The Philadelphia Flyers are in an odd place these days. They’ve a marquee team in the NHL. They’ve accomplished a lot; two Stanley Cups, six conference championships, and three years posting the best record in the NHL say everything. They’ve never won the Presidents’ Trophy, but that’s only because their years being the best team in the NHL during the regular season all happened before the Presidents’ Trophy was a thing. Their historic points percentage is THIRD in the history of the NHL, behind only the Montreal Canadiens and the Vegas Golden Knights. And the latter team there has only been playing for four years, so we’re not working with a large sample size there. They have one of the great organic rivalries in the league between expansion teams with the Pittsburgh Penguins. And yet… They haven’t won the Stanley Cup since the 70s, they made an all-in trade for a player who wasn’t the player they needed him to be, and the biggest thing that happened to them recently is the introduction of a mascot. (Although, in fairness, it’s a fucking awesome mascot.)
Although the Flyers aren’t one of the Original Six, they’re still one of the oldest teams in the NHL. They were created in the 1967 expansion, at the beginning of the league’s first big wave of expansions. Before that, there WAS NHL hockey in Philadelphia, but that was only because the Pittsburgh Pirates were about to go under and had to relocate or die. So the Pirates relocated to Philadelphia, which was a bigger city, and became the Philadelphia Quakers. And as the Quakers, all the team could muster was a single dreadful season in which they set a futility record which still stands: 4-36-4. They were also outdrawn by the Can-Am League’s Philadelphia Arrows. After that, the Quakers quietly “suspended operations,” which everyone knows is just hockey-ese for “we’re finished but not ready to admit it yet.” The inevitable finally happened in 1936; the team was cancelled, and no one ever wanted to think of the Quakers again. The vilely corrupt league put the stoppers on a 1946 attempt to bring the Montreal Maroons to Philadelphia as well. A Philadelphia sportsman by the name of Len Peto was leading a businessman group which wanted to build a hockey arena in the spot where the old Baker Bowl stood, but couldn’t get the funding raised by the time the league-imposed deadline hit. (We can safely assume the NHL put the deadline in place only to stymie the attempt to raise funds. It did shit like that ALL THE FUCKING TIME, which is why the Original Six Era existed at all.)
In 1964, Philadelphia Eagles vice president Ed Snider happened to be visiting Boston. He saw a long line of fans lining up to buy tickets to a Bruins game. At the time, the Bruins were in last place. Around that same time, the NHL was starting to have serious talks about expanding because they feared being challenged by a new league that was popping up on the West Coast. Snider made a pitch to the league, and his group was picked over a group from Baltimore. In April of 1966, one of the team’s co-founders, Bill Putnam, announced a name-the-team contest. The contest started in July, and on August 3, the name of the new team was announced to the world: The Philadelphia Flyers. And the hockey world shuddered in fear.
Of course, all six of the n00bs were hampered with rules and restrictions which were meant to make sure all the talent on the Original Six teams stayed on the Original Six teams. In other words, the Flyers were forced to take the ice as a winning percentage fattener stocked up with trade bait. Doug Favell, Lou Angotti, Leon Rochefort, and Bill Sutherland weren’t anyone’s idea of an all-conquering cast. Sutherland’s great career highlight was scoring the first goal in the team’s history. But the Flyers DID manage to grab a few players from the expansion draft who stuck around for awhile. Joe Watson and Gary Dornhoefer both found homes in Philadelphia and played the bulks of their careers there. Ed Van Impe went to three All-Star Games. And a certain young goaltender by the name of Bernie Parent made a name for himself as one of the greatest players in the league. Despite having a band of scrubs, though, the Flyers powered their way to their first division title and playoff appearance in their inaugural season!… Because the NHL, which was still fairly corrupt and tripping to let the Original Six to hold all the power, just shoved all the new teams into their own separate little division! As it turned out, the Flyers won that division with a sub-.500 record, then the Blues booted them out of the first round of the playoffs.
