The quintessential expression of the rivalry with the Rangers, of course, has to come from the Flyers quintessential figure.
I hate the Rangers the most, said Bob Clarke. When I came here in the third year of the franchise, the players already did.
That first year we won the Cup was when they had their best team and were supposed to win, so Im sure its the same for their side. Even today, new guys coming to our team quickly know to hate the Rangers.
After 44 years of fear (mostly by the Rangers), loathing (generally by the Flyers) cheap shots (largely Flyers), sermonizing (predominantly Rangers) and scarring postseason defeats (mutual), the great irony is that if not for the Rangers, the Flyers might not exist.
When he learned of the NHLs plans to add teams, the first call Ed Snider made was to Ranger president Bill Jennings, the chairman of the expansion committee, who, never mind the unimpressive history of minor league hockey in Philadelphia, pushed for a franchise in a new 15,000-seat building here over one in an existing Baltimore Civic Center seating 12,700.
Youre in, said Jennings in his congratulatory call to Bill Putnam, the Flyers first president, on Feb. 9, 1966 at New Yorks St. Regis Hotel. But of course the Rangers had no concept of what they would be in for.
The Flyers beat the Rangers, 3-2, at the Spectrum in their first meeting on Nov. 16, 1967, earning a standing ovation from people whose love of any win over New York likely was greater than their appreciation for Philadelphias new major league sport. In Clarkes first year, the punchless 17-35-24 Flyers tied all six games they played against the rising 38-22-16 Rangers.
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Among the best teams to never win the Cup were that eras Rangers, whose probable best shot came up one goal short in Game 7 of the semifinals at the Spectrum in 1974, and the Mike Keenan-era Flyers, whose best chance in 1986when the Edmonton team that beat the Flyers in 1985 and 1987 finals was upset in by Calgarydied in the glove of John Vanbiesbrouck in a monumental first-round upset.
Still, that wasnt the worst thing the Rangers, their revulsion stoked by the Paul Holmgren-induced welts a shirtless Anders Hedberg would diagram for the New York media, ever did to the Flyers. Bob Clarkes and Bill Barbers last chance for another Cup ended in a three-game, first-round sweep of a 106-point Philadelphia team by Herb Brooks 80-point Rangers in 1983, the franchises most inconsolable defeat ever. Still the worst Ive ever felt, confirms Clarke.
But after the upstart Flyers knocked out the defending Stanley Cup champion Rangers in a startling second-round sweep in 1995, the last hurrahs of Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky, Adam Graves, Brian Leetch and Mike Richter were crushed by Philadelphia in a five-game semifinal in 1997.
Going into Mondays Winter Classic, the Flyers have won 114 regular-season games in the series, the Rangers 112 and there have been 37 ties. The Flyers have won six of the 10 postseason meetings, including the last three, but it may not seem like that to men of a certain age, who watched the two teams meet seven times in the first round in nine years between 1979-87. In only one of those seasons, 1981-82, did the Rangers finish ahead of the Flyers and yet New York won four of the seven series.
With the creation of four conferences and two rounds of playoffs within them for next season, the Flyers and Rangers surely will begin to find each other again come spring, as they almost couldnt miss during the 80s. Those series were the full flowering of cacti seeded during 1974, one of the most bitter playoff series ever played.
Hardest one I was ever in, said Clarke, which contradicts revisionist history that the Rangers capitulated. True, Dale Rolfe got no help while being beaten by Dave Schultz in Game 7 and Brad ParkI decided after Game 5 that if I had to maim someone to win the Stanley Cup then it wasnt worth itinfamously gave a postseason statement of surrender.
But the Rangers scored the first goal soon after Schultz savaged Rolfe, and lost by only goal after having been down 4-1. In a series where home ice held to New Yorks bitter end, the Flyers won by the closest of margins on sheer determination.
Every time you think youre about to gain some ground on them they kick something out from under you, said Ranger goalie Ed Giacomin, who spent the series with Gary Dornhoefer in his lap. They won because they were all over us all the time.
The Rangers signed Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson and stole Fred Shero. The player the Flyers drafted with the pick that freed Shero from his contract, Ken Linseman, scored in overtime to beat New York in 1979s Game 1, before the Flyers goaltending and discipline crashed. Even while doubling the shots on a hot John Davidson, they were outscored 24-8 in a five-game Ranger rout that left Philadelphia short of the semifinals for the first time in seven years.
They had too many guys hitting too much, said Shero. We had muscle when I coached the Flyers but we used it judiciously.
The next year, the Flyers did, Pat Quinns team wearing down New York in five close games on the way to the finals. But as Philadelphias defense and discipline frayed, the Rangers, next coached by Herb Brooks, became masochistic in their April glee at surviving the Flyers.
For me, they were just as much of a rival as the Islanders, said Dave Maloney, mainstay defenseman for the Rangers then, their radio analyst now.
The Spectrum was a different feel than going anywhere else, even the Nassau Coliseum, where, great as were those Islanders teams that ultimately we couldnt beat, almost half the fans were rooting for us.
