Flyers at 50: Orange and Black's humble start

Fifty years ago, the Flyers returned from training camp in Quebec City and wanted to generate excitement for their inaugural season by having a parade down Broad Street.

This was before the 1967-68 season, when six expansions teams, including the Flyers, were added to the NHL.

Philadelphia, which would attract two million people to the Stanley Cup parade in 1974, had yet to become enamored with the Flyers.

Maybe two dozen people attended that 1967 parade. Philadelphia had a checkered past in supporting major- and minor-league hockey teams, so this wasn't a very good sign.

The players and club personnel sat in open convertibles.

"There were more people in the parade than there were people watching it," said defenseman Joe Watson, an original Flyer who is now a senior account executive for the Wells Fargo Center's advertising department. "I said, 'Hell, we're not going to be here very long.' One fan gave me the finger and said, 'You'll be in Baltimore in six months!' "

Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love.

"I thought it meant you're going to be No. 1," Watson said of the fan's gesture, "but obviously it didn't mean that."

Watson laughed heartily.

"It wasn't a big welcome. And Mayor [James] Tate was supposed to welcome us to the city at the Chamber of Commerce hall downtown, and he doesn't even show up for the function," Watson said. "I never forgot that because seven years later when we won the Stanley Cup, [Frank] Rizzo was the mayor, and I got up and I said, 'Where the hell was the mayor seven years ago? He never showed up and now we're such a big deal.' And Rizzo says to me, 'I wasn't the mayor then, so don't blame me!' "

The Flyers are celebrating their 50th-year anniversary this season. They have had many pregame celebrations in which they have brought back players from the past.

Today's game is vastly different than when the Flyers were born in 1967.

"I have some old CDs, and when you compare the way the game is played today to back then, it's like we were in slow motion," said Gary Dornhoefer, a rugged right winger who was on the Flyers' original team. "Big was 190 pounds back then. Now you have some guys 240, 250."

Flyers from the franchise's different decades will celebrate the golden anniversary by playing in an alumni game on Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Center against the Pittsburgh Penguins, another of the NHL's six expansion teams 50 years ago.

Many of the Flyers from the past and present will be part of a celebration at the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association's dinner Feb. 3 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill.

But the Flyers weren't even a thought when Ed Snider was in the record business in the 1960s. While in New York on business, a sales associate took Snider to a hockey game at Madison Square Garden to watch the New York Rangers face the Montreal Canadiens.

"It was the greatest spectator sport I had ever seen," Snider, who died last April, said years later.

Not many years after he watched that game, the Flyers, with Snider as co-founder, were created.

"It seems like yesterday," Snider said last February when the Flyers celebrated the 50th anniversary of the franchise being awarded in 1966.

The team started playing the following year.

"In our first season, the Hockey News thought we would be the team least likely to succeed, but were they ever wrong!" Snider said.

The franchise was purchased for $2 million, and Snider and Jerry Wolman got the Spectrum built for $12 million. A bogus contest was held to name the team. The winner was "Flyers," but Snider's sister, Phyllis, had actually chosen that name months earlier.

At a news conference to announce the team's name, three women models displayed the Flyers' new colors.

"It's comforting to know that the team's colors are orange sweatshirts and black mesh stockings," Daily News columnist Stan Hochman wrote, according to Jay Greenberg in Full Spectrum. "Let's hope the players can fight."

Expanding from six to 12 NHL teams was welcomed by players scuffling to reach The Show.

"When you go back to that time, there were only six teams playing and there were so many good players in the American League and all around Canada and the United States who never had the opportunity to reach the National Hockey League," said Lou Angotti, the Flyers' first captain, in a telephone conversation from his home in Pompano Beach, Fla., on Saturday. "When they went to 12 teams, it gave a lot of players a chance to extend their careers and get a chance to play in the National Hockey League. It was a wonderful opportunity for everybody."

General manager Bud Poile and coach Keith Allen did a masterful job in the expansion draft, selecting players such as goalies Bernie Parent and Doug Favell, defensemen Watson and Ed Van Impe, and right winger Dornhoefer.

Parent, Watson, Van Impe, and Dornhoefer would become fixtures when the Flyers won consecutive Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975.

The Flyers were in the West Division with the five other expansion teams. The East Division was composed of teams from the NHL's Original Six.

"Our favorite saying when we played against the established teams was: 'Dump it out!' " Dornhoefer recalled with a laugh. "There was always a lot of pressure down our end of the ice."

In their first season, the Flyers "had a lot of small guys, and as the years went on, we got a little bigger, a little stronger, a little tougher," Dornhoefer said. "But we got beat up some nights, physically, in the early days."

At first, fans were slow to accept the new team. Tickets were $2 to $5.50 per game during that first season, and just 7,812 showed up for the home opener. Gradually, as the Flyers sprinkled in wins against the original teams, attendance picked up. By February, they had their first home sellout.

The Flyers finished 31-32-11 in their first season, were outscored by 179-173, and won the title in the West, which was also composed of expansion teams from St. Louis, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, and Los Angeles.

They won the championship despite playing seven "home" games away from the Spectrum because portions of the roof came crashing down late that season.

One of those "home" games, at the old Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, included a stick fight between the Flyers' Larry Zeidel and Eddie Shack of the Bruins.

"The worst I have ever seen," Dornhoefer said, adding that Zeidel reacted to a Jewish slur.

The Flyers clinched the West championship on the next-to-last day of the season when second-place Los Angeles, needing a victory to stay alive, was tied by Oakland. The Flyers were on the road in Pittsburgh, but when the Kings didn't win, the Orange and Black's final regular-season game was meaningless.

When Snider heard the Kings' result, "he got most of us out of bed and we went to this after-hours place and celebrated 'til 5 in the morning," Watson said.

The Flyers narrowly lost out that season for the Vezina Trophy, awarded for the lowest goals-against average.

"Bernie and Dougie Favell were upset because they had bonuses of $200 if they won it," Watson said. "Imagine that today. Mr. Snider felt so bad about the whole thing - this is the type of owner he was - he gave everybody their bonuses, anyway. The defense and the goalies got the bonuses."

Watson said the Flyers got their identity, in part, because of losing to St. Louis in the opening round of the playoffs in their first season. The Blues won in seven games.

"They beat the hell out of us, physically," Watson said. "Mr. Snider said it would never happen to a Flyers team again."

They would add muscle (Dave Schultz, Bob Kelly, Don Saleski) through the draft and through a trade (Andre Dupont). More important, they drafted players like Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber, and Jimmy Watson, acquired Rick MacLeish, Bill Flett, and Ross Lonsberry, and reacquired Parent in 1973 after dealing him to Toronto two years earlier.

The stage was set for future success. The next parade they held would be nothing like the first one.

scarchidi@phillynews.com

@BroadStBull