There’s no easy way to put this: The Philadelphia Flyers were a pathetic team throughout the remainder of the 60s. Yes, that was largely through the design of the NHL, because the old boys wanted the new kids to forever bow to them and kiss their rings. Finally, after getting tossed from the playoffs in 1969, Ed Snider turned to general manager Bud Poile and offered a simple directive: Make his players bigger, stronger, MEANER. Snider probably saw what the Boston Bruins were turning into back then and said he wanted THAT, but even nastier! And Poile’s response? To take it as a directive to draft a young diabetic kid from Flin Flon, Manitoba, named Bobby Clarke! Yes, Clarke is a bona fide NHL legend, but nobody realized that at the time. And Poile was sort of jerked by that directive into his pick in the 52nd overall slot: Enforcer Dave Schultz, one of the most aggressive and feared players in the history of the league. Clarke instantly emerged as the team’s best and most popular player. In 1972, the Flyers were in the hunt for the playoffs, and needed at least a tie against the Buffalo Sabres to make the cut. The score was tied late into the game, but with four seconds left, Buffalo’s Gerry Meehan took a shot from just inside the blue line that dashed Philadelphia’s playoff dreams. But that was the last time the Flyers missed the playoffs for 18 years.
The Flyers of the 1973 season were skilled, talented, and strong enough to just plow through their opponents. Which they frequently did. So it was during that season the team forever shed its label as a mediocre expansionist and was given the new nickname that captured the imaginations of hockey fans everywhere: The Broad Street Bullies! With players like Rick MacLeish, Bill Barber, Bob Kelly, Bill Clement, and Don Saleski, the Flyers weren’t afraid of being flattened by anyone. They had the skill, toughness, and stamina necessary to turn hard games into wars of attrition or just outscore worse opponents. And they didn’t take kindly to the idea of bowing down to the league’s traditionalists, which is why they became the first of the league’s expansion teams to ever defeat an Original Six team in a playoff series. That happened in 1974, when they dumped the New York Rangers to make it to the Stanley Cup Final. That series went seven games, with the home team winning every game. Yes, that was a tough series, but the Final would prove to be even tougher; the Boston Bruins would be facing them. And the Bruins were built in a similar way to the Flyers. They had all the same skill and talent and were led by a pair of legends in Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. The Big Bad Bruins took the first game, but the second game went to overtime, where Clarke scored the game winner. The Flyers then won the following two games to take a 3-1 series lead. Boston won game five to stave off elimination, which set up game six in Philadelphia. The Flyers took a lead in the first period courtesy of MacLeish. Then, late in the game, Bobby Clarke was flying down the ice on a breakaway when Bobby Orr hauled him to the ice. Orr was called for the penalty, and just like that, the game was over. The expansion Broad Street Bullies had defeated the league powerhouse Big Bad Bruins. That made them the first expansion team to win the Stanley Cup. What could the Flyers do after that? Repeat, that’s what! Only this time, there was no Original Six team facing them for them to flip off the establishment. The establishment had already been flipped off by the time the 1975 Final rolled around. The Flyers would be playing for the Stanley Cup this time in the league’s first all-expansion team Final. They were facing the Buffalo Sabres, one of the 1970 expansion teams. The Sabres weren’t built for muscle, but they did have a dynamic line called The French Connection which was comprised of Rick Martin, Rene Robert, and uber-talented superstar Gilbert Perrault. Once more, the Flyers presumably smiled their toothless mugs at the other team, waved, and proceeded to pound them into oatmeal. Game three is in the league archives because there were occasional waves of heavy fog during the game – the result of an unusual heat wave in May that year. There was also a bat flying around in the arena, and as the fog rolled in, Sabres center Jim Lorentz killed it with his stick. Despite the unusual events, though, game three was an exciting, hard-played game which ended in overtime when Rene Robert gave Buffalo a 5-4 victory. Aside from that and a game four loss, though, the Flyers spent the series walking all over the Sabres.
