I was sitting on a rock along the St. Lawrence River with my little transistor radio. I had cheap rubber worms in my tackle box. Full disclosure – sometimes putting real worms on a hook made me barf. I was 10 and I had a thing about worms. A bully that lived in our little rural neighborhood made me eat one once when I was three or four.
That day, listening to a Montreal Expos game on my little radio, and a thought popped in my head. Suddenly, I was overcome with panic.
What if the Philadelphia Flyers win the Stanley Cup?
Fifty years ago, as I sat on that rock, the Flyers were about to battle the Boston Bruins in a seven-game series in the 1973-74 finals. No expansion team had ever won the Stanley Cup. Having a non-Original Six team win the Cup was, well, a lot for a hockey loving Canadian kid to handle.
As uncomfortable as I was with the whole thing, Bernie Parent had become my favorite goalie. I was a Montreal Canadiens fan in my childhood, long before the Ottawa Senators entered the league, and I was a big Ken Dryden fan. But Dryden took an unexpected leave of absence that year. They said it was to pursue his law degree, but that was more like something to do during a contract holdout.
So when it was my turn in goal in pond hockey, I was no longer Dryden. I was Bernie Parent.
Parent put together what may still be the best two-year stretch of any goalie in NHL history. In 1973-74 and again in 1974-75, he won both the Vezina Trophy as the top goalie in the NHL and the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Stanley Cup MVP.
Fast forward a few years, and I was working in the sports card and collectibles industry. My job took me to a lot of shows, especially in the 1990s. On a few occasions, I was able to meet Bernie Parent and have a few chats. Once, as editor of Canadian Sportscard Collector, I got to do an interview with him that I wish had lasted for hours.
At the Sport Card and Memorabilia Expo in Toronto, Parent was signing autographs. He had a smile for everyone and truly loved meeting fans.
He is one of those autograph guests that did not just scribble a signature. He looked up, engaged, exchanged a few words, and was genuinely appreciative that fans would remember and want his autograph long after he retired.
During the show, a collector handed him BeeHive photo to sign. It was from his rookie year with the Boston Bruins in the Group 3 wood grain set, which was available in the mid-1960s.
“I haven’t seen one of these in a while,” he said, looking at the photo of himself as a young goalie, ready to embark on a Hall of Fame career. “When I was on a photo, it was like this moment where you realize you have finally made it to the NHL. When I was a kid, I always wanted the Jacques Plante BeeHive photo. He was my favorite player.”
He told a quick story about how Jacques Plante’s sister lived on their street. He would look out the window frequently to get a glimpse of Plante going to her house to visit her and her family.
“I always wanted to go and get his autograph, but I was always too scared to go out and meet him,” he said with a smile. “Then I grew up and we became teammates and he was the best goaltending tutor I ever had.”
Parent was the youngest of seven children. He learned to play hockey wearing jeans and boots with galoshes over them.
“We only had one pair of skates in our family,” he said. “When I was 12, it was my turn to wear them. That’s when I learned to skate and became a real goalie.”
Parent played junior hockey for the Niagara Falls Flyers of the Ontario Hockey Association Junior A league (now the Ontario Hockey League). He was the top goalie in the league two years in a row, and led his team to the 1965 Memorial Cup championship for supremacy in Canadian junior hockey.
He began his career with the Boston Bruins but was left unprotected in the 1967 expansion draft and was claimed by the Flyers. His only appearance on a hockey card with the Bruins was being on the team photo card in the 1965-66 Topps set. His rookie card appeared three years later when he was included in the 1968-69 O-Pee-Chee and Topps sets. The O-Pee-Chee version is tougher to locate but both are generally affordable.
“Fans would bring cards with them to games,” he said. “It was an easy way for them to get an autograph. We always signed with a pen, not a marker. You can’t sign the cards they make now with a pen.”
Broad Street Bullies
Parent was in his fourth season with the Flyers when he was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs. He spent the remainder of the1970-71and the entire 1971-72 season with the Leafs. He was teammates with Plante in Toronto, and Plante acted as a coach for Parent and helped turn him into an All-Star.
