No recollection of the intimidating aura of the Spectrum for visiting teams is complete without mentioning the
"Paul Holmgren/Wayne Cashman Memorial Gate" that stood for 32 years in the hallway between the Flyers and visiting team's locker rooms. It was installed there shortly after a preseason game between the
Fred Shero's Flyers and
Don Cherry's visiting
Boston Bruins in
October, 1977, in which Flyer right winger (and current GM)
Paul Holmgren and hard nosed veteran Bruins' winger
Wayne Cashman were tossed from the game early in the second period by referee
Wally Harris after being involved in a stick fight in front of the Flyers' goal.
Both players (along with Flyer defenseman
Jimmy Watson who Holmgren had been coming to the aid of) disappeared down their respective tunnels to the locker rooms but when they arrived at the doors they continued to taunt each other down the hallway that connected them. It didn't take long for Holmgren to cover the less than a hundred foot distance and engage Cashman in round two without the benefit of any officials or anybody else to separate them. The Bruin players, however, could see what was happening and quickly left the ice and bench and ran up their tunnel to come to Cashman's aid. Seeing this the Flyers quickly ran up their tunnel and within a few seconds there were forty hockey players in engaged in a full fledged brawl in the concrete hallway under the stands.
I (and a number of others) ran down the stairs from the Spectrum press box located immediately above to witness the melee which was eventually broken up by a number of Spectrum security people. Not long after order was "restored" and the game resumed, however, another bench clearer broke out on the ice which resulted in referee Harris throwing out every player on the ice at the time it started (plus a few others who left the bench) which left each team with just ten players and one goalie each to finish the more than thirty minutes left. (And remember this was just a preseason game!!!)
For every game at the Spectrum after that until the building was closed 32 years later in 2009, the Holmgren/Cashman was closed, locked, and guarded whenever the teams or any players were entering and leaving the ice to prevent such a confrontation from happening again. And that is what was meant by the "Spectrum flu".
The "Paul Holmgren/Wayne Cashman Memorial Gate"