In the 1976 season, the Flyers posted their greatest season, well, possibly ever. They went 51-13-16 and beat up one of the Soviet Union’s teams during an exhibition. Bobby Clarke’s line with Bill Barber and Reggie Leach set a record for scoring goals with 141. They returned to the Stanley Cup Final, but they also ran into Montreal’s up and coming machine and were quickly swept. An injury to Bernie Parent didn’t help anything. After that, Dave Schultz was traded to the Kings, and the days of the Broad Street Bullies were now officially numbered. They won the division in 1977 but lost in the playoffs, and a year later they didn’t even win the division. They lost to Boston in the playoffs, and head coach Fred Shero just up and left to become the new head coach and general manager of the Rangers. The Flyers got a first round draft pick as compensation, but then Parent suffered an eye injury which ended his career. That was the end of the era. The Broad Street Bullies did manage to produce one final Conference Championship before fading away. During the 1980 season, the Flyers set a record which still stands by going undefeated in 35 straight games. Their record during the streak was 25-0-10 before they finally fell to the Minnesota North Stars. Their success during the regular season carried over into the playoffs, where one of the teams they beat was the Edmonton Oilers. In the second round, they beat the Rangers, then they promptly disposed of the North Stars. Their run was stopped when they ran into the nascent New York Islanders, who beat them in six games. The Flyers made them earn it, though; the final game went to overtime, when New York’s Bob Nystrom scored the game winner. The game was marred with controversy because the Islanders were offsides during the play which resulted in their second goal. The Linesman, Leon Stickle, admitted to blowing the call.
Fortunately, the team had a knack for replacing old talent with new talent. Bobby Clarke was up there in years and retired as a player in 1984. Barber was gone after that same year. Leach, MacLeish, Kelly, and all the other Bullies had all been gone for years by then. But the young talent coming in included guys like Brian Propp, Tim Kerr, Dave Poulin, Pelle Lindbergh, and Mark Howe. Those guys got the Flyers back to being good in the early 80s, but they also kept hitting the golf courses right after the playoffs began. They did make it back to the Stanley Cup Final in 1985, though, but they were facing the Oilers, which meant they were just another brick wall for the wrecking ball to smash. Then in 1986, the team discovered a young goaltender named Ron Hextall, and Philadelphia’s rejuvenation truly moved forward! That culminated with the Flyers going back to the Final again in 1987. That season, they went 46-26-8 and posted 100 points. Once the playoffs started, though, the team was in for a world of hurt. The Flyers had to beat the New York Rangers, who had beaten them in the first round of the 1986 playoffs in five games. Then they had to face the New York Islanders, who were just a few years removed from their dynasty years and still plenty dangerous. After that came the Montreal Canadiens, who had won the Stanley Cup the year before. While the Flyers did come out on top in six games, they were also decimated by injuries, which didn’t help in the Final when they matched up with the Edmonton Oilers again. Unlike the 1985 series, though, the Flyers were able to make a fight out of it. The series ran the distance, but the Flyers had to dig out of a 3-1 hole to get it that far. (Hey, Wikipedia editors? You might want to check the page on the 1987 Stanley Cup Final. The individual game summaries have the Flyers winning four games.)
