For Flyers fans keeping score, it’s now 50 years of Stanley Cup misery — and counting | Opinion

Bernie Parent was clutching a can of Budweiser in his right hand, not his magic wand of a goalie stick. He toasted 100,000 fans gathered at JFK Stadium in South Philadelphia at a celebration that capped the second Flyers’ Stanley Cup victory parade in just 372 days.

“Well, we did it again, eh?” Parent told the boisterous crowd in his charming French-Canadian accent. “So, all I can say is, I’ll see you next May 27.”

Actually, it was Wednesday, May 28, 1975 — 50 years ago Wednesday. Flyers’ fans would have understood if Bernie and the other Broad Street Bullies were a little beer-fogged on that gorgeous late-spring afternoon, because fans were beer-fogged, too.

Ah, but there would not be a third Cup parade in Philadelphia the following year, or, sadly, in any year since. The Flyers have missed the Stanley Cup playoffs five years running now and appear to have work to do before they can hoist Lord Stanley’s Chalice again.

On that May day in 1975, though, the Flyers reigned over Philadelphia. That was not exactly an amazing feat, considering that the Phillies, Eagles, and 76ers all failed to make the playoffs from 1972 to 1975, making the Flyers the city’s only successful pro sports franchise.

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Larry McMullen wrote on the day of the 1975 Cup parade that the city “had grown tired of losing. Philadelphia learned that the checks had bounced when they tried to cash in on promises from other teams. The Flyers are backed by gold.”

So the Flyers provided a lot of joy, and they bought some time. Things did get better: The Phillies have had two World Series parades, in 1980 and 2008. The Eagles have had two Super Bowl parades, in 2018 and in February. The Sixers had an NBA-title parade in 1983.

We are a lot more accustomed to championship victory parades in Philadelphia than we were 50 years ago. But that 1975 Cup parade, while offering a rare chance to celebrate while being able to forget about the lousy teams, set a standard that endures to this day.

Police Commissioner Joseph F. O’Neill told The Inquirer that day that the 1975 Flyers parade and celebration drew an estimated 2.3 million, or 300,000 more than the 1974 Flyers parade. Estimating crowds is an inexact science (believe me), but that 2.3 million figure stuck.

As one exhausted police officer told The New York Times that day, “It’s enough to make you want somebody else to win the damn thing for a change.” He was in the vast minority.

The 1980 Phillies parade drew between 500,000 and a million, per news reports. The 1983 Sixers parade drew about 1.7 million. The 2008 Phillies parade drew 2 million. The 2018 and 2025 Eagles’ parades, in bitter-cold temperatures, drew 700,000 and 1.7 million, maybe the total of the second Flyers’ Cup parade alone. Most in attendance, or many, were under 18.

Organizers provided extra incentive by moving the 1975 parade to late morning from lunchtime in 1974, prompting more kids to skip the whole school day. At Cardinal Dougherty High School, an old buddy told me, students who had been suspended for cutting class for the 1974 Flyers parade even with a parent’s permission were granted excused absences in 1975.

(Lincoln High School, also in Northeast Philadelphia, reported that 25% of its students were in school on the day of the parade, compared with the usual 86%.)

“Should I be in school?” Ara Caraciolo, a 15-year-old student from Yeadon, said to The Inquirer that day, repeating a reporter’s question.

“No, I should be here,” she said.

Parades for conquering sports teams down Broad Street were still a relatively new thing. When the 76ers won the NBA championship in 1967, there was no parade. About 1,000 showed up at the airport to greet the new champions after they won the title in San Francisco.

The 1974-75 Flyers, in only their eighth NHL season, were far from a team of kids with local ties; all 23 players who appeared in at least one game that season were born in Canada. But the ruthless and punishing Broad Street Bullies became beloved because they represented their tough city well, if not exactly artistically, often backing up disagreements with their fists.

I was a sophomore in high school in Lancaster County that year and did not cut school that day to celebrate on Broad Street with all of the jubilant truants, but I did like the Flyers much more than the three other sports teams in Philadelphia, because the Flyers were actually good.

And they had won two championships in a row — something that no Philadelphia team had accomplished in my lifetime. The Flyers were establishing a dynasty.

Only the Lord saved more than Bernie, read the bumper stickers. The captain was a toothless and fearless (and diabetic) scrapper named Robert Earle Clarke, who hailed from a mining town in Manitoba. No. 8 was the most popular Flyers’ sweater number seen at the Cup parade, because it was worn by enforcer Dave “The Hammer” Schultz.

Their coach was the enigmatic Freddie “The Fog” Shero, who often communicated with his players with handwritten notes or by scrawling bold messages on a blackboard, such as “Win today, and we will walk together forever,” before the Flyers won their first Cup.

You just could not help but like these guys, all humble Canadian boys who played and partied hard. There seemed to be no reason why they could not win three in a row, at least. (This was the last Stanley Cup winner with a roster entirely composed of Canadians.)

And, in fact, the Flyers eliminated Boston and Toronto to advance to the 1976 Cup finals, in which they would face those high-flying Montreal Canadiens. “Plans are being made for Parade No. 3,” The Inquirer optimistically noted in a photo caption on May 9, 1976.

Montreal swept the series in four games. Les Habitants won four Cups in a row, and the New York Islanders won four more Cups in a row, beating the Flyers in the Cup finals in 1980.

The Flyers generated excitement and civic pride by again making the Cup finals in 1985, 1987, 1997, and 2010 (when the Chicago Blackhawks dared to win the Cup in South Philly), but no Cup. No one is getting younger. Bernie Parent turned 80 last month, after all.

Dave Caldwell, who graduated from Temple University and was an Inquirer sports writer from 1986 to 1995, lives in Manayunk.