May 16, 2020
Kate Frese/for PhillyVoice
Flyers mascot Gritty allegedly punched a 13-year-old boy in the back during an event for season ticket holders..
In 52 years as a franchise, the Flyers have won just two Stanley Cup titles. They have only 13 players in the Pro Hockey Hall of Fame. Compare that to the Rangers, who were an original six team and have 53. Still, the team has a surprisingly long list of accolades.
As we did already with the Sixers, Phillies and Eagles, we ventured to unearth some of the more interesting and unexpected records and stats from the Flyers during their time as a franchise. Here are 10 of our favorites:
Only 6 different Flyers in the history of the franchise have scored 100 or more points in a season (nine total instances). Marc Recchi did it twice, with his 123 points in 1992-93 standing as the franchise record. Bobby Clarke did it three times.
No NHL player has played for more different franchises than Mike Sillinger, who made the Flyers his fifth of 12 different team sweaters. He played 52 games in Philly over two seasons.
In 1984-85, Tim Kerr scored 34 times on the power play — not only the most of any Flyers skater, but the most in any NHL season by any player ever. Wayne Gretzky, the most talented goal-scorer in league history never had more than 20 in a season.
BONUS: Kerr also has the record for most power play goals in a single game with three in a contest that same year.
DOUBLE BONUS: Another note about Kerr in 1985, he scored four goals in a matter of 8:16 of gametime, the quickest ever.
There aren’t many single-game feats more rare than scoring a goal when your team is down two players and on the wrong side of a 5-on-3. Mike Richards did it three times in his Flyers’ career, more than anyone else in hockey history.
Speaking of rare feats, Flyers goalie Ron Hetxall, on December 8th 1987, scored on an empty net against the Bruins, the second time a goalie had ever scored an NHL goal at that time. Two years later he did it again, this time in the playoffs to ice a win against the Capitals.
Who holds the NHL record for penalty minutes in one season? If you guessed Dave Schultz, that’s both the obvious guess and the right guess. Shultz, in the Cup-winning 1974-75 season had 472 minutes in the box — almost eight entire game’s worth.
BONUS: Another Flyer, Hextall, has the single-season record for penalty minutes for a goalie. In 1987 he had 43 of them.
As a rookie, Ville Leino had one of the best postseasons in team history, setting rookie records in assists (14) and points (21) in 2009-10. Leino was +10 in 19 playoff games as the Flyers fell short of a championship that summer.
BONUS: Reggie Leach, in 1976, put together a 10-game goal streak in the postseason, tied for the longest in hockey history.
During the Flyers' historic 2010 playoff run (the one that saw them come back from down 3-0 in Game 4, down 3-0 in the series and beat the Bruins before faltering in the Stanley Cup Finals), goalie Michael Leighton posted three shutouts in the team's series victory over the Canadians. He allowed just seven goals in the five game series. He was traded to Columbus a year later and saw his NHL career slowly fade to nothing.
During their lowly 1969-70 season, the Flyers tied a record 24 times during that season — one that saw them win outright only 17 times. We wrote about this season during "Worst Week."
The 1969-70 Flyers are kind of the baby Broad Street Bullies, as superstars Clarke (just 20) and Parent (24) were just getting their feet wet in the third season of hockey in the franchise's history.
Philly’s 35-game unbeaten streak (25 wins, 10 ties) in 1979-80 is the longest such streak in NHL history. This is also the longest such streak in pro sports (though hockey at the time had much more frequent ties than the NFL or MLB). During their stretch, they beat every team in the league except the Capitals as they bested the previous streak of 28. They had 116 points that year to lead the NHL but fell to to the Islanders in the Stanley Cup Finals.
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