Before the 1972-73 season, however, there was a new professional hockey league starting up. The Leafs were notorious for underpaying its players in that era. Parent was the first player to leave the NHL and sign a contract to play in the new WHA, signing with the Miami Screaming Eagles. When that franchise failed to get off the ground, he went back to Philly and signed with the Blazers. He was the starting goalie through the season but left the team in the middle of the playoffs over a pay dispute.
Although he was the WHA’s first player, he was not included in 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Series 3, which was made up exclusively of WHA players.
Parent wanted to return to the NHL, but did not want to go back to Toronto. He was traded back to the Flyers. The Blazers, meanwhile, left Philadelphia for Vancouver.
“At the time, going to the WHA was the right thing to do,” he said. “It was a new league and they were paying a lot more money than I was making in the NHL. But as the season went on, I knew I wanted to be back in the NHL.”
Parent was the piece that was missing for the Broad Street Bullies on their way to the Stanley Cup. He played in 73 of the Flyers’ 78 games that year, posting a 1.89 GAA and a .933 save percentage. He had a 47-13-12 record – there were ties instead of overtime then – and he posted 12 shutouts. Although Martin Brodeur holds the record for 48 wins in a season, Parent’s 47 wins remains a record for most overtime wins in a season.
In the playoffs, the Flyers swept the Atlanta Flames and then beat the New York Rangers in seven games to reach the finals. They would beat the Bruins in six games, with Parent getting a shutout in a 1-0 win in Game 6. More than 30 years later, Parent admitted in a magazine interview that with the puck deep in the Bruins end with four seconds left, he was looking at the scoreboard clock. He was unaware that Bobby Orr got control of the puck and fired a slapshot the length of the ice toward the Flyers’ net. The shot went wide, but Parent said that if the shot was on goal, Orr would have scored and tied the game.
With his return to the NHL, Parent was once again featured on O-Pee-Chee and Topps hockey cards. Because there were leaders subsets in the mid-1970s sets, Parent had multiple cards in each set. Still, counting only his O-Pee-Chee and Topps cards, Parent only had about two dozen cards, not counting regional team promotional sets, when he retired after suffering an eye injury in 1979. Most are inexpensive today.
While the Flyers won two Cups, Parent said that he is often asked by fans at autograph appearances about the 1974 Cup as it was their first.
“That was a special year,” Parent said of the 1974 Cup run. “The whole city of Philadelphia was behind us. They embraced the Broad Street Bullies and loved the way that Dave Schultz and Bobby Clarke and the rest of the team played. Even Kate Smith singling the anthem was a big thing. Maybe we were superstitious, but when she sang God Bless America before games, we knew we would win, and our fans knew we would win.”
For the past 30 years, Parent has not slowed down. He spends half the year on his yacht, and he is often making guest and promotional appearances in Philadelphia as a motivational speaker, pitchman, or autograph guests. He has been travelling the continent to major sports card shows for years.
“From about 2000 on, I have been on more new hockey cards than I ever imagined I would have,” Parent said. “Every year, the companies make more and more cards featuring retired NHL players. I sign a lot of cards. I am always interested at shows to see what new cards are out there.”
Regardless of how many cards Parent signs, his autographs are generally of good quality. His signatures on cards look the same as his signature on the 8×10 photos he signs.
“It’s important to take the time to sign an autograph,” he said. “Fans are paying money to meet you and to get an autograph. I want to make sure I smile, make eye contact, and give them an experience and an autograph they will remember.”
Parent reflected one more time on the 1974 Cup-clinching win.
“Before that game, our coach, Fred Shero, wrote something on the blackboard in our dressing room” he said. “He wrote ‘We win tonight, we walk together forever.’ That win bonded us together. But as time went on, we realized that it includes our fans too. All of the Flyers fans in Philadelphia and everywhere, are a part of that Stanley Cup.”
I think back to 50 years ago, sitting on the rock on the St. Lawrence and not catching any fish. There are so many things I would want to say to myself as a kid, but on that day, I would have told him that having an expansion team win the Stanley Cup wasn’t such a bad thing.
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