An almost-daily look back at how the Philadelphia Flyers have fared on this day, recalling some of the more memorable moments, achievements, and events that shaped the organization throughout the club’s storied history
The Flyers have managed a 10-6-4-0 record in 20 all-time games played on November 20, with an 8-3-2-0 mark at home on this date.
Some of the more memorable November 20 moments in franchise history:
1969 — Jim Johnson’s goal midway through the third period broke a 2-2 deadlock, Bill Sutherland added a goal and an assist, and Bernie Parent turned aside 37 of 39 shots to help propel the Flyers to a 3-2 triumph over the Los Angeles Kings at the Spectrum.
Larry Hillman’s second period power play goal gave Philadelphia a 2-1 lead at the second intermission, but Eddie Shack tied it up early in the third. Future Flyer Ross Lonsberry also scored for L.A., while Gerry Desjardins made 38 saves in the defeat.
1975 — Gary Dornhoefer snapped a 2-2 tie late in the middle frame and Wayne Stephenson stopped 23 of 25 shots to lead the Flyers to a 3-2 victory over the California Golden Seals at the Spectrum.
Jimmy Watson opened the scoring early in the first but California came back with markers from Dennis Maruk and Bob Girard to take a 2-1 lead into the second period.
Bobby Clarke evened things up with a shorthanded tally just over a minute into the frame, before Dornhoefer’s go-ahead strike with 5:04 remaining.
Stephenson had to be very good in the third as the ice was tilted towards the Philadelphia end for much of the stanza. The Seals outshot the home squad by an 11-6 margin, but Stephenson made the one-goal lead stand up and improved his personal record to 13-3-5 for the season.
1977 — Flyers’ defensemen accounted for all the goals as Joe Watson and Bob Dailey each scored twice, and Bernie Parent stopped all 18 shots he faced to record his 41st regular season shutout in a Philadelphia uniform in a 4-0 whitewash of the Atlanta Flames at the Spectrum.
Watson’s goals both came in the opening twenty minutes and Dailey’s pair were delivered in the second, while Gary Dornhoefer added three assists and Bill Barber contributed two helpers to the winning cause.
1980 — Minnesota-native Tom Gorence scored in the first period and Phil Myre made 21 saves in a 1-1 tie with the Minnesota North Stars at the Spectrum.
1983 — Bobby Clarke’s goal 2:43 into overtime lifted the Flyers to a 5-4 triumph over the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Spectrum.
Pittsburgh’s Mike Bullard scored the lone goal of the second period to give the visitors a 3-2 lead, but Brian Propp netted his second of the game and defenseman Thomas Eriksson gave Philadelphia their first lead of the contest midway through the frame. But Bullard — who finished the game with a Gordie Howe hat trick — sent the tilt into extra time with a late man advantage marker on his second of the contest to set up Clarke’s overtime heroics.
Bill Barber also scored for the Flyers and set up Clarke on the OT-winner, while Pelle Lindbergh stopped 27 shots to up his record to 9-4-2 for the year.
1986 — Tim Kerr scored four straight goals and assisted on a fifth and rookie Ron Hextall turned away 24 of 25 shots as the Flyers erased an early deficit to hammer the Chicago Blackhawks 5-1 at the Spectrum.
Trailing 1-0 on Mark Lavarre’s first NHL goal just over a minute after the opening faceoff, Kerr scored midway through the first, once in the middle stanza, and twice early in the third to give Philadelphia a 4-1 lead before setting up Brian Propp just 1:04 later.
The natural hat trick was Kerr’s 11th regular season three-goal game of his career.
Propp had a pretty good game as well, as he assisted on three of Kerr’s markers in addition to his own goal. It was the seventh multiple-point game in 19 contests for Propp on the season, giving “Propper” eight goals and 27 points for the campaign.
1988 — Rick Tocchet posted his fourth career hat trick and four points while Ron Hextall stopped 22 of 23 shots in a 7-1 drubbing of the New Jersey Devils at the Spectrum.
After spotting the visitors an early first period 1-0 lead on a Pat Verbeek power play marker, Tocchet knotted the game just over two and a half minutes later.
Tim Kerr scored twice before the conclusion of the opening stanza, giving him 18 goals in 22 contests after missing all but eight games the previous year with multiple shoulder surgeries.
Tocchet and Brian Propp made it 5-1 with the lone strikes of the middle session, before Tocchet set up Peter Zezel early in the third and then completed the hat trick later in the period against beleaguered New Jersey netminder Sean Burke, who finished the game with 29 saves.
The win snapped Hextall’s personal eight-game winless skid (0-7-1).
1993 — Mark Recchi posted a goal and two assists, while Tommy Soderstrom made 38 saves in a 5-5 deadlock with the Boston Bruins at Boston Garden.
Goals from Rod Brind’Amour, Dimitri Yushkevich, Vyacheslav Butsayev, and Brent Fedyk made it a 4-4 contest before Recchi’s power play marker with 1:09 remaining in the middle frame gave Philadelphia a 5-4 lead at the second intermission.
Ted Donato was able to beat Soderstrom just 33 seconds into the third, and the Swedish goaltender held the Flyers in the game as Boston outshot the visitors by a 16-7 margin in the stanza and 3-0 in overtime to earn the draw.
1997 — The Flyers held the San Jose Sharks to just 12 shots on goal for the entire game — including just one in the third period — but the visitors were able to score on three of them in the middle session while Mike Vernon turned away all 28 pucks he faced at the other end of the ice in a 3-0 defeat of Philadelphia at the CoreStates Center.
