Parent IS the Most Beloved Living Sports Figure in Philly Sports
In a recent article by Philadelphia Daily News columnist Marcus Hayes, the writer took exception to a radio show declaration that Hall of Fame goaltender Bernie Parent is the most beloved sports figure in the Delaware Valley. As a lead-in to an article than declares current Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Chase Utley the most popular all-time local sports figure, Hayes showed blatant disrespect for the sport Bernie played and a complete lack of understanding about what Bernie means to multiple generations of sports fans in the greater Philadelphia area.
Hayes wrote, "Forget that the most-loved figure cannot be a hockey player; sorry, fringe sport. No disrespect meant, but there are millions of people in the region who wouldn’t know Bernie Parent from Bernie Madoff."
I am someone who grew up in Northeast Philly, spent childhood summers on the Jersey shore,and has friends and relatives who lived for many years in the vicinities of Cherry Hill and Voorhees. Two of my closest friends grew up in South Philly. I went to George Washington High School and Temple University. At various times in my adult life, I have lived in Delaware, Chester and Bucks Counties and within the "University City" portion of West Philly. In the past, I worked in Center City, West Chester, Paoli and Malvern. My mother for many, many years was a Philadelphia school teacher working in North Philadelphia.
As such, I think am pretty well qualified to know the sporting tastes of people around this region. I am not going to get into the whole "hockey is a fringe sport" debate except to say that the Flyers' popularity in the greater Philadelphia metropolis absolutely dwarfs the popularity of the 76ers (even in times when the Sixers have had excellent teams), and it has been that way for 40 years.
Now, some of that is neighborhood dependent. On the whole, the Northeast, South Philly (at least traditionally), South Jersey and the northern and western suburbs of Philly are Flyers country. When you add those areas together, however, the Flyers come in a comfortable third in this region in general popularity. At times when it hasn't been trendy to passionately follow the Phillies -- basically spanning the Veteran Stadium years of the late 1980s to 2003, save for the Phils' magical 1993 season and the pre-lockout portion of the season that followed -- the Flyers have even been second in popularity to the Eagles at times in many these areas. That was especially during the fall to spring months when the Phillies were in the off-season or the early stages of a new season.
As far as Bernie Parent goes, his enduring popularity transcends anything currently going on in the local sports scene. He is absolutely beloved in the Delaware Valley, even among many who are too young to have seen Parent play or don't follow the Flyers or hockey at all (another important nuance of the local fan base is that there a significant percentage of folks who root for the team itself but care little for what goes on elsewhere in the NHL).
I have witnessed it first-hand on two occasions, where I have been in public places located away from the sorts of settings where one would expect Parent to be instantly recognized, such as the Wells Fargo Center, the vicinity of the Flyers' practice rink or an autograph-signing event. In about 1990, I saw Parent walking out of a building in Center City. In the early 2000s, he was in some random store near Cape May, NJ. On both occasions, he was immediately recognized by numerous people and graciously stood around chatting and shaking hands as if it were a scheduled public appearance. He just has that pied piper effect on people.
For my generation of fans -- the children of the 1970s -- the Broad Street Bullies were Superheroes of a sort to us but Parent and Bobby Clarke were a step beyond even that. It is not much of an exaggeration to say those two players were deified.
With Clarke, the various controversies surrounding his two post-career stints as general manager changed the perspective to a degree. I have always said that Bobby Clarke, the hockey player, could do no wrong in Philly but Bob Clarke, the general manager, was a polarizing figure. That was NEVER the case with Bernie.
Parent was just as beloved as the Flyers' goaltending coach (both before and after the death of Pelle Lindbergh, with whom he had a nearly paternalistic bond) as he was during his own playing days. When he left the coaching ranks, he still remained beloved by later generations of fans, who view him as a sort of "cool grandfather" figure while knowing just the basics of his on-ice accomplishments several decades ago. Even when Parent has gone through some personal and financial travails in his life, he continued to be the same warm, smiling person in public and his human imperfections and triumphs over them have made all the more likable and inspirational to those whose lives he's touched in some way, shape or form.
Yes, there may be a lot of younger people in sections of the Delaware Valley who "don't know Bernie Parent from Bernie Madoff". But I can guarantee that anyone with even passing familiarity with the Philadelphia sports scene of the last 40 years at least knows that Parent was a hockey player, his face still shows up on local television and his name still comes up in promotions for various events in this region. I dare say that Parent's multi-generation popularity is second only to the late Richie Ashburn, and Parent is indeed the most popular living Philadelphia sports figure.
I can guarantee that anyone who has met Parent in any context has never forgotten him. He's charismatic, funny, quirky (he WAS a goalie, after all) and generally larger than life. Even when he's quiet, there's a gleam in his eyes that tells you there's all sorts of mischief and colorful thoughts going on in his head. If he never won a Stanley Cup, never played a day of professional hockey and was just some Ernest Hemingway-looking man with a Quebecois accent, he would still instantly grab people's attention and be someone you'd like to meet.
Hell, that entire Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" ad campaign very easily could have substituted the real-life Bernie Parent for the actor in the ads. There's a Parent story for just about all occasions and it's usually something hilarious or a bit off-color in a non-offensive sort of way. When the subject turns back to hockey and goaltending, he still has a lot of wisdom and insight to offer.
