An almost-daily column that takes a 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
Heading into tonight’s road contest with the Calgary Flames, the Flyers have posted a 10-5-2-0 record in 17 contests played on March 19. Philly is unbeaten in their last six (5-0-1) in games played on this day since 1996, including wins in each of their last three.
Some of the more memorable moments and brief recaps in Flyers history that took place on March 19:
1977 — Bobby Clarke scored twice during a four-goal third period as the Flyers turned a 3-1 deficit entering the final frame into a 5-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
The win ran Philly’s unbeaten streak against the Kings to 11 consecutive meetings (8-0-3) since they last suffered a loss to them back in October of 1974.
Goals in the first half of the opening period from Don Kozak and Bob Murdoch staked the home team to a 2-0 lead, before Harvey Bennett cut the deficit in half just over three minutes later.
L.A. outshot Philadelphia 15-9 in the first period and continued to carry play in the second to the tune of a 7-4 shots advantage. and winger Mike Murphy beat Bernie Parent while Andre Dupont was serving an elbowing minor midway through regulation to restore the Kings’ two-goal cushion heading into the third.
Gary Dornhoefer made it a 3-2 contest early in the session, but Los Angeles continued to put pressure on Parent, who had to come up big to keep the visitors in the contest. It appeared as if Rogie Vachon would make the lead hold up as the game reached the latter stages of regulation time, but the Flyers had other ideas. Clarke knotted things up with his first of the tilt with 7:16 remaining, Rick MacLeish netted his 44th of the season — what turned out to be the eventual game-winner — just 1:20 later, before Clarke hit for the clincher with 3:24 left to set the final score.
1981 — Rookie Tim Kerr netted his first NHL hat trick and figured in on the Flyers’ first four goals, and Bobby Clarke recorded his 1,000th career point as the home team built a 5-0 lead and hung on for a 5-3 win over the Boston Bruins at the Spectrum.
Kerr scored the only two goals of the opening twenty minutes — with the big forward hitting the 20-goal mark in the process — then earned an assist on Ken Linseman’s goal early in the middle period before completing the hat trick just over two minutes later.
Clarke became just the 15th player in NHL history to reach the 1,000-point plateau when he scored a goal off his own rebound 31 seconds into the third period.
Typical of the workman-like, win-at-all-costs attitude the gap-toothed legend had always exemplified throughout his 12 years of on-ice leadership with the franchise, Clarke had been bloodied when drilled in the left temple by a Reggie Leach slap shot while attempting to screen Boston netminder Marco Baron earlier in the contest — but remained in the game.
It seemed only appropriate that the goal celebration for point number 1,000 saw teammates surrounding him, and the then-home white jersey that had been stained with Clarke’s own blood just above the Flyers’ logo.
Don Marcotte notched a pair of goals sandwiched around one from Rick Middleton to get the Bruins onto the scoreboard and close out the scoring, but the night was all about the continuing emergence of Kerr, and the celebration of another milestone in Clarke’s Hall of Fame career.
1984 — Mark Howe scored the game-winning goal with less than five minutes remaining in regulation, Tim Kerr figured in on all four Philly goals, and Pelle Lindbergh made 25 saves in a 4-3 Flyers triumph over the New Jersey Devils at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J.
Brian Propp opened the scoring just before the midway point of the first stanza, and Kerr doubled the Flyers’ advantage with his 49th of the season 6:30 later.
New Jersey starter Ron Low was pulled in favor of Glenn “Chico” Resch to beging the second period, and defender Jan Ludvig cut that lead in half by beating Lindbergh for the only goal of the session with the Devils on a power play in the latter half of the frame.
Paul Guay — who was acquired from the Minnesota North Stars three weeks earlier in exchange for Paul Holmgren — made it a two-goal Philadelphia lead again when he notched his first NHL goal with just under nine minutes left, but Pat Verbeek got the Devs back to within a goal at 3-2 less than two minutes later before Howe and Bob MacMillan (another power play goal) traded late tallies.
Kerr finished the tilt with a goal and a trio of helpers, and was appropriately named the game’s First Star.
1985 — Ron Sutter scored his second goal of the game 7:40 into the third period to snap a 3-3 tie and propel the Flyers to a come-from-behind 5-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Igloo.
Things looked pretty good for the home squad early in the first period when rookie Mario Lemieux set up former-Flyers defenseman Kevin McCarthy less than two minutes after the opening faceoff, then scored one himself at 4:55 to make it a 2-0 Penguins lead at the first intermission.
Sutter gave the visitors a breath of life early in the middle session before rookie Todd Bergen tied it up at 2-2 just before the midway point of regulation.
It was Bergen’s fourth game with a goal in five contests since being recalled from the AHL’s Hershey Bears, and gave the 20-year-old sniper six goals and eight points in seven total NHL games in two seperate recall stints that season as he gelled well with the existing cast down the stretch as the club headed towards the postseason.
Rookie winger Arto Javanainen beat Pelle Lindbergh to make it a 3-2 Pittsburgh lead less than three minutes later, and that score stood into the second intermission.
Philadelphia got even 3:24 into the third when Ilkka Sinisalo notched his 33rd goal of the season, before Sutter’s game-winner and Murray Craven’s clinching empty-net goal with 24 seconds remaining and Denis Herron pulled for a sixth Penguins attacker.