The Flyers still hadn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1975, but they had been a dangerous team and a constant contender by then. So it was natural that they would be due to hit a few snags soon. In 1989, the Flyers returned to the Conference Final only to bow out to Montreal. In the 1990 season, Hextall missed all but eight games between injuries, a contract holdout, and a suspension for attacking Chris Chelios. Team Captain Dave Poulin was traded to Boston, and the team, hampered with injuries, missed the playoffs. That got Bobby Clarke – who had been the team’s general manager for several years after his retirement – fired. A rebuilding job was going to be needed, and that started out in earnest in 1991 when the team traded for Rod Brind’Amour. He led the Flyers in goals, assists, and points in his first season in Philadelphia. Then Mark Recchi was acquired from the Penguins. During this rebuild, though, the Flyers made the galactic error that would haunt them for years to come. They made that mistake where they thought they had found their keystone in another team’s player and traded the entire team for him. The player in question was Eric Lindros, who was drafted by the Quebec Nordiques despite being quite vocal about how he was never going to play for them. He was locked in an arbitration battle, but the league believed in him too much for not only his talent, but his marketing potential. So it was the Flyers who coughed up a package for him which contained Peter Forsberg, Mike Ricci, Steve Duchesne, Ron Hextall, Kerry Huffman, Chris Simon, first round draft picks from both 1993 and 1994, and $15 million.
I frequently refer to the Lindros trade as hockey’s version of the Herschel Walker trade, but in fairness, the Minnesota Vikings didn’t really get much out of Walker. Lindros DID become a star for awhile, but the problem was that he never became the keystone the Flyers truly needed him to be. The Nordiques took that enormous bounty to a pair of Stanley Cups. At first, Lindros was paired with Recchi and Brent Fedyk on a line called the Crazy Eights for their numbers (respectively 88, 8, and 18). Although Lindros produced, Recchi was the best player on the line. In 1993, Recchi led the team in production with 123 (53 goals, 70 assists) points while Lindros scored 41 goals in 61 games. The next season, Recchi put up 107 points and Lindros posted another 97. And for being the best player on the team, Recchi was rewarded with a trade to Montreal! Philadelphia got Eric Desjardins, Gilbert Dionne, and John LeClair in return, and the Flyers were now officially Lindros’s. He was put on a line with Mikael Renberg and John LeClair which became known for both its ability to produce and its ability to physically intimidate opponents. That line got one of the coolest nicknames in the history of sports: The Legion of Doom! It was the period that Lindros is now best known for in his career, and during the abbreviated 1995 season, the Flyers 25-9-3. Lindros tied Jaromir Jagr for the league lead in scoring, won the Hart, and Philadelphia’s playoff drought finally ended. In the playoffs, the Flyers dispatched the Sabres and Rangers before falling to the Devils, but it looked like the old Broad Street Bullies were lurking somewhere inside the team again.
Lindros finally got over 100 points for the first time in 1996, and LeClair added 51 goals, and the Flyers locked up the first playoff seed. But when the playoffs started, they had a little bit of trouble knocking the upstart Tampa Bay Lightning out of the playoffs before falling to the Florida Panthers in the second round. The 1997 season was supposed to be the team’s coronation. But that idea ultimately went kaput. Lindros missed 30 games, and the Flyers fell a point shy of winning the division. They did make up for everything by reaching the Stanley Cup Final, where they were actually favored. But that didn’t go anywhere either. The Detroit Red Wings were their opponent, and their coach countered the Legion of Doom simply by throwing his best stickhandling guys at them. Flyers coach Terry Murray tried a technique of rotating goaltenders, but that backfired horribly as Ron Hextall (who had returned to the Flyers) and Garth Snow conceded soft goal after soft goal. After losing game three 6-1, Murray blasted his players in a private meeting, then went to the media and called the Final a “choking situation.” Suffice it to say that Murray wasn’t around much longer after that. The Flyers were swept. The Legion of Doom contributed three goals to the entire series, and just one was from Eric Lindros. Lindros’s only goal in the series came with 15 seconds left in game four. In July, Renberg was traded, which effectively ended the Legion of Doom. The famed line had seen action in 547 games and, between the three of them, had posted a very fitting total of 666 points.
