Nothing came easy for the Flyers or their late owner, Ed Snider, during that first NHL season in Philadelphia in 1967-68.
The ownership squabbles between himself and Jerry Wolman over the team and the Spectrum still ate at him, and like every new arena, there were issues.
Except most issues don’t involve the roof blowing off an arena, igniting a political battle between the city of Philadelphia and the Flyers that closed the Spectrum for a month, forcing the team on the road like a band of gypsies.
And even when things went right, they were wrong.
The Flyers didn’t have a practice facility in Philadelphia. The one they were using in Cherry Hill lacked showers. Players drove to the Spectrum then bussed to New Jersey for practice and back.
Did we mention the Flyers held a parade in Center City to “welcome” the team that fall and no one showed up?
Joe Watson laughs when he recalls all of this. Fact is, it almost never happened for Watson because of a contract squabble between himself and general manager Bud Poile.
“Eddie Van Impe and I go to training camp and had not signed our contracts yet,” Watson said. “They presented us contracts and we didn’t accept them. So Bud Poile told us to get the hell out of here, which we did. And when you get to your destination, he said, tell me where you’re at.”
Watson got in a car and drove all the back to British Columbia. He phoned Poile from Kamloops.
“What the hell are you doing out there?” Poile screamed.
“You told us to leave camp and go as far as we could, so I did,” Watson replied.
That’s how it began for Watson.
This season marks the 50th anniversary of the Flyers, who have signature events lined up for selected home games to celebrate the birth of NHL hockey in Philadelphia.
“From that first year, that would have been a big stretch to think we could win a cup,” said Gary Dornoefer, another first-year Flyer.
“As the years went on, there were a lot of good leaders on the hockey club and that was very important for the development of the team. Helping the young kids mature and get into the system.”
Core, older players such as Lou Angotti, Larry Zeidel and Bill Sutherland. Players in their late 20s, such as Ed Van Impe, who acted like older veterans.
“Van Impe never said much, but you watched him on the ice and he did things, some legal and some not so legal, to win a hockey game,” Dornhoefer said. “You watch him and jump in and try to do the same thing.”
Unlike some other expansion cities, the Flyers didn’t have a base to build upon. Minnesota was a thriving state for amateur hockey. Pittsburgh had a minor league team. So did St. Louis.
Philly’s last real hockey team, the Quakers, folded in the 1930s.
“When they awarded Philly the franchise, there was talk it was a bad decision,” said Angoitti, the Flyers’ first captain.
“They weren’t focused on Oakland or L.A., but it seemed to people in Toronto there was a focus on Philadelphia, which had very little background in hockey. They thought it was a big mistake.
“We weren’t identified much as a hockey team. We had a parade to welcome us in these convertible cars driving down the street and there was no one there.”
Seven years later, there would be a second parade. This time, more than a million showed up as the Flyers became the first expansion club to win a Stanley Cup.
Angotti, who had played before sold out crowds at Chicago Stadium, was taken aback his first month here and wondered if Philadelphia had what it took to succeed.
What the Flyers had going for them were some very capable men like Poile and Keith Allen, their first coach would soon become their greatest GM, and of course, a visionary owner in Snider, who would later build an empire off one word: Spectrum.
They would get it done.
“I thought that the Flyers seemed to be the best financed of the expansion clubs,” recalled Scotty Bowman, who coached the Blues that first year and later became the NHL’s greatest coach of his era with nine Stanley Cups.
“[Bill] Putnam was a banker. Bud Poile and Keith Allen were terrific hockey minds and were very good rivals in the minors. The Flyers had everything. Even their own blazers.”
Snider had lurid orange blazers for every member of the team.
Even if you didn’t recognize a particular player, you knew they were Flyers just looking at the blazers.
“When you went out in these, people thought you were either the maître ‘d or you parked cars,” Dornhoefer recalled. “I wouldn’t wear it after two times. That was the end of it.”
Travel was difficult because all the expansion teams were in the Western Division. That meant four extended trips to the West Coast.
“That first year was survival,” Watson said. “We survived. Survival of the fittest as a bunch of vagabonds traveling all over playing at night, then during the day, and it was ludicrous. We played in Minnesota one night and had to fly all night to get to Quebec City the next night.
“We were traveling on a DC3, a goddamn prop job. With equipment and everything else, it took forever to get there. It was rough. But we stuck together and played well together.”
The players picked Angotti to be their captain because of his past experience with the Rangers and Blackhawks.
“We were fortunate we had a team built from the goaltending out and we had two good ones in Doug Favell and Bernie Parent,” Angotti said. “Our defense was very good. We were primarily a defensive team.
“Keith Allen did a very good job keeping us focused on our structure given the personnel. We played to our strength. We came together as a team.”
When the roof blew off on March 1, 1968, the Flyers, who were in a tight battle with L.A. and St. Louis for the divisional crown, were forced to play the remainder of the schedule on the road.
In New York City, in Toronto, and finally, in Quebec City, where the Flyers already owned the Aces as their AHL affiliate.
“We never sat around and thought we got to do something because we won’t be playing at home,” Angotti said. “We just went out and did what any team would do. Go on the road and try to win as many games as you can.”
It became "us versus the them." The Flyers narrowly won the division over the Kings. The trials of the final month had galvanized the team.
“The strong survive and the weak fall apart,” Watson said.
The Spectrum re-opened with a new roof when the playoffs began and the Blues, despite losing seven of 10 regular season games (five games decided by a single goal), won in the playoffs.
The epic seven-game series was a war and laid the foundation for the bitterness between the two teams that would follow, plus the roots for the transformation of the Flyers’ image that would accompany it.
All that aside, what most people remember was the hardship the Flyers endured at the end after being forced out of their own building by mother nature.
“Philadelphia finished first in the league and it was such a tight race,” Bowman said. “Philadelphia started from the get-go.
“They were the leaders and no doubt about it, they played a really good brand of hockey. They didn’t win games by much, but they finished first and sustained.”
While the end of the season may have brought the team closer together, some players felt there was an advantage to being on the road.
“I’ve always felt as a player it was easier to play on the road than at home,” Dornhoefer said. “At home, you’re on the power play and people are yelling at you to shoot, shoot, shoot and there are plays you are trying to make.
“And when you’re having a bad game, they let you know it. That doesn’t happen on the road. Now, when we became the Broad Street Bullies, that changed and they got on us pretty good.”
Ah, yes, the Bullies. That chapter was just down the road.
