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Quick Hits: April 22, 2020
1) The four major pro sports teams in Philadelphia -- the Flyers, Phillies, Eagles and 76ers -- collectively released a video today celebrating and thanking those on the frontlines serving and protecting the city of Philadelphia during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Per a press release from the Flyers, "as a collaborative way to thank the community and unite the city of Brotherly Love, all four teams commissioned their respective employees to submit the included photos and videos of local heroes that they share personal connections with."
2) Player Profile series: Shayne Gostisbehere's profile was posted yesterday on the Flyers' official website. Up next in the series will be Robert Hägg, whose article will run on Thursday. Come Saturday, it'll be Tyler Pitlick's turn.
3) The Flyers Warriors weekly online meetings continue tonight with guest speaker Keith Jones. On Friday, the special guest will be Dave Brown. There have been Flyers fan inquiries about how these can access these video meetings with the Flyers Alumni. For right now, these are strictly for the Flyers Warriors players. However, Flyers Alumni president Brad Marsh is working on a way to bring Alumni availability to the public during the pandemic.
4) On Tuesday, the two-time defending national and North American power wheelchair hockey champion Philadelphia Flyers PowerPlay team held a video conference arranged by Marsh; similar in format to the ones that the Flyers Warriors do several days per week. To learn more about the Flyers PowerPlay hockey program, click here.
5) Today in Flyers History: April 22, 2008
In the seventh and deciding game of their 2008 Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series with the Washington Capitals, Joffrey Lupul's power play rebound goal at the 6:06 mark of overtime won the 3-2 game and series for the Flyers.
On the series-winning goal, scored with nine seconds left on a To Lupul got open in front of the net and put a backhanded shot past goaltender Cristobal Huet on a Kimmo Timonen rebound.
During regulation, Scottie Upshall and Sami Kapanen sandwiched goals in between tallies by Washington's Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Ovechkin. Martin Biron made 39 saves to earn the win. Danny Briere, who assisted on the game-winning goal, had a series-high 11 points in the seven games.
The Flyers trailed early. Ovechkin set up Backstrom to give the Caps a 1-0 lead less than six minutes into the game. They battled back to knot the score on Upshall's power play goal at 15:38 of the first period. Philly took the lead at 9:47 of the middle frame on a disputed Kapanen goal. Washington claimed it should have been disallowed for goaltender interference. Ovechkin scored at 15:29 of the second period to forge a 2-2 tie.
The Capitals controlled the third period, outshooting the Flyers by a 16-5. In the final six minutes, Biron produced a near-miracle: an open Alexander Semin was poised to stash home a rebound, but Biron flung himself backward and contorted his body to beat Semin and cover the puck for a desperately needed stoppage. Biron would go on to play brilliantly in the Flyers' second-round series against Montreal.
The match was the thirtieth Game 7 in NHL History to go overtime, including a previous Flyers vs. Capitals series (1988, won by Washington). For more, click here.
5) The late Peter Zezel would have celebrated his 55th birthday today. One of the biggest fan favorites of the 1980s, he was born in Toronto to Serbian immigrant parents. Drafted by the Flyers in the second round (41st overall) of the 1983 NHL Draft, the center went on to play 873 regular season games and 131 playoff contests in the National Hockey League.
As a hockey player, Zezel was best known as a hard-working forward who excelled on faceoffs and was an underrated offensive player in the early part of his career. He compiled 219 goals and a respectable 608 points during his NHL career.
Zezel spent four-and-a-half mostly happy seasons in Philadelphia. During that time, the Flyers made runs to the Stanley Cup Finals in both 1985 and 1987. His best season came in 1986-87 when he posted a career-high 33 goals and 72 points in 71 regular season games and then added 13 playoff points en route to coming within one win of the Stanley Cup.
Off the ice, Zezel was known as a caring, generous and fun-loving person whose greatest passion was teaching hockey and soccer to children. One of the most popular Flyers players of the Mike Keenan era, Zezel was a heartthrob among many young female fans with his matinee idol looks but also a highly respected player among all Philadelphia fans.
Zezel's father, Petar Žeželj, was born to Serbian parents in Srb, Lika, Yugoslavia, along with a brother named Dusan and sisters Kosa, Dusanka and Neda. Petar fought in World War II and came to Canada at the age of 18. He married Valerie Thomson and was married for 47 years until his death at age 80 in Oct. 2010. Slightly anglicizing the spelling of their surname to Zezel, the family had children Peter Jr. and Neda.
