general managers (Clarke).'

The Flyers also won because they had, by far, the hardest-working team in the NHL. They played with courage on the road and they refused to give on games even when they trailed or were fatigued. Yes, there was an intimidation factor and, yes, Dave Schultz and Moose Dupont in particular racked up dizzying penalty minute totals. But the real intimidation came from the team's unity, unquenchable hunger for winning the puck (at any price) and its genuine hatred of losing.

Beating the Flyers meant going to battle for 60 minutes (sometimes more in the playoffs) and matching their work ethic. If you messed with one Flyer -- not just Clarke, but anyone -- you would have the whole team after you. If you wanted to play a more tactical or technical game, the Flyers could beat you that way, too.

Apart from the team's three Hall of Fame players, the mid-70s Flyers exuded talent. Rick MacLeish, who had a 50-goal, 100-point season in 1972-73 as the team started its ascent, was a prolific playoff performer. Before the 1974-75 season, Allen added pure goal-scoring right winger Reggie Leach. Young defenseman Jimmy Watson became a five-time All-Star.

Now the count was up to six star-caliber players on the second Cup team, and that's not even the extent of the talent the team boasted. The club received vastly underrated two-way way from role players such as Ross Lonsberry and third-line center Orest Kindrachuk.

Offensive minded defenseman Tom Bladon was adequate in his own end of the ice -- not great, not terrible -- but he could be banked on every year for double-digit goals from the blueline and anywhere from the mid 30s to the low 50s in points. He once had an eight-point game (four goals, four assists) in the NHL. He also never had as much as 70 penalty minutes. In short, he was another "skills" player.

Overall, the entire Flyers supporting cast players all knew how to play the game. They could do more than just fight and watch the "sprinkling" of talent score all the goals and Parent post 1-0 shutouts or 2-1 wins.

As a whole, they weren't the fastest-skating group, although role players such as Bill Clement offered speed as well as two-way acume. Nevertheless, to a man they were all bona fide solid NHL players who were suited to a variety of a unheralded but important tasks. Shero's genius partially lay in his ability to make the role players feel just as valued as Clarke or Barber or MacLeish; something that Clarke himself believed and inspired teammates to believe.

"Whether you played four minutes or 20 minutes, Freddie stressed the importance of your role. And Clarke reinforced it," said Clement, who recalls how Clarke inspired him to play through a knee injury in the 1974 Final by telling him the team couldn't win the Cup without him.

Any notion that the Flyers' Stanley Cup championship in 1974 was a fluke was put to rest on the evening of May 27, 1975. On that night, the Flyers downed the host Buffalo Sabres, 2-0, in Game Six of the 1975 Stanley Cup Final to win the Cup for the second straight year.

The game was scoreless through two periods as Flyers superstar goaltender Bernie Parent turned back all 26 shots fired on his net, while Buffalo's Roger Crozier made 18 saves including a dozen in the middle frame.
In the third period, however, the Flyers forged ahead.

During the Flyers' practices, at the very end of the session, players sometimes competed among themselves in a fun little drill where they collected a puck behind the net, stepped out in front and tried to score a goal. The first one to do it successfully won a $5 bill.

Eleven seconds into the third period of Game 6, Bob "the Hound" Kelly claimed the puck behind the net. He swooped around and beat Crozier with a back hand shot to give the Flyers a 1-0 lead. The goal was made possible by team captain Bob Clarke winning an initial puck battle with the much larger Jerry "King Kong" Korab.

Returning to the bench among gleeful teammates, Kelly turned to head coach Fred Shero and said, "Freddie, that's five bucks you owe me."

For Kelly, who missed the 1974 Stanley Cup Final due to a serious knee injury suffered the previous round against the New York Rangers, the goal was especially sweet.

Shero remained outwardly stoic. But he issued what Flyers players had come to understand was his selectively-chosen equivalent of either in-game praise or consolation, depending on the situation: The coach gently put a hand on Kelly's shoulder before returning his focus to the game.

The skinny lead held as the minutes on the clock ticked down. Finally, with 2:47 remaining in the third period, the Flyers got some insurance.

Claiming the puck along the boards, Kindrachuk spotted Clement getting open over the middle. Kindrachuk fearlessly hung in, receiving a bone rattling hit from Korab that left the Flyers forward down in a heap, but not before sending a tape-to-tape pass to Clement. Going in all alone on Crozier, Clement scored to extend the lead to 2-0.

Not that Parent needed any extra help. Winning the Conn Smythe Trophy for the second straight year, Parent turned aside an additional six shots in the third period to complete a 32-save shut out. With time about to expire, Clarke took one final face off in the defensive zone and then jubilantly pumped his legs and arms in celebration as the rest of his teammates rushed onto the ice.

The previous year, when the Flyers clinched the Cup on home ice against the Bruins, fans poured out onto the ice during the ceremonial victory skate. This year in Buffalo, the players had the ice all to themselves. Clarke's wide, toothless smile during the Cup presentation ceremony became one of the most iconic images in team history.

As with the 1974 championship, a crowd of more than two million Flyers fans jammed the Broad Street parade route the following day. This time around, the parade was better organized. Players and their families rode on flatbed trucks rather than seated in the back of convertibles. The parade route ended with a celebratory rally.