Category: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Local News

Opinion

Our “25 Most Philly Athletes of All Time” list would be worthless without Bobby Clarke, the toothless, grinning captain who played 1,144 games in the orange and black and defined for a generation what Philly grit looks like. But …. do you want to be the one to tell Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, Bob “Hound” Kelly, or Andre “Moose” Dupont we left them off? Or #1 in goal (and in our hearts), Bernie Parent?

While, yes, Clarke is the face of the franchise, there’s just no singling out any one player from the Philadelphia Flyers teams that gave this city two straight Stanley Cups. The whole was truly greater than the sum of its parts. Win today, and we walk together forever, head coach Fred Shero famously scrawled on a whiteboard in the locker room before Game 6 of the 1974 final. And so they did, and have.

Even if you aren’t old enough to remember Rick MacLeish’s winner in that game against the Boston Bruins, or a single one of Schultz’s 472 penalty minutes during the repeat campaign, you’ve heard the stories, watched the highlights, seen the banners hanging, know the names. And what a bunch of names, even just phonetically (Orest Kindrachuk! Ed Van Impe! Gary Dornhoefer!).

We’ve had better teams and more beloved champions, but none has ever been more Philly, nor meant more to the city in its era. The Broad Street Bullies made Philadelphia a hockey town. They were Rocky before Rocky. And they won. That first run to the Stanley Cup came at a time when the Phillies, the Eagles, and the Sixers were all last-place teams (and the 9–73 Sixers the worst team in NBA history). The Flyers set the standard for championship parades, both in exuberance and in crowd size. Schultz even beat A Philly Special Christmas by four decades, cutting a seven-inch single, “The Penalty Box,” with lyricist Kal Penn (Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again”) and MFSB/Sigma Sound great Vince Montana.

Rodney Dangerfield may not have been in Philadelphia when he “went to the fights and a hockey game broke out,” but that joke does not exist without the Broad Street Bullies. The team was its own larger-than-life orange and black mascot: ornery, hulking, porn-stached, and, above all, loathed by hockey purists. “These bullies would bloody the face of the National Hockey League,” narrator Liev Schreiber says in HBO’s 2010 doc about the team, while New York Times sports columnist Dave Anderson once called the Spectrum a “cradle of licensed muggings.”

To put it another way: No one liked them, and they definitely didn’t care. Certainly not founder/owner Ed “Mr.” Snider, who could be as pugnacious as the players (well, not literally).

“Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent,” the bumper sticker said, which was especially true given how often the Flyers had to kill off penalties. In ’73–74 the four biggest Bullies — Schultz, Kelly, Dupont, and Don “Big Bird” Saleski — combined for more penalty minutes than six of the NHL’s other 11 teams; the next year, Clarke, who was more a slasher than a brawler, was third on the team behind the Hammer and Dupont.

Along with that intimidation came the time and space to score a lot of goals, by future Hockey Hall of Famers Clarke and Bill Barber (then just 24 and 21 years old, respectively), by MacLeish, and then, in ’74–75, Reggie “The Rifle” Leach. The Flyers outworked teams as much as they outplayed them; the cerebral Shero could out-system any coach.

During that second season, Parent, who’s also in the Hockey Hall of Fame, made the cover of Time magazine, his Jason Voorhees–style mask sporting the headline “Hockey: War on Ice.” The toughness was also the greatness, and it wasn’t just the fighting. The core things the Bullies did — make the other team afraid to go into the corner, not be afraid of getting hit themselves, go hard to the net — are still everything this city wants out of the Flyers in 2026.

While today’s fan-to-athlete bond is parasocial, these were guys you could actually have a beer with — so long as you were drinking at Rexy’s in Mount Ephraim. The Bullies were the last all-Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup, but more than a dozen of them never left the area. And of course, Clarke, Barber, and Paul Holmgren all went on to run either the Flyers front office or the bench (or both), and remain “senior advisers.” Alas, what was the city’s only championship franchise in the 1970s has now surpassed the Sixers for longest championship drought. Which is also pretty Philly.

>> Click here to return to The 25 Most Philly Athletes of All Time

Published as “The 25 Most Philly Athletes of All Time: Bobby Clarke” in the March 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Opinion

Confused (or irritated or furious) about why/when the school district decides to call school for snow? You’re not alone. Here, editor (and SDP parent) Christy Lejeune offers some clarity — as she sees it — into the issue, via her edit of the District’s letter about the snow day.

Dear School District of Philadelphia Families,

The recent winter storm in the greater Philadelphia area dropped significant snow across the region, which has left in some select areas slick or covered roads, as well as some potentially hazardous travel conditions and ongoing impacts for drivers and commuters — far fewer, though, for those students and employees who walk or take SEPTA to school. As you well know, this has not stopped the many residents across the city and region who have successfully navigated various weather-related challenges with shovels and a little extra care, as evidenced by the following places, which are open and running: medical facilities, bars, gyms, Reading Terminal Market, the Franklin Institute, Pat’s King of Steaks, and the gift boutiques in your neighborhood, the pet store, the Free Library ….

But based on these conditions, out of reflex and an abundance of caution and in order to ensure the safety of our entire school community, including our valued staff members who commute from various counties across the region, many of whose routes, if they come via the Schuylkill Expressway or I-95, are looking just fine, tomorrow, Tuesday, February 24, all School District of Philadelphia schools and Early Childhood Centers, as well as the Constance E. Clayton Education Center (Central Office) will operate virtually. And by that, we mean a couple hours in front of a screen with teachers trying their best in the same near-impossible circumstances that we all recall from COVID, when learning (and our sanity) slipped. All in-person after-school activities, including all athletic programs scheduled for Tuesday, are also canceled. So — good luck!

The safety and well-being of our students, staff, and families is our top priority, though you’d be forgiven if you sometimes wonder what constitutes looking out for the “safety and well-being” for our students, given that so many of them spend every day in decrepit buildings this city and state and country can’t see their way to fixing or updating. And you might also wonder if it’s an abundance of the right sort of caution that demands we keep children out of school while the rest of the city is up and running. And you might also wonder where educating them—and, hey, also often feeding them — plays into that safety and well-being.

To the greatest extent possible, the School District of Philadelphia strives to keep schools open for in-person learning to accelerate student achievement — as evidenced by the 33 out of 40 weekdays in 2026 so far in which your children have gone to school … the rest of them missed over two months for holidays, half days, and snow/virtual days. Nothing says student achievement and momentum like less classroom time! However, given the mildly extreme weather conditions in a city that experiences winter every single year and owns snow plows and salt trucks, this additional virtual day will allow both City and School District personnel extra time to ensure our roads, side streets, sidewalks, parking lots and school yards are safe for students and staff to travel safely to and from school, even though everyone else in the city is somehow managing to muddle through as usual.

In accordance with the District’s Inclement Weather Protocol, we have nixed the idea of calling for a two-hour delay and/or simply allowing an excused absence for those students who cannot make it due to weather difficulties while keeping the school open for the seeming majority who can make it. Instead, we’re just cancelling — excuse us, going “virtual,” which allows us to clock it as a regular school day full of learning and not have to worry about making it up, which would just be so complicated to deal with — and are closely monitoring weather conditions across our region. Should there be any changes to tomorrow’s schedule, we will communicate through our standard channels. Fingers crossed!

In partnership,

The School District of Philadelphia
(and a frustrated parent)