That terrible show in the Final was the best the Flyers did for the next several years. Terry Murray’s replacement coach, Wayne Cashman, wasn’t good at his job, and he was replaced with 21 games left in the season. It’s a bad sign whenever that happens, and while the Flyers made the playoffs, the year still ended predictably: With a first round playoff loss to the Sabres. In the 1999 season, Lindros was a front-runner for the Hart until he was hurt on April Fools’ Day. That was a serious injury too – a collapsed lung. That was the beginning of a drawn-out battle with the injury bug, and after a pair of concussions, being stripped of his Captaincy for calling out the Flyers’ medical staff for failing to call them concussions, and losing a playoff series in which the team had been up 3-1, Lindros decided he was done with the Flyers. He sat out the following season waiting for a trade, and spent the rest of his career playing for the Rangers, Leafs, and Stars until he retired.
The trade of Lindros to the Rangers brought Kim Johnsson, Jan Hlavac, Pavel Brendl, and a third round draft pick in 2003 to the Flyers. And they tried to make up what they lost by signing Jeremy Roenick and made a trade for Adam Oates at the deadline. You have to admit, it was a strong effort to get the team back to its feet, but it just didn’t work as well as everyone assumed it would. They did win the division, but got beat in the first round of the playoffs – the series ran for five games, and the Flyers only scored two goals, total, through the entire series – and there was a lot of discontent in the locker room. So the Flyers started going to the big name approach. They got a name coach in Ken Hitchcock and name players in Sami Kapanen and Tony Amonte. Honestly, the narrative here can be generalized because some impressive names were run in and out of Philadelphia, all to the team getting the same kinds of results. Derian Hatcher, Jeff Hackett, Mike Rathje, Martin Biron, Mike Knuble, Peter Forsberg, Keith Primeau, and Roman Cechmanek were all players on the Flyers’ payroll at some point during the 00s. The only real home grown player and consistent face with the Flyers during the time was Simon Gagne. The Flyers DID make the playoffs several times, but the only people who ever would have mistaken them for a contender were in Philadelphia.
It wasn’t until the emergence of Claude Giroux that the Flyers finally found a new guy they could build around. Jeff Carter and Mike Richards also started to develop, the team augmented its developing core by signing Daniel Briere. When they shored up their netminding situation with Ray Emery and their defense with Chris Pronger in 2009, the Flyers were ready to take flight again. And they were mediocre! They were so bad that they managed to get their coach fired! Fortunately, the firing opened up the coaching slot for Peter Laviolette to be hired as the replacement. And the job Laviolette did that year was one of the great coaching masterpieces in the league. He managed to rally the Flyers to a 41-35-6 record which got them the seventh seed in the playoffs. Emery was injured in December, so a journeyman goalie named Michael Leighton stepped up and made a name for himself. The Flyers played in the third-ever Winter Classic, losing a close game to Boston. In the first round of the playoffs, the Flyers pulled out a stunning upset against the Devils, but the cost of that was Carter breaking his toe and Ian Laperriere breaking his face by blocking a shot with it. (Yes, you read that right.) In the second round, the Flyers had to play against the Bruins. While they were pretty evenly matched with them through the first three games, they still found themselves facing the dreaded 3-0 series deficit. But the Flyers managed to fight their way back and force a seventh game. In THAT game, they fell behind 3-0. They fought their way out of that too, winning 4-3 on a late goal by Gagne and becoming just the fourth team, anywhere, ever, to win a playoff series in which they had been behind 3-0. After that, the Eastern Conference Final against Montreal seemed rudimentary, and Philadelphia disposed of the Habs in five games. That solidified a Final matchup against the Chicago Blackhawks. That was a great story for the NHL because the Flyers were fighting to break a Stanley Cup drought that dated way the hell back to 1975. But the Blackhawks had an even longer drought; the last time the Stanley Cup made it to Chicago was in 1961. For Philadelphia, this was an unexpected run. For Chicago, it was the culmination of a grand plan coming to fruition. Pundits didn’t give the Flyers much of a chance – it was said that for the Flyers to have a chance, they needed to win the first two games and the fifth game. But Chicago won the first two games. The Flyers responded by taking the next two, but the Blackhawks used the following two to put the Flyers away. It was a closer and more exciting series than it looked on paper, and the Flyers acquitted themselves well, but it still went according to script.