The Rangers had a practice at the Spectrum a few years before it closed and going in there, even all those years later, those feelings came back to me. Intimidation was such a part of the Flyers culture. Oh my God, is Holmgren playing tonight?
But between their goaltender problems and the way they would get themselves in trouble, we felt if we could get though the first 10 minutes they would self destruct.
It happened in 82, when a favored Ranger team back-doored the undisciplined Flyers again, coming back from a 3-0 deficit in the pivotal Game 3 and holding off a three-goal, third-period rally in Game 4 to put away the series, 4-1.
The Flyers traded for Mark Howe, installed Pelle Lindbergh in goal, ran away with the 1982-83 Patrick Division title, appearing to have fixed their problems. But after the Rangers won the last two regular-season meetings and Coach Bob McCammon complained nobody hit their Smurfs all night, the quicker Rangers stunned the Flyers at the Spectrum in the first two games of a first-round series and finished them off 9-3 at a delirious Garden.
If they dont learn from this, they never will, crowed Ron Duguay after Smurf dolls littered the ice.
Clarke, Darryl Sittler, Barber were in their wind-down days when I came up the last weekend that season, recalled Dave Poulin. It was going to be their final run. I could feel the devastation.
And, after the Flyers were swept again in 1984s first round (this time by Washington), Poulin was part of the tension when the Flyers, shocking Jennings Trophy winners with the leagues youngest team, had to get through the Rangers again in the first round in 1985.
The nervous Flyers, who blew 3-0 and 4-3 leads in Game 1 at the Spectrum before Howe scored in overtime, needed four goals by Tim Kerr in Game 3 to complete a sweet purge in three games (total margin four goals) that felt like seven.
Athletes always tell you its a new year, new team, but there was an old guard (Howe, Brad Marsh, Brad McCrimmon, Lindbergh) that remembered the bad, even though trying to put it out of our minds, said Poulin.
Mike Keenan gets the credit for doing that for us. That win was enormous, liberating.
And, after the Flyers went to that springs finals, it became enormously painful again when the Rangers, who had finished under .500 and lost 18 of the last 19 against the Flyers, rose again the following year to blow out the Flyers in Game 1, score four third-period goals to wipe out a 2-2 deficit in Game 3, and overcome an 8-1 Flyers Garden blowout in Game 4.
I had to skate by their bench when (Coach) Ted (Sator) pulled me, recalled Vanbiesbrouck. They said, Youre finished, which I remembered going into Game 5.
The pressure was off us though. Until Mark Osborne went around Bob Froese (in the second period to put New York up 3-1), it hadnt occurred to me we could win that game.
McCrimmon shot what everybody at the Spectrum except Vanbiesbrouck thought was the tying goal through a screen and the goalie gloved it before the Rangers hit two empty nets.
To me, we were over that tension about the Rangers, just hit the wall from everything we had been through with Pelles death, Poulin said.
But the next year, after another 100-point Flyer season and 18 trades by new Rangers GMcoach Phil Esposito, including one of Froese for Kjell Samuelsson that GM Clarke felt would disturb Vanbiesbrouck karma, here again were the Rangers shutting out the Flyers in Game 1 at the Spectrum. In a series-tying Game 4 Ranger win at MSG, Esposito taunted the hacking, slashing, wired rookie goalie Ron Hextall with Ronald! Ronald McDonald!
But Hextall made big saves against a two-man advantage early in Game 5 and the vastly superior Flyers began finally to impose their will. They had the puck the rest of the six-game series, which ended in a redemptive 5 -0 shutout at MSG.
You want to beat any team to show youre superior, said Jay Snider. But you want to beat the Rangers just to shut them up.
The rivalry went dormant when the Flyers missed the playoffs five straight years, the last of which, 1994, being the one the Rangers broke their 54-year Stanley Cup drought. For the Flyers, that only created the perfect stage to announce their re-emergence with a stunning second-round sweep in 1995.
Two years later, the Rangers came into the semifinals glowing hot after a five-game upset of the Devils. But the Flyers cooled Richter with goals on two of their first three shots, got a game-winning goal by Eric Lindros with six seconds remaining in Game 4 and with Leetch playing with a damaged wrist, the depleted Rangers went down in five.
They missed the playoffs the next seven years, but come to Citizens Bank Park a top team in the conference, off four consecutive victories over the Flyers and, as always in this series, looking for a next round of redemption.
It got back to us that when Ken Hitchcock became the Flyers coach, he said, Its mandatory with the job to beat the Rangers, said Maloney.
Indeed, after the Flyers were out-prepared by Brooks in 1983, Snider accused the Rangers of tanking their regular season, vowing never again to make it an emphasis again. Snider kicked GM Keith Allen upstairs and McCammon ordered March vacations for his veteran players the following season that Clarke resents to this day. The Rangers had driven the Flyers insane.
If youre telling me we rattled their heads, I can feel good about that even 30 years later, said Maloney. There was fear there and I guess ultimately respect.
But mostly I hated them.
Jay Greenberg covered the Flyers for 14 years for the Daily News and Evening Bulletin. His history of the Flyers, Full Spectrum, was published in 1996. He can be reached at jayg616@aol.com.