As devastating losses go, they dont come cleaner than 1987s Game 7 in Edmonton.
Doug Crossman slid the puck against the post on the power play, just after Murray Craven had scored on a two-man advantage in the first minute. But there was no late fateful giveaway, bad penalty, call, bounce or goal to haunt those Flyers forever. Without leading scorer Tim Kerr, they had erased deficits of 3-0, 3-1 and 2-0 to win three games against probably the best single offensive team in NHL history.
The Oilers, dominant through the final 30 minutes, won that game 3-1, the Flyers didnt lose it. Nevertheless that didnt keep Mark Howe (Never been shot with a bullet, but it couldnt hurt any more than this) from sticking his head under a sink faucet to drown his tears.
Likewise, 24 years later Brad Marsh tries to remember the excitement of the two days following Game 6, when the Cup was in our hands, with limited success.
A great memory, Marsh said. Also, a bitter memory.
The next chance for me never came. Who off the 85 and 87 teams went on to win with another team?
Marsh could congratulate Brad McCrimmon (1989 Flames), Dave Brown (1990 Oilers), Rick Tocchet and Kjell Samuelsson (1992 Penguins) plus coach Mike Keenan (1994 Rangers), just couldnt bear to watch them celebrate.
NHL
I follow every sport and always turn off the TV prior to any trophy-awarding or champagne locker room, Marsh said. I never got to do it and it bleeps me off.
Nobody who has worn the black and orange, as did Marsh did for seven discouraging, redemptive, tragic and extraordinarily eventful seasons, has ever cared more winning.
Drives me crazy when Mommy and Daddy take their kids to their games, say just have fun today, he said. Your fun comes from success.
Yes, if you dont win at least you gave your all. But its devastating when you lose.
Marsh, who had 33 goals in 15 NHL seasons, somehow stickhandled through the Caps to score for the Flyers late in their final 1984 game, a 5-1 loss that brought their post-season record since his November 1981 acquisition (for Mel Bridgman) to 1-9.
If I could score, you would think some of these other guys could have, Marsh muttered privately that night.
A year later, when Craven jammed the last puck past the point and the visitors bench at Madison Square Garden to seal an excruciatingly-tense first-round sweep (total margin of victory, four goals) over the Flyers playoff nemeses, Marshs arms were the first ones up and his legs first over the boards towards Pelle Lindbergh. For a big, slow guy, amazing how he always won those races.
Bob Clarke always said Marshs basic problem was that that his feet were big as his heart. He used every ounce of strength from his helmet-less head to his webbed toes to throw himself in front of shots, maul forwards, hug Philadelphia goalies and make you care about the Flyers almost as much as he did.
Been captain of an NHL team and still had no idea how to be a pro until I got to Philadelphia, he said. Wearer of a London Knights jacket chewed at the collar by his Rottweiler Ernie, driver of a truck with 180,000 miles, Marsh was without pretense, the easiest Flyer to be happy for when they got off that three-year April schneid and went on to two finals.
In turn, that made October 3, 1988 one of the sadder days in their history. To pick up a fourth-line forward named Doug Sulliman in the waiver draft, GM Bob Clarke put Marsh out on the curb to be picked up by the lowly Leafs. That night practically every Flyer gathered at Marshs home to say goodbye, even the dirty, Sulliman-loving Clarke having been granted permission to attend.
Years later, a prideful Marsh still wanted to know: Who the bleep is Doug Sulliman? but time heals some things. In a phone conversation a few weeks ago, Marsh couldnt remember whom the Flyers had picked up.
Thus he no longer needs the consolation of knowing that Sulliman missed the invite list for the Legends Game on Dec. 31 at Citizens Bank Park. Marsh not only was an automatic but, having recently lost 40 pounds, he should be one of the better players on the ice.
He never had a step to lose anyway. The Flames, who had made Marsh the 11th player taken in the 1978 draft, who had stunned the Flyers in a 1981 second-round Game 7 at the Spectrum with Marsh neutralizing Paul Holmgren, traded their captain to Philadelphia in the belief the game was growing too fast for him.
Its never too fast if you know how to play, scoffs Clarke. The fastest guy in the NHL in Brads day probably was Mike Gartner and Marshie owned him.
The clutch disappeared during the lockout, hand-in-hand with the grab, but the Marshasaurus, who worked tirelessly with Flyers assistant coach Ted Sator to improve his skating, who, like most Flyer veterans, raised his level of play another 20 percent under Mike Keenan, doesnt see why he couldnt play today in a league almost two decades faster than the one Marsh left.
I wasnt the most graceful skater, he said. But from A, I knew what I was supposed to do when I got to B.