The Flyers didn’t get back to the Final. 2010 was the height of what that version of the team achieved. Laviolette was fired in 2013 and they began another structural reorganization. To say the best, its been jumpy. They’ve had some great players – Wayne Simmonds and Jakub Voracek both come to mind. They’ve posted some decent records, but since their last division title in 2011, they’ve placed above third place just once, at that was in 2020. Hell, they made it up to third only two other times. They’re missing the playoffs in every other season, and when they do get to the playoffs, it’s routine for them to be bounced from the first round. They made it past the first round in 2020, but the league put 24 teams into the playoffs, and they were basically using weaker teams as chum. So even though the Flyers posted a fine record of 41-21-7 and made second place in 2020, they were more of a bad team having a good year. For 2021, they fell back to sixth place and didn’t make the playoffs. Alain Vigneault was hired to coach in 2019, but he’s currently looking like more cattle for the killing floor.
The list of retired numbers for the Philadelphia Flyers includes Bernie Parent, Mark Howe, Barry Ashbee, Bill Barber, Bobby Clarke, and Eric Lindros. Not a surprising list of players, although Barry Ashbee there sticks out a little bit. Ashbee was one of those players who got honored by the team because he died a tragic early death – it was 1977, he was 37, and the cause was leukemia. He had already played out his career by then. His professional career started out with the Kingston Frontenacs of the EPHL in 1969, and save for a 14-game stint with the Boston Bruins in the 1965-1966 season, he moved to the Hershey Bears of the AHL after a few years and stayed there until the Flyers came knocking in 1970. He played until 1974 in Philadelphia, then work as an assistant coach with the team until his death. Bobby Clarke is forever Mr. Flyer. He holds a lot of the team’s most meaningful records: Games played, most assists, most points, best plus/minus ratio. He’s only fourth in goals, surprisingly. Clarke won three Hart Trophies and played in eight All-Star Games. And after his career was over, he continued to work for the Flyers as a general manager. Working two separate stints as general manager, Clarke proved adept at that as well. His first stint ran for six years and included the team’s 1985 and 1987 trips to the Final. Afterward, he moved to Minnesota and put together a surprising run to the Final in 1991. He took a role as senior vice president for one season, took another general manager job with the Florida Panthers, and then moved back to his old general manager role in Philadelphia in 1994. He built the team back into a contender and oversaw their Cup run in 1997, but finally burned out in 2006. So he moved to another front office position.
Eric Lindros deserves a little bit of special mention. Lindros was phenomenally skilled and could dominate the NHL when he WANTED to. But one gets the feeling that if you define a player who had all of the talent but none of the desire, Eric Lindros would have his picture right there alongside another Philadelphia sports legend, Wilt Chamberlain. Lindros was good enough upon being drafted that he got the Flyers to make a trade that tipped the balance of power in the NHL. Unfortunately, that tip was in the other team’s favor. Lindros was also notorious for being a malcontent and a locker room distraction. Bobby Clarke had a falling out with him while trying to negotiate a new contract with him during the 1998 season. To be fair, a lot of this is also on Lindros’s doting helicopter parents, and when his parent said Clarke had “tried to kill their son” by trying to put him on a plane back to Philadelphia after Eric suffered a collapsed lung, that was real concern. Certain injuries can be aggravated by cabin pressure, and a collapse lung is one of those things that can be fatal on a flight. The two of them buried the hatchet a long time ago, and Clarke is very complimentary of Lindros’s abilities. Lindros had a great career – seven All-Star Games and a Hart Trophy show that. And injuries ended his career early and took away a lot of what made him good, much like Bobby Orr. Still, though, when you look at his career statistics, they seem to be missing that special brand of oomph. He posted 865 total career points even though another player with his abilities could have gotten well over four digits. He posted over 100 points only once, and over 90 just two more times. His single season point total after those three never gets above 79. He was frequently outshined by his linemates Mark Recchi and John LeClair. He made it to one Stanley Cup Final and disappeared in it. Is he a face of the Flyers who deserves to have his number retired in Philadelphia? Sure. But whether or not he’s one of the greatest hockey players of all time is something that can be debated.
