The Spectrum, and Big E

Yesterday the Spectrum was razed. Besides being the home of the Flyers and Sixers, it was the scene of many a memorable night: Christian Laettner's infamous buzzer beater for Duke, Bobby Knight won two Final Fours there and the Flyers' infamous victory over the Red Army among other things. Dr. J slammed epic dunks, Bobby Clarke skated wild, Eric Lindros dominated, Allen Iverson wooed, Bernie Parent, Pelle Lindberg and Ron Hextall played god and one time the roof came off. It was great.

My earliest memory is going to a Flyers game in I think 1987, it may have been later than that. I remember they played the Penguins, and I remember that I loved it. Despite the name, the arena was pretty bland. The original idea was for the seats to be a spectrum of colors, but that was too expensive so they went with plain old maroon. The outside of the building wasn't much better. By the 90s it stank of smoke, beer and sweat and the concrete floor was sticky... just like an arena should be.

Ah, memories. My grandparents had season tickets along the goal line, I always loved going to a game on a school night as a little kid and then getting to gloat about it to my classmates. My immediate family, we used to go to Phantoms games all the time. My brother and I would chant “we want Frank” as boisterous as anyone other Phantoms fan clamoring for head coach and Flyers legend Bill Barber to unleash Frank “The Animal” Bialowas on the other team for a quality round of fisticuffs. He would usually acquiesce and some poor sap would get his ass beat. I loved the seats we would occasionally get that were on the metal awning above an entrance. You could really get a good booming sound by stomping it when they played “We Will Rock You.” They had soft pretzels in the shape of the Flyers logo, why they didn't sell those all over the place year round I'll never know. I'd certainly buy them. There was one game against the hated Hershey Bears where at the end of the game, everyone on the ice fought, except the goalies. There were 5 separate fights and Phantoms goalie Neil Little skated out to center ice to try to get the other goalie to fight him, but the Bears netminder refused. He just stood there, elbows propped up on the crossbar, relaxing and waiting for it all to be over. Pretty funny. Then of course there was The Big E.

Eric Lindros was an absolute beast. After giving up half the franchise to get him, expectations were sky high. He didn't disappoint. The first thing you noticed about Lindros was that he was huge. At age 19, he was already in the 99^th percentile of NHL players in terms of size, he was a man-child.  The league would eventually catch up, but for the first few years he was quite simply the biggest player on the ice at anytime. There was no physically intimidating Lindros, rather, he physically intimidated you. He would routinely bowl over defensemen like they were wooden pins, and then just when you thought that poor defender was ready for him the next time Lindros came barreling down the ice, he'd put the puck between the defenseman's legs and skate around him. Routinely, players would line up to hit him and they'd find their ass on the ice because Lindros had turned the table on them. Or he'd simply knock them over on a faceoff. Then he'd go out and duke the shit out of a goalie to score a beautiful goal. Early in his career he was tested routinely with fights. He more than held his own, and against the toughest of tough guys like Tony Twist, Bob Probert, and Joey Kocur. The man could literally do it all.

After trading away five guys from the active roster of a non-playoff team to land Lindros, the Flyers were thin on talent. They gave Lindros (#88) the outstanding Mark Recchi (#8) and the career journeyman Brent Fedyk (#18) for wingers and his line was dubbed “The Crazy Eights.” That worked enough to allow the Flyers to focus on improving the rest of the roster for a little while, but eventually Recchi was dealt for stud defenseman Eric Desjardins and the underachieving John LeClair. LeClair had promise but had failed to capitalize on it, the Flyers figured at worst he could be a solid third liner, at best he could pot 20 goals on Lindros' line while creating some space with his size. In 37 games for the Flyers in the strike shortened 94-95 season, and playing alongside Lindros, LeClair scored 25 goals. Over the next 5 seasons he would score, at worst, 40 goals, including 3 straight years of at least 50 goals, establishing himself as one of the few truly elite goal scorers in the league. The talented but not that talented Mikael Renberg provided speed and agility to a line dubbed “The Legion of Doom.” It dominated the league so much that in the 96-97 season, despite the team essentially consisting of The Legion of Doom, Rod Brind'Amour, Eric Desjardins and not much else, the Flyers made it to the Stanely Cup Finals, and were favored. They got swept, because Detroit was better and because Paul Coffey played the worst hockey of his life and the Flyers haven't had a true #1 goalie since Hextall was in his prime in the late 80s. But that was the power of Lindros: he single handedly turned a franchise around. Actually, two franchises. The players and draft picks that the-then Quebec Nordiques acquired were a major part in turning that franchise from the worst team into the league to multiple Cup winners when they moved to Colorado. Oops. Too bad all the personal issues lead to a meltdown and the injuries piled up. But man, was he ever fun to watch. Also he had a bit of a mullet. If like me you were a kid growing up a Flyers fan in the 90s, you had an Eric Lindros poster hanging in your room. I'm not sure that without him I would not be the huge Flyers fan I am today.

Gotta love that “ooh, take the roof off baby!” goal against the Devils. And of course, the emotion on display when accepting the MVP trophy.
The music is shitty, but the highlights are simply amazing: