Rangers, Flyers Greats Discuss the Old Days at LinesMaker

Rangers, Flyers Greats Discuss the Old Days

PHILADELPHIA — A day before the Fly­ers and Rangers renew their rivalry dur­ing the game’s biggest spec­ta­cle, four leg­ends got together to talk the breaks of the game.

For Philadel­phia, Bill Bar­ber and Dave Schultz rep­re­sented the two-time Stan­ley Cup dynasty of the 1970s, while New York alumni Rod Gilbert and Eddie Gia­comin kept them in check, much like they did so many years ago. In all, it made for an insight­ful, enter­tain­ing Miller Coors / NHL Win­ter Clas­sic Leg­ends Event.

The round­table dis­cus­sion, mod­er­ated by NHL’s Barry Mel­rose, was at turns enter­tain­ing and poignant, as the greats dis­cussed every­thing from con­cus­sions to fight­ing to ref­er­ees to, most impor­tantly, the rivalry that helped define their sto­ried careers.

The crowd of 120 — about half of whom were too young to remem­ber those heady days — was quickly won over by the endear­ing, intel­li­gent and often self-deprecating per­son­al­i­ties seated on stage.

“The major dif­fer­ence is, in our day, you got sin­gled out if you could skate,” said Bar­ber, who is now a scout­ing con­sul­tant for the Fly­ers. “Today, you get sin­gled out if you can’t skate. And every­body can shoot.”

Schultz, known as the “Ham­mer” in his play­ing days for his tough brand of hockey, kept the crowd in straits with his snappy responses. When Mel­rose asked him whether he pre­ferred the old ref­eree sys­tem or the cur­rent two-man, Schultz answered matter-of-factly.

“I’d pre­fer none!”

The four shared can­did opin­ions on the evo­lu­tion of the game. All four agreed that the min­i­mal pro­tec­tive equip­ment of their era forced play­ers to be more care­ful and police them­selves. But Bar­ber reminded the audi­ence that that old-school men­tal­ity had its ups and downs.

“You got in front of the net back then, you bet­ter get out fast,” Bar­ber said, refer­ring to the dan­ger of cheap shots. “But I really miss the 1-on-1 bat­tles. Not intim­i­da­tion, but con­fronta­tion. Good, hard-nosed hockey. I just don’t know how we get that back with the new rules.”

Out­law fight­ing, the group agreed, and the League would lose a key self-policing aspect that keeps insti­ga­tors at bay.

“Who’s to say that if fight­ing leaves the game, that those smaller play­ers won’t just start insti­gat­ing at every turn?” said Schultz, who was infa­mous for his tough style said.

“When small guys started trou­ble, you just want to pitch­fork them into the next cen­tury,” Bar­ber quipped.

Even­tu­ally, Mel­rose turned to the rivalry. Each for­mer player recounted his fond­est mem­ory, often riff­ing off the answer of their oppo­nent.

“When they came into the League, we beat them most of the time. Then they got the ‘The Fog’, Freddy Shero, I don’t know what he had but it was some­thing,” said Gilbert, who became the first Ranger to have his jer­sey retired, in 1979. “In 1974, when they won the Cup, I scored in Game 6 in over­time to send it back to Philly. Then I remem­ber we out­shot them at their place, but we couldn’t get over that hump.”

“The major dif­fer­ence is, in our day, you got sin­gled out if you could skate. Today, you get sin­gled out if you can’t skate. And every­body can shoot.” - Bill Barder

“Goal­tend­ing is every­thing,” Bar­ber said. “I really think it was two cities. New York was always more excit­ing, but Philadel­phia was also a city. I think that really built the rivalry. First of all, it’s tough to play in Madi­son Square Gar­den – your ice is ter­ri­ble. You’d sit there and smell like ele­phant poop for about two weeks.”

“That was our secret,” Gilbert shot back.

Schultz was just happy he didn’t rec­og­nize any Rangers fans, the type that “used to throw beers on me”, among the crowd.

Gia­comin remained con­cil­ia­tory: “You knew you were in for a game any time you faced those guys.”

On Mon­day at 3 p.m., the hockey world will find out if that’s still the case.
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