One of the things that’s ingrained into the Flyers’ identity is a hard, physical style of play. They’re a lot like the Boston Bruins in that respect, albeit not nearly as prominent with blue line sentries. The Flyers are historically known as a battering ram that can option going both around and through their opponents. The way they’ve been playing recently seems to have tempered that off a little, but when there’s a better opponent in the building, you can still count on the Flyers to not let themselves get intimidated and to step up and fight to the last. The Broad Street Bullies and the Legion of Doom are just the beginning. They’re always willing to throw down for the big contests. Whether they’re playing in The Battle of Pennsylvania against the Pittsburgh Penguins, or involved in their always-bitter dispute against the New York Rangers, or even involved in one of those weird NHL on-again-off-again rivalries with the Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals, the Flyers are willing to step up and act like brutes. They’re one of those rare teams that embodies both the incredible skill and hard physicality of the sport to the fullest extent.
The last major component of the Flyers’ identity that’s worth writing about is their mascot. I’m referring, of course, to Slapshot! He debuted in 1976 and was out a year later but… No? Okay. The last time I wrote out this project, the Flyers didn’t have a mascot. Hell, after Slapshot, they just went without one until 2018, when they debuted a big, orange, hairy… Thing… That the team named Gritty. Think of the old Warner Brothers cartoon character Gossamer with a Flyers uniform and a crazed look in his eyes and you have the right idea. Gritty sort of subverts the common mascot who wants to cuddle. The eternal look on Gritty’s face is one of an off-kilter nutjob who looks like he’s in constant danger of going on some kind of spree with a pair of sheers. After a LOT of initial confusion, fans everywhere started to embrace Gritty, because he’s sort of the gritty reboot of sports mascots. His Twitter account is famous for how offbeat it is – his first major act on social media was to threaten the Penguins (“Sleep with one eye open, bird!”). He arranged a 5K run called the Gritty Anti-Runners 5K, which featured some of “Gritty’s favorite things” along the tracks. Gritty’s favorite things apparently include hot dogs, silly string, and a shrine to Claude Giroux. In an on-ice appearance, he checked the contestants in a goalie race during intermission. With Gritty’s tongue-in-cheek actions and his wild-looking demeanor, it was only a matter of time before he was turned into a meme. And once the inevitable happened and he made meme status, Gritty ended up emerging as a Leftist icon. The Left identifies with his cheerful, unkempt, maniacal demeanor and googly-eyed, anarchic mirth. Gritty himself hasn’t commented on that development, but when Philadelphia played a major role in determining the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election, social media memed Gritty shoving Donald Trump out the door.
The Philadelphia Flyers are the final NHL team on my list, so it’s rather appropriate that they’re a team that has everything a fan could want: An identity with both skill and toughness, a location in a cool city, a constant presence in the media as a marquee team, the ability to usually be great but not so successful that their fans are spoiled, one of the most iconic uniforms and logos in the league, and Gritty!
Pros
Can be counted on to play their asses off when it counts; awesome, powerful colors and iconic logo; can draw the best free agents in the league like nobody’s business; generally successful but without letting the fans get as bad as Boston fans (YES I SAID IT!); Gritty!
Cons
Often come out on the losing end of playing their asses off; can be written off as Bruins Lite; tend to be overshadowed by their cross-state rivals; lately aren’t willing to stick to a blueprint
Should you be a fan?
If a glory-laden history, black and orange color combo, and GRITTY don’t sell the Philadelphia Flyers, you mayhaps have a future both joyless and hockey-less.
everyteamever 