Peter Zezel was outstanding two-sport athlete, excelling in both hockey and soccer, during his upbringing in Scarborough, Ontario. Soccer was the sport of his father's heart, as the elder Zezel played for the Hamilton-based Serbian White Eagles Football Club. Peter was a member of the Canadian national Under-20 soccer team as a midfielder. In 1982, he played in three exhibition games for the NASL's Toronto Blizzard. Nine years later, Zezel played one season for the North York Rockets of the CSL during the National Hockey League offseason.
A second-round pick by the Flyers in the 1983 NHL Draft, Zezel posted 47 goals and 133 points for the OHL's Toronto Marlies during the 1983-84 campaign.
"Getting drafted by the Flyers was the biggest thrill of my life. Bobby Clarke had been my idol when I was younger and now I was in Philly alongside him," Zezel recalled in Stan Fischler's Greatest Players and Moments of the Philadelphia Flyers.
The following year, he established himself as a regular for a Flyers team that posted the best regular season record in the NHL and took a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals despite icing the youngest lineup in the NHL.
That year, Zezel also garnered a pair of first-place votes for the Selke Trophy, although he did not place as a finalist for the NHL's award for the league's top defensive forward.
"Peter was a good player in this league. He saw the ice well. He wasn't the fastest skater but he was strong, with a thick build and he became pretty good without the puck, too," recalls Paul Holmgren, who was a Flyers assistant coach during Zezel's best seasons in Philadelphia.
In 1986, Zezel landed a small role in the hockey-themed Rob Lowe movie, Youngblood. His appearance in the movie furthered added to his burgeoning local celebrity.
A big kid at heart, Zezel loved to have a good time and joke around. He was also very soft-hearted and generous. Zezel was especially good with kids and donated considerable time -- with no publicity attached to it -- to visiting children's hospitals, and staying in touch with the families of seriously ill children. He also supported youth sports and would arrange donations of equipment for those whose families could not afford for them to play.
"Being the center of attention with the fans was never a bad thing. It always gave me a real nice feeling when I would give a kid an autograph and his face would light up," Zezel recalled in Greatest Players and Moments of the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Flyers of the Keenan years were an exceptionally close-knit team. However, along with the good times, the period also had its share of tears and strife.
When Vezina Trophy winning goaltender Pelle Lindbergh died in November 1985, a 20-year-old Zezel was one of the goaltender's most emotionally devastated teammates. The emotions were too much to hold inside, and Zezel publicly wept both at the hospital and during the memorial ceremony for the goaltender at the Spectrum.
The Keenan years were also a time in which the Flyers' team leaders occasionally had to rally the troops to remain a united front. Like most every player on the team, Zezel felt Keenan's lash on more than one occasion. On one occasion, after Zezel's line had a poor first period, Keenan screamed at the entire team in the dressing room and then got in Zezel's face.
"He came up to me and kicked me in the shinpads. In the next game, we got ahead in the first period so I grabbed a pair of goalie pads and sat in front of my stall. Mike sort of smiled. Sort of," Zezel recounted with a chuckle to Fischler.
Zezel may not have known it at the time but, over time, he became one of the players whom Keenan most enjoyed having on his team. Keenan later brought Zezel along to join him during his coaching stints in St. Louis and Vancouver.
"Peter was a player who cared, and he was an unselfish player and person," Keenan said in 2010.
In later years, Zezel credited his unyielding work ethic partially to the experience of playing under Keenan.
"What I learned from Mike as a Flyer is that when I made a bad pass in practice, I would swear at myself because it mattered," Zezel said in Greatest Players and Moments of the Philadelphia Flyers.
On Nov. 28, 1988, the Flyers traded Zezel to the Blues in exchange for Mike Bullard. Zezel had been slowed by serious knee and shoulder injuries in the past two seasons and Bullard posted 113 points in 127 games as a Flyer but the team itself continued a downward slide. A now-healthy Zezel regained his offensive form to post 72 points in 73 games for the 1989-90 Blues.
In the years that followed, Zezel increasingly transformed from a center who regularly saw time on scoring lines to more of a strictly defensive-minded center. His career took him through a brief stint with the Washington Capitals, a three-plus season stay with the Toronto Maple Leafs (where he was part of the 1992-93 team that fell one win short of reaching the Stanley Cup Finals), one season with the Dallas Stars, one-plus season of a second stint with St. Louis, brief portions of one-plus season with the New Jersey Devils and parts of two seasons with Vancouver.
On March 23, 1999, the Canucks traded Zezel to the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in exchange for future considerations. Zezel declined to report to Anaheim, and instead returned to Ontario. The NHL voided the deal.