Starting today and running through Aug 2, Parent is conducting a
goaltending clinic at the IceWorks Skating Complex owned and operated by his former Broad Street Bullies teammate, Jimmy Watson. To be honest, I am actually a bit jealous of the attendees even though my only goaltending "experience" is in street hockey. I have no doubt that the attendees will always remember the time they spent on the ice with one of the game's all-time great goaltenders and most enduring personalities.
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Monday Quick Hits
* Today marks the 21st anniversary of the untimely passing of former Flyers goaltender Michel "Bunny" Larocque at the age of 40. Best known as the Montreal Canadiens longtime backup to Hall of Famer Ken Dryden, Larocque spent a brief stint in Philadelphia during the 1982-83 season. Appearing in only two games, Larocque was the backup to rookie Pelle Lindbergh after coming over from Toronto in exchange for Rick St. Croix. While with Montreal, Larocque collected four Stanley Cup rings as Dryden's backup. After his playing career ended in 1985, Bunny became the general manager of the QMJHL's Victoriaville Tigres, where he won the QMJHL Executive of the Year award for the 1989–90 season. He was named vice president of the QMJHL in 1991 and still held the position at time of his death the following year. Brain cancer claimed his life on July 29, 1992.
* On a more pleasant note, today is the 23rd birthday of Flyers/Phantoms left winger Tye McGinn.
* Who would get your vote as the most unfairly maligned Flyers player of all-time? For me, it's a pair of defensemen: Tom Bladon from the Broad Street Bullies era and Chris Therien from more recent times.
To me, Bladon never got nearly the credit he deserved as the team's best offensive defenseman until the booming shot of Bob Dailey (who was underappreciated in his own right) came along. While not a physical defender, Bladon was also not nearly the liability in his own end of the ice that he was sometimes made out to be. Bladon was one of the few Flyers of that era who occasionally got booed at the Spectrum. He didn't make an abnormal number of mistakes, but the ones he made tended to be glaring ones such as direct giveaways that ended up in the Philly net a couple seconds later. He was sort of an earlier-era version of Matt Carle, except a little bit better all-around.
As for Therien, I never understood all the heat he took. Yes, he could be inconsistent. But he could also elevate his game to a pretty high level for extended periods of time. Even before his longstanding defensive pairing with Eric Desjardins was formed by Terry Murray in Therien's third NHL season, he was an NHL All-Rookie Team selection in 1994-95 (with Dmitri Yushkevich as his primary partner) and generally performed well in his second season with veteran Kjell Samuelsson as his most frequent partner.
In Bundy's case, I think people's expectations were sometimes a bit excessive after that All-Rookie season and the team's run to the 1995 Eastern Conference Finals. People wanted him to be more of a physical presence on a consistent basis, and perhaps even a little more of an offensive-minded defenseman than he was capable of being.
They saw him frequently shut down Jaromir Jagr at the time Jagr was the most dangerous player in the world. They saw him step up his physical game whenever the Flyers visited Ottawa and he was playing in front of family and friends in his hometown. They saw him win a Hardest Shot competition at the Wells Fargo Center, topping even a blast by John Leclair. They even saw some rare offensive outbursts, such as an end-to-end goal that Bundy scored one night against Washington.
When they saw those things, they wondered why Therien couldn't play at that level all the time. As a result, he drew a lot of criticism from fans who did not seem to realize that he may not have been an All-Star but he was an above-average NHL defenseman in Philly for a lot of years. Therien was one of the NHL's more mobile "big man" defensemen of the mid-1990s to early 2000s. He wasn't quite as fast or smooth as Braydon Coburn (who is a plus skater for a player of ANY size), but he was no tortoise out there, either.
The reason why defensemen come at a premium in the NHL is that it is a very, very hard position to play. There aren't a lot of players who can consistently play it the top-notch level of a "true" first-pairing player. Therien may never have consistently been of that higher caliber but he was a fine compliment to bonafide All-Star Desjardins and, for the majority of his career, could have comfortably fit at least on the second pairing of most teams in the NHL.
Year in and year out, it seems like it's a defenseman or a goalie who is the most popular scapegoat of choice among a segment of the Flyers fan base -- Bladon, Behn Wilson (minus his rookie and third seasons), Doug Crossman, Terry Carkner, Kjell Samuelsson at times, Therien, Karl Dykhuis, Carle and, most recently, Coburn all took more than their share of criticism. All were at least average NHL starting defensemen in reality. Of all of the aforementioned players, it was actually Crossman and Dykhuis whom I found the most frustrating to watch. Those two guys had all the physical tools to be high-end caliber NHL defensemen but their hockey sense was a step behind their physical skills.
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Former Flyers forward Ian Laperriere, now the organization's Director of Player Development, will be participating in the Ironman Mont-Tremblant: North American Championship on August 18. Apart from competing in the triatholon, Lappy is raising funds for a variety of charitable causes: the IRONMAN Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, the National Pancreatic Cancer Foundation and Go4theGoal Foundation- Tunes4Teens. Laperriere has set a $10,000 fundraising goal. For more information or to make a donation,
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