Bernie Parent was the best of the Flyers and the best of Philadelphia. RIP.
The two-time Stanley Cup champion Flyers of the mid-1970s were full of stars and the city's sports legends. Bernie Parent was the most indispensable.
This was the spring of 2024, coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Flyers’ first Stanley Cup, of the championship that kicked off the greatest decade in the history of Philadelphia sports, and Bernie Parent was standing on the porch of his family’s home in Warminster, his arms wide above his head, his smile huge.
He wore a Flyers zip fleece and a snow-white goatee. He had just turned 79. He had morphed, over time, from the impenetrable goaltender of those two Cup-winning teams to the buoyant quasi-mascot of the Broad Street Bullies, their most public and approachable member, a willing storyteller, the one who was most likely to notice someone eyeballing him with familiarity … Hey, isn’t that Bernie? … then stop for a handshake and a photo, one arm around the fan who had just become his newest friend, the other arm thrust forward in a fist to show off one of his Stanley Cup rings.
“It never goes away,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
Parent died Sunday at 80, and what a marvelous dual legacy he leaves. For all the guts and leadership and skill of Bobby Clarke, for all the creativity and talent of Bill Barber and Rick MacLeish and Reggie Leach, for all the snarling, hands-throwing intimidation of Dave Schultz and Moose Dupont and Bob Kelly, the best and most indispensable player on the ’74 and ’75 Flyers was always the jokester between the pipes. His ’73-74 season, his first back with the team after general manager Keith Allen had reacquired him from the Toronto Maple Leafs, was as good as any NHL goaltender — or, with due deference to Saquon Barkley’s 2024, any Philadelphia athlete — has ever had. He led the league in games (73), victories (47), shots faced (2,006), saves (1,870), save percentage (.932), goals-against average (1.89), and shutouts (12). He was even better in the playoffs, going 12-5 with a .933 save percentage and two shutouts, including the 1-0 classic to beat the mighty Boston Bruins in Game 6 of the Cup final at the Spectrum. The Time Magazine cover. The ubiquitous bumper stickers: ONLY THE LORD SAVES MORE THAN BERNIE PARENT. The Vezina Trophies and the spoils and the fame.
» READ MORE: Bernie Parent, legendary Flyers goalie who brought Philadelphia its only two Stanley Cups, dies at 80
Then he did it all again the following season, as if he knew no other way to celebrate being back with the Flyers than to play his position better than anyone had before. They had traded him to the Maple Leafs in February 1971, and it had broken his heart.
“Very disappointed,” he said. “Then I drove to Toronto and realized, ‘My God, I’m going to share duties with Jacques Plante!’”
Growing up in Montreal, Parent had watched and admired Plante, the legendary Canadiens goalie who was playing for the Leafs late in his career.
“I started practicing, didn’t say anything in the beginning, just watching him play,” Parent said. “Finally, I asked him, ‘Can you teach me? I need to learn a few things.’ He said of course. I became a different goalie. Two years I played with Toronto, I learned so much from him. And then, at the end of the second year, the World Hockey Association came in. I received a phone call from the league, ‘Would you like to join us?’ I thought about it. One of the things that I learned from Plante was, ‘Why not?’
“Called them back. ‘If it doesn’t work out, I’ll come back.’ Halfway through the season, we’re playing in front of 500 people. I didn’t like it. So I decided to come back.”
He never left. Through the horrifying eye injury that ended his career in 1979, through his battle with alcoholism, through the tragic death of his mentee, Pelle Lindbergh, he remained a fixture with the franchise, with its core community of devotees, with anyone who followed or covered or was in any way affiliated with the Flyers. If anything, his friendliness and accessibility made it easy to forget just how brilliant he had been in net.
“I just love to share with people what it was like when we won,” he said. “I know it’s been 50 years, but I feel like we’re part of a family. The family in sports, the players will grow older. We all do. But the team will never get old.”
Bernie Parent never did, either. Those Flyers teams and those Cups and those glory days are more than a half-century into the past now, but they stay fresh in the mind’s eye of everyone who remembers them. They represent the apex of the franchise’s history, still, for their influence on the sport and the popular culture and this city, for a playing style and collection of characters that made them unforgettable. They never go away.
“And you had to have a good goalie, of course,” Bernie Parent said that day last year with a twinkle in his eye.
Not just a good one, Bernie. The best.