Lindbergh made 29 saves to record his sixth straight victory, a career-high 35th of the season.
1996 — John LeClair scored twice and Ron Hextall stopped 29 of 30 shots to lead the Flyers to a convincing 4-1 victory over the New York Islanders at the Spectrum.
The Philadelphia man advantage clicked for three goals — a pair from LeClair and one from Pat Falloon — to give the home club a 3-0 lead heading into the final frame.
Isles’ defender Bryan McCabe spoiled Hextall’s shutout bid with a power play marker of his own midway through the third, before Shjon Podein sealed the victory with an empty net goal with 1:18 left and former-Flyer Tommy Soderstrom pulled for an extra skater.
The win was the third in a row for the Flyers, which just so happened to coincide with a goal-scoring streak for LeClair in which the power forward notched six, including a hat trick in his previous outing against the San Jose Sharks.
1997 — Eric Lindros posted his first career four-goal game and registered six points and the Legion of Doom accounted for 13 points in a come-from-behind 6-3 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs at Maple Leaf Gardens.
After Toronto’s Brandon Convery and Lindros exchanged first period markers and the Leafs’ David Cooper and Mikael Renberg traded tallies in the middle stanza, the home team actually took a third lead in the contest when Sergei Berezin beat Ron Hextall just over two minutes into the final period.
That’s when Lindros — who was playing in front of family and friends in his hometown — took full control of how the ending was going to be written to this story.
First he knotted things up with his second goal of the night just 44 seconds after Berezin’s goal, then gave the Flyers their first lead of the night with his hat trick marker — the ninth three-goal game of his career — when he beat Felix Potvin 1:12 later.
He wasn’t done, as he was in on setting up Renberg’s second of the tilt, then sealed the outcome with his fourth into an empty cage with 0:48 left.
The Legion was fully responsible for pulling this one out, as they recorded some staggering numbers — Lindros four goals, six points; Renberg two goals, four points; John LeClair three assists.
After the game, LeClair — one of the purest goal-scorers on the club but failed to beat Potvin — said Lindros “won the game almost by himself. He took it upon himself to get things turned around. He was head and shoulders above anybody else on the ice.”
2000 — Rookie Simon Gagne snapped a 2-2 tie 31 seconds after Keith Jones had tied the game midway through regulation, and rookie netminder Brian Boucher stopped 29 of 31 shots en route to a 6-2 triumph over the Boston Bruins at the First Union Center.
Keith Primeau staked Philly to an early first period lead, but goals by Brandon Smith and Andre Savage had given Boston a 2-1 lead as the contest neared the midpoint of the second period.
After Jones’ and Gagne’s quick strikes gave the Flyers a 3-2 lead at the second intermission, it was an even faster pair that put the tilt out of reach early in the final frame.
John LeClair made it a two-goal lead 0:57 into the stanza, and before the celebrating Philly faithful even had a chance to return to their seats, Daymond Langkow beat Bruins’ goalie John Grahame 15 ticks of the clock later to make it a laugher at 5-2.
Rick Tocchet closed out the scoring in the final minute when he blew a slap shot from the slot past relief netminder Robbie Tallas.
When the smoke cleared, Gagne — who had posted a pair of goals the previous day against the New York Rangers — and LeClair had each recorded a goal and three points, and Tocchet, Primeau, and Jones managed a goal and two points, while tough guy Craig Berube picked up a pair of helpers in the win.
2001 — Eric Desjardins broke a 2-2 deadlock with 1:51 left in the second period, and Brian Boucher made 25 saves as the Flyers skated out of Edmonton with a 4-2 win over the Oilers.
Keith Primeau opened the scoring with what would end up as his career-best 34th goal 7:48 into the second stanza, but the home team answered with strikes from Anson Carter and Ryan Smyth to take a 2-1 lead with 6:44 left in the middle frame. Mark Recchi evened it up at 2-2, before Desjardins put the Flyers ahead for good later in the period.
Defenseman Andy Delmore added an insurance goal early in the third in what would prove to be his last goal in a Flyers’ uniform to set the final margin.
The triumph would be the last for the Orange-and-Black over the Oil in Alberta in over 12 years, as the next Flyers victory in Edmonton would be a 4-3 decision in a shootout on December 28, 2013.
2011 — Ville Leino beat Kari Lehtonen in the sixth round of the shootout to lift the Flyers to a 3-2 victory over the Dallas Stars at American Airlines Center, clinching a postseason berth for Philadelphia in the process.
Philadelphia took a 2-0 lead with a pair of goals within just over a 2:30 span split between the late stages of the opening period and the beginning of the second, when Jeff Carter redirected an Andrej Meszaros point blast past Lehtonen to give the Flyers a 1-0 lead at the first intermission and Mike Richards doubled the margin when he was able to sneak a close range shot through the Stars’ goalie.
Dallas was able to get even on late-second and third period goals from two of their defensemen, Alex Goligoski in the middle frame and Stephane Robidas with a little more than five and a half minutes remaining in regulation to force extra time.
Rookie netminder Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves through regulation and overtime, then stopped five of the six shooters he faced in the shootout — with stops on Jamie Benn, Brad Richards, Jamie Langenbrunner, Robidas, and Brandon Segal — to pick up his 26th win of the year