Whether I ran or slid on my skates, I just had to be quick from the front of the net to the corner, then outmuscle and outfight my opponent. Thanks to Teddy and Mike, who would play me 25 minutes, I adapted. And I could today.
The players are bigger, faster, stronger. But the best teams only have two lines, because thats what the cap does. Its a special teams and videotape game, very specialized, like the NFL. I venture to say more than half of todays players would not have had the skill to play in the eighties, when we had 21 teams. And yappers like Sean Avery would not have been able to play because somebody would have killed him.
On Dec. 8, 1987, the night Ron Hextall would became the first NHL goalie to shoot and score a goal, 17,077 at the Spectrum thought Marsh was dead. He was sandwiched -- high and low but cleanly -- by Cam Neely and Ray Bourque, a Hall of Fame double team if there ever was one that unfortunately took place at the corner of the glass at the edge of the players bench.
Frighteningly motionless on the ice, Marsh was aware enough to jokingly ask for his chew on the way to the hospital, In just nine days, he was dumb enough to return, albeit with a helmet he had been determined to never wear (the requirement had been grandfathered one year after he entered the NHL).
In those days they didnt understand concussions like they do now, he recalls. I didnt have the extra drive and determination I normally had.
Perhaps I didnt realize how bad I was playing. I remember getting into bleeping matches with Keenan when he stopped using me.
He played a full shift in the playoffs, when the Keenan era ended with the Flyers blowing 3-1 lead to Washington. New coach Paul Holmgren had three new regular defensemen the next year as the Flyers, in a last hurrah minus Marsh, made a run to the semifinals.
The hapless Leafs moved him to the improving Red Wings and Marsh finished up with the first-year Senators, who recorded the second-fewest wins (10) in NHL history.
I embraced every place I played, he said. Yeah, I would have wanted it to end up on a better note, but I got to an All Star Game for the first time (bad weather had killed his plane connection as a last-minute sub for the 1985 game in Calgary) and there were crazy fans in Ottawa who started a Brad Marsh Fan Club.
I wanted to keep playing but nobody wanted me. I had plenty of offers to go to the minors and be an assistant coach, but Patty and I wanted stability for the kids so we stayed in Ottawa.
Brad Marshs Barbecue and Grill debuted in the Corel Center after it opened in 1996 and lasted until January 2011.
The (2004-5) lockout put us in a hole we were never able to get out of, said Marsh. Ugly end, Im bitter about it, how the little people get hurt in a work stoppage.
A friend involved in the nutrition health industry knew the restaurant was on life support, called me and weve given that a shot. ViSalus Sciences is an about face from pushing burgers and wings to promoting a 90-day challenge for people to lose weight or improve their times in a 5k race or marathon.
Ive lost 40 pounds and can fit in my Knights jacket again. Were paying the bills, its going fine. But Patty and I still are here in Ottawa and the kids are all away.
Erik, born a month after the withering death of Per-Erik Lindbergh in a car accident, recently earned a teaching degree at Ottawas Carlton University. Patrick attends Calgary University, where, no chip off the block, he trains as a Canadian Olympic speedskating hopeful. Victoria is in her fourth year at Western Ontario University majoring in early childhood education and Madeline in her first year in the nets for Middlebury (Vt.) College.
Patty came from a Somerdale, N.J. family of 11, enough for a family band that Marsh says played at a lot of Flyers weddings and their second weddings, too.
We would like to come back to Philly at some point. Most people who knew me in hockey are gone, I doubt theres anything for me anywhere in the game.
He belongs on someones coaching staff and in the Flyers Hall of Fame, too. Barely fast enough to get to icings, Marsh was lighting quick to make friends, memorably putting one of his ever clutching-and-grabbing paws around a Cold War refugee named Miroslav Dvorak, who became the first European Flyer after the Czechoslovakian federation opened the Iron Curtain to sell veteran stars.
We would ride together to practice, the families would eat at each others homes, recalls Marsh. He couldnt speak English and I couldnt speak Czech and we would still talk on the phone. Patty would ask what are you possibly talking about?
It wasnt a chore, something you should do to be a good teammate. I really liked the guy.
The friendship thrived through multiple Marsh visits to the Czech Republic, including a final one to Dvoraks 2008 funeral.
Throat cancer, lifelong smoker, said Marsh. Sad.
You know, of the players they let come, he was the only one who amounted to anything over here.
A lot of Flyers have amounted to a great deal of franchise glory. But none ever reveled in it or reviled failure to a greater degree than Cookie Dvoraks best friend.
They show that stupid game from 1987 all the time on NHL Classic, Marsh said. Great series, sure, but dont they have another game?
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.