Zezel had a deeply personal reason for not going to California. His three-year-old niece Jillian, whom the unmarried and childless Zezel adored, was dying of nuroblastoma (a form of cancer). Zezel had requested a trade to either the Maple Leafs or Buffalo Sabres so he could be in closer proximity to his sister's family in Scarborough.
Instead, the Canucks dealt him to the Ducks; the most geographically distant team in the NHL from Toronto. Zezel announced his retirement and went to Scarborough to be supportive to his family.
On May 16. 1999, Jilliann died. Peter never returned to the NHL but did later play a few games per season for the Cambridge Hornets of the Ontario Hockey Association's Major League Hockey circuit. Over the final 11 years of his too-short life, Zezel devoted much of his time and effort to operating youth hockey and soccer camps. That became his greatest passion.
"These kids put me to the test, in the best way possible," Zezel said in 2000. "Their energy, their love of the game, the smiles on their faces. There's nothing better."
The disease that would eventually claim Zezel's life, Hemolytic Anemia, was diagnosed in 2001. After undergoing chemotherapy, he went into remission. However, the medications Zezel took and other developing health problems had the unwanted side effect of contributing to a massive amount of weight gain, which led some people unaware of his condition and his other developing health problems to make cruel remarks about his physical appearance when he attended NHL games.
In 2009, the cancer returned. He once again underwent chemotherapy and had his spleen surgically removed. The treatment did not work. Zezel experienced severe headaches and his condition worsened. Doctors recommended immediate surgery.
Feeling weak and very ill, Zezel agreed but asked his family to donate his organs if he did not make it. It was the final request he ever made. Surgery revealed he had suffered brain hemorrhaging and he soon lapsed into a coma. Doctors placed him on life support.
The Zezel family, as the Lindbergh family had done in 1985, asked the doctors to remove the machines and donate his organs so that others might live. It was Peter Zezel's final gift.
Peter Zezel died on May 26, 2009. His funeral was held at the St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Mississauga, Ontario.
Peter Zezel Sr., who was his son's biggest hero as a child and who became his namesake's most ardent admirer as an adult, passed away less than a year and a half after his beloved son. He was survived by wife Valerie, daughter Neda and three grandchildren. Neda and husband Richard have sons named Matthew and Jack and a daughter named Nicole.
6) April 22: Happy birthday, Al Hill. The versatile utility forward was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, on April 22, 1955. Primarily a checking forward, he could play wing or center and could be plugged into any line without looking out of place. He was reliable in his own of the ice, took the body willingly, dropped the gloves when necessary and could chip in the occasional clutch goal.
Unselected in the NHL Draft, Hill signed as a free agent with the Flyers on Oct. 22, 1976.
Hill's greatest claim to fame as a player came in his NHL debut on February 14, 1977. On that night, Hill racked up five points (two goals, three assists) to set an NHL record. The record may never be tied or broken because rookies get only one crack at matching or surpassing it. Even for future superstars, the chance of a five-point game in their debut are minimal.
However, Hill himself was hardly a likely candidate to set such a mark. In Hill's 221-game NHL career, he had a modest 40 goals and 95 points. He was never a prolific scorer as a junior or professional but, rather, a dependable role player.
Hill's biggest break came in 1979-80: the year of the Flyers' historic 35-game unbeaten streak. He was a semi-regular in the Flyers lineup, under the auspices of his former Maine head coach Pat Quinn. That year, Hill scratched out an NHL career-high 16 goals and 26 points in 61 games spent mostly on the third and fourth lines. He added eight playoff points to the Flyers march to the Stanley Cup Finals against the New York Islanders. The player then spent the next two full seasons with the big club, tallying 10 goals in 57 games in 1980-81 and 6 goals in 41 matches the following year.
When Quinn was fired and replaced with Bob McCammon, Hill's time with the big club was numbered. He returned to the AHL, spending most of the remainder of his active career with the Hershey Bears.
Hill dressed for seven regular season NHL games and nine playoff tilts for the Mike Keenan-led 1986-87 Flyers club that reached the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals. The following year, he saw 12 regular-season games with the Flyers plus one playoff appearance in the Flyers' first-round loss to Washington.
After his playing days, Hill went into coaching and scouting. As a coach, he was both an NHL and AHL assistant and also spent two years as an AHL head coach in Binghamton. Hired by the Flyers as a pro scout before the 1998-99 season, he still serves the organization to this day in that capacity. Following the 2018 retirement of amateur scout Simon Nolet, Hill became the longest continually serving scout in the organization after veteran amateur scout Dennis Patterson.
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