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Bernie Parent - The best ever!! My boyhood hero. If I'm not mistaken, he's the only hockey goaltender to make the cover of TIME magazine...and it wasn't his face but his mask. "Only the Lord saves more than Bernie". Do you remember that sign in the crowd back in 75? >
>Parent was very good. (And yes, I remember the signs and the bumper stickers about Bernie)
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>In the regular season of 1974, critics claimed that Parent won games simply because the Flyers outshot and outplayed the opposition of a weak Western Division (remember, at the time, the Western Division was largely expansion teams).
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>But in the finals, Boston outshot the Flyers in nearly every game - Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr were both quoted afterwards as saying they were the better team, but just could not get past Parent. I have the DVD of Game 6 of the '74 finals, when Parent and the Flyers won, 1-0 - Parent made some acrobatic saves on some Boston power plays that would still be considered tremendous by today's comparisons.
I saw those Bruins teams of the early 70s a number of times. They were still playing in the old Boston Garden, a place with more atmosphere than any 10 modern sports stadiums with all their amenities. To this day the most noise I have ever heard at a sports event was in the Garden when Orr took the puck and rushed up the ice. Defensemen simply did not do that at the time. He was probably faster than anyone else on the ice so it made perfect sense. He was a revolutionary. You could sense that underneath all the talent and adulation was a quiet, shy Canadian kid. But there was nothing quiet about his game.
Esposito was his polar opposite, a grinder. He was not flashy. He just planted himself in front of the goal and knocked them in, often on rebounds. (Another retro bumper sticker was "Jesus saves -- and Esposito scores on the rebound"). I was there one time when he scored a hat trick, from a combined distance about the length of his stick.
Good observation about the Flyers and the rest of the expansion teams in the Western Division. (That was before the NHL came up with colorful names like the Don Adams Division and the Chuck Norris Conference). The Flyers were the first of them who could hold their own with the original six.
I said the other day I don't have any more sports heroes. Actually I still have a few and Bobby Orr is one of them.
"The goal" --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orr.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Orr+/- of 124 in 1971 -- that is an absolutely staggering number. It's like some guy running the mile in under 3 minutes.
Here is a great video clip (among many) on YouTube. I laughed out loud at the assist he makes a couple of minutes into it after being pulled onto his back. Outrageous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSDw3tMa7ec&NR=1
