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1) The Memorial Cup semifinals take place on Friday night. The QMJHL champion Rouyn-Noranda Huskies, featuring Flyers defense prospect Philippe Myers, will take on the tournament host Red Deer Rebels.
The winner will play the OHL champion London Knights in the final. London swept through round-robin play with a perfect 3-0-0 record.
2) May 27 marks the 41st anniversary of the Flyers' 2-0 win over the Buffalo Sabres to win their second consecutive Stanley Cup. The next day, as with the previous year, a crowd of over two million people came out to celebrate the championship in an epic parade on Broad Street.
In many ways, the second Cup was a validation of the first championship. No one could call the 1974 Cup a fluke. In some ways, the Flyers' second Cup team was a better squad than the first. The second team had Reggie Leach added to it, while young players such as Jimmy Watson took on bigger roles. Bobby Clarke (the NHL's Hart Trophy winner) had a 116-point season. Bernie Parent repeated as the Vezina Trophy winner.
Sometimes it seems that memories of the second Cup year only get mentioned in combination with the first. But for players such as Bob "the Hound" Kelly -- who was on crutches during the 1974 Final and scored the Cup winner in Buffalo the next year -- the second one was even a little sweeter than the first.
In sports,there's only one thing harder than winning a championship: defending it successfully the next year. The 1974-75 Flyers weren't going to surprise anyone. They were well-entrenched as the NHL's primary villain (and gate attraction) leagewide. They were also all but unbeatable on home ice. The "Philly flu" was becoming epidemic by 1974-75 and the Flyers went 32-6 with two ties at the Spectrum that year -- remember, there was no overtime in the regular season in that era, so these were all regulation wins. The next year, the Flyers went an astonishing 36-2 with two ties at the Spectrum.
The reality of the "Broad Street Bullies" era Flyers is that they didn't win by beating other teams up physically. They won because they had the league's best captain (who just so happened to be a three-time Hart Trophy winner), a Hall of Fame left winger, a Hall of Fame goaltender, a Hall of Fame coach, a Hall of Fame general manager, a great leadership group in the dressing room even beyond Clarke (count all the future NHL coaches among their ranks), the hardest-working group of role players and a fearlessness on the road as well as at home.
3) Former Flyers forward Max Talbot has signed a one-year KHL contract with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. The 32-year-old Talbot split this past season in the NHL with the Boston Bruins and the AHL with the Providence Bruins.
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