Bill Meltzer Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSS
• Archive
• CONTACT
Flyers Night Before Christmas 1984
For many years, it was a tradition during Flyers TV broadcasts to air an intermission segment on the final broadcast before Christmas in which that season's players, coaches and other club personnel read "'Twas Night Before Christmas." It was actually via Gene Hart in the 1970s that I first learned the famous poem was written by a man named Clement Clarke Moore ("How apropos to the Broad Street Bullies!" said Hart).
The only version that I've found on Youtube is the one from 1984. Fortunately, it's one of the best. Another one I got a big kick out of was the 1996 version, in which Trent Klatt got to read the line, "When out the lawn, there arose such a clatter." Rookie defenseman Janne Niinimaa had the task of spouting off the reindeers' names in his heavy Finnish accent; the same part read by countryman Ilkka Sinisalo twelve years earlier.
Apart from the sheer entertainment value of the clip, the video reminds me how many of the people in it are no longer with us and just how young they were. Rest in peace Pelle Lindbergh, Peter Zezel, Miroslav Dvorak and E.J. McGuire, as well as Flyers' wives Kathy Kerr, Karen Brown and Jenny Barber.
On a much lighter note, how about that stylin' sweater Bob Clarke is wearing?
***************
Voracek in Action
There isn't much going on in the hockey world today or tomorrow. The start of the World Junior Championships, the annual Spengler Cup tournament in Switzerland and the resumption of the minor league and major junior seasons will be the highlights of the week ahead.
Today, however, there is a pair of KHL games on tap. There is one on Christmas Day, featuring Ruslan Fedotenko and Donbass Donetsk in action.
One of today's games features Lev Prague hosting Ak Bars Kazan. Lev features Flyers forward Jakub Voracek as well as Bruins star defenseman Zdeno Chara as well as other currently locked out and former NHLers such as Erik Christensen, Marcel Hossa, Jakub Klepis, Tomas Surovy, Lubos Bartecko, Jaroslav Svoboda and Petr Vrana. The Ak Bars, who are first place in the KHL's eastern conference, feature Alexei Morozov, Denis Zarapov, Jarkko Immonen, Niko Kapanen, Janne Pesonen and Alexei Emelin.
Game time is 11 a.m. eastern U.S. and Canada time. A free webcast will be available here.
Lev played yesterday, losing 3-2 in overtime to Neftekhimik. Voracek, who had two goals and an assist in his previous game, did not figure in the scoring. For the season to date, Voracek has six goals, 17 points and a team-high plus-10 rating in 20 games.
***************
Book Project
One of the people featured briefly in the 1984 "Night Before Christmas" video above was Flyers equipment manager Kevin Cady. After leaving the hockey business in 1986 to purse a career in law enforcement in his native Portland, Maine, Cady spent the next quarter century working as a police detective in Portland and deputy police chief in Eliot before going into the private investigation and consultation business. He has also worked with the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
I first made Kevin's acquaintance through working with Thomas Tynander on the English version of the "Pelle Lindbergh: Behind the White Mask" book project. Lindbergh was like an older brother to Kevin, and the two became close friend during their time together with the Maine Mariners and the Flyers. Cady was one of the best sources of information for stories that ended up in the book.
About a year ago, Kevin told me he was writing a book and asked if I would like to read the manuscript and give him feedback on whether I thought it would be a publishable work. The book pertains to an extremely complicated cold-case investigation he was involved over the period of several years. Specifically, it is about the 1971 disappearance of a 16-year-old Portland girl named Cathy Moulton. The case is oldest still-open missing person's case in Maine and one of the oldest anywhere in the U.S.
The initial investigative efforts at the time of Cathy's disappearance were lackluster at best. As a result, when Kevin and other law enforcement officers resumed working on the still-unsolved case decades later, they had very little with which to work. The foundation had to be built essentially from scratch.
Over a period of multiple years and many seemingly promising leads that fizzled out, the case reached the point where the Maine-based investigators developed a highly plausible theory for what happened to Cathy, but still couldn't prove a thing. The case went cold again in recent years, and remains unofficially unsolved to this day.
Even with a cursory initial read, I realized there is definitely a good book -- and perhaps even an "Unsolved Mysteries" type of television special -- within the story that Kevin told. There is so much wrenching human emotion, heartache and inspiration to be experienced.
While the story itself is horrific, it is impossible not to admire the Moulton family's courage, faith and persistence through the years in trying to do right by Cathy. It is also inspiring to learn of the painstaking work of the latter-day investigators who poured so much of their time and effort into trying to give the family some closure. The detectives were under no obligation to pursue the decades-old case, but doggedly went forward, regardless of the many obstacles that made (and continue to make) the case a longshot to officially solve.
The book also continues a lot of first-hand knowledge of just how political and territorial investigative police work is in the real world. People who ought to be working together for the same goal instead often hinder each other; sometimes as a matter of unavoidable bureaucratic red tape, but just as often due to petty territorial rivalries and personal differences.
I told Kevin that I would be happy to make some editorial suggestions to him. Over the last 10 months -- mostly on airplane trips, down time in the summer where there was no hockey to cover and especially when the NHL lockout started -- I read and made copy editing suggestions on the first draft of the manuscript.
About eight weeks ago, Kevin graciously and unexpectedly offered me a co-authorship credit on the book. I was honored to accept. The manuscript will undergo another full round of edits before we actively shop it to publishers.
By the way, Kevin is a good example of how once the hockey bug bites you, the passion never truly dies out. Just for the fun of it, Cady returned to the hockey business for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons as the equipment manager for the AHL's Portland Pirates. By that point in his life, Kevin didn't need to be lugging around hockey equipment and sharpening skates for modest-at-best money. But he still loved hockey and enjoyed being around the team environment.
A couple years ago, when the Flyers played the Sabres in the first round of the 2011 Playofs, Kevin and I were in semi-regular Facebook contact. He filled me in on some of the younger Sabres players he'd gotten to know during their stints with the Pirates, which gave me a bit of a different slant on players I'd only watched from afar.
When the Portland switched affiliations from the Buffalo Sabres to Phoenix Coyotes, new people were brought in by the organization. But Kevin will always be one of those behind-the-scenes people that make the hockey business a rewarding to be involved with, even in a sideline capacity such as being a writer.
************
Kindle users: Please sign up for Flyers Buzz. For more information click here.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»