1998 — Petr Svoboda’s goal late in the second period would prove to be the game-winner and Ron Hextall stopped 18 of 19 shots to lift the Flyers to a 3-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes at Greensboro Coliseum.
The triumph was the second in a row for Hextall, who moved ahead of the legendary Bernie Parent and into the top spot on Philadelphia’s all-time wins list with his 233rd as a Flyer.
Dan McGillis and Colin Forbes (empty-netter) also scored for Philadelphia, who won for a third consecutive outing after going winless in their prior seven contests (0-5-2).
1999 — Eric Lindros and Daymond Langkow each scored a pair of goals and Brian Boucher turned aside 17 of 18 shots in a 4-1 Flyers’ triumph over the Tampa Bay Lightning at the First Union Center.
Eric Desjardins added three assists and Mikael Renberg had two helpers in support of Boucher, as the rookie netminder won his third straight starting assignment.
2001 — John LeClair had a pair of goals and an assist, Justin Williams chipped in with a goal and three points, and Roman Cechmanek stopped 42 of 45 shots in a 3-3 draw with the New Jersey Devils at the First Union Center.
Cechmanek had to be spectacular just to salvage a point, as the Devils outshot Philadelphia by a 25-6 margin over the course of the third period (20-3) and overtime.
2003 — The line of Mark Recchi (two goals, three points), Tony Amonte (goal, assist), and Jeremy Roenick (two helpers) finished as the game’s three stars, while goalie Robert Esche turned away 22 of 23 shots to help the Flyers to their eighth-consecutive game without a loss (7-0-1) in a 3-1 win over the Minnesota Wild at the Wachovia Center.
All of the goals scored in the contest came within a 5:07 span late in the middle stanza, with former-Flyer Alexandre Daigle notching the lone Minnesota tally.
The victory was the sixth straight for Esche, and kept Philadelphia without a loss on home ice (8-0-2) for the season.
2010 — Danny Briere scored the shootout-winner to redeem himself for a late-game gaffe, and Brian Boucher stopped 33 shots in regulation and overtime and all three shooters in the shootout in a 5-4 triumph at Verizon Center.
On the strength of goals from Claude Giroux, Mike Richards, and Jeff Carter, Philadelphia held a 3-1 lead midway through the third period before a steady parade to the penalty box got Washington back into the game.
Nicklas Backstrom brought the Caps back to within a goal with 8:57 remaining and Kimmo Timonen in the sin bin, and Richards was called for a slash when the goal was scored to put the Flyers down a man yet again.
It took Washington just 0:28 to knot the score at 3-3 on the ensuing power play via a Jason Chimera strike.
Andreas Nodl gave Philly the lead late in the stanza, but Briere took an awful high-sticking minor with less than two minutes left to give the Capitals another crack on the power play. Eric Fehr beat Boucher with only 39 ticks remaining on the clock to send the contest to extra time.
Boucher thwarted Backstrom, Alex Ovechkin, and Alexander Semin in the three rounds of the shootout, while Briere beat Michal Neuvirth in the second round to help the visitors wrestle away the extra point.
2014 — Claude Giroux’s power play goal with 3:30 remaining in regulation knotted the game at 2-2, but Jason Zucker spoiled the mood of the pre-game inductions of Eric Lindros and John LeClair into the Flyers Hall-of-Fame with the game-winner with 0:45.4 left to give the Minnesota Wild a 3-2 triumph at the Wells Fargo Center.
Mark Streit scored the other Philadelphia goal, while Jakub Voracek assisted on Giroux’s tally to take over sole possession of the NHL scoring lead with 27 points, which included a league-best 20 helpers.
Preceding the game the Flyers inducted forwards Lindros and LeClair — 2/3 of the infamous and dominating “Legion of Doom Line” — into the club’s Hall of Fame, a much-deserved honor and the first such players to be enshrined in the team’s hallowed halls since Dave “The Hammer” Schultz was honored in 2009. The third member of that trio, Mikael Renberg, was in attendance to help celebrate the duo’s induction.
Lindros posted 290 goals and 369 assists for 659 points in just 486 regular season contests with the Flyers, with his point total ranking fifth all-time and his points-per-game average of 1.35 being the best. The “Big E” added 24 goals and 33 assists for 57 points in 53 postseason contests, leading Philadelphia to the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals before being swept by the Detroit Red Wings.
LeClair had already won a Cup with the Montreal Canadiens before being acquired along with Eric Desjardins and Gilbert Dionne in exchange for Mark Recchi, but he became one of the NHL’s most feared goal scorers when he came to the City of Brotherly Love. “Johnny Vermont” scored 25 goals in 37 contests the first season after the trade, then posted three consecutive 50-goal campaigns and two more of 40+. LeClair finished with 333 goals and 310 assists for 643 over the course of 649 regular season games with Philly — with his 333 markers sitting fifth-overall in franchise history — and 42 goals and 47 assists for 89 points in 154 playoff tilts during his time with the Flyers, also skating on the 1997 team that fell just four victories short of a Cup championship.
November 20 Flyers Birthday
Yanick Dupre was born on this day in 1972 in Montreal. At the conclusion of his major junior career in the QMJHL, Dupre was selected by Philadelphia in the third round (50th-overall) of the 1991 NHL Entry Draft. The 6′ 0″, 190-pound winger scored two goals in 35 games over parts of three seasons with the Flyers, including a game-winning tally on his first career goal on January 3, 1996 in a 3-1 win over the Sharks in San Jose. Tragedy struck the Flyers’ family once again when Dupre was diagnosed with leukemia in April of 1996. Though maintaining a positive attitude and vowing to not only beat the disease but also return to the Flyers, he would ultimately lose his battle just 16 months after his original diagnosis at the age of 25.
