Flyers Notes: Director Rob Zombie talks about Broad Street Bullies movie

Flanked by former Flyers Bernie Parent, Gary Dornhoefer, and Bob Kelly, Hollywood movie director and rock musician Rob Zombie talked Tuesday night about the motion picture he is creating about the Broad Street Bullies.

Parent suggested that Danny DeVito could play the role of Kelly.

Dornhoefer interceded.

"Moses can play you," Dornhoefer told Parent, who looked distinguished in his white hair and matching goatee.

Zombie said the project is in its early stages, and he attended Tuesday's game against Tampa Bay to visit with some of the Broad Street Bullies - the brawling teams that won Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975 - and to observe the fans.

"It's the greatest sports story ever not told. It's been told other ways, but not film," Zombie said. "I had to do it. It reads like fiction. It's so incredible."

He added: "We're just wrapping up the script right now, looking to start shooting in the fall. This is sort of a fact-finding mission. This is where I try to get everyone to tell me stories they don't want to tell."

Zombie, who grew up near Boston, recalled the 1974 Cup finals against the Bruins. "I remember it well," he said.

Parent added his two cents. "By the way," he said, "who won?"

Zombie plans to shoot most of the movie in Philadelphia.

"It's almost like Rocky, but it's real," he said. "When you watch Rocky, you go, 'God, I wish that was real.' It's sort of like Boogie Nights meets Rocky. I know from the five-minute conversation [with the ex-Flyers] there's a lot of good stuff besides hockey going on.

"It's a character-driven movie," he added. "There's such great characters. To just make a movie about hockey, hockey fans will love it, but nobody else will. The characters are so great that - not to keep going back to Rocky - even if you hate boxing, you love the movie because the characters are so great. This has incredible characters, except they're real."

The Flyers won't know until Wednesday if winger Wayne Simmonds (concussion) can resume skating, general manager Paul Holmgren said. . . . Claude Giroux entered the night having taken a league-high 217 face-offs this season and had won 53.2 percent of them. The Flyers were just 26th out of 30 teams in face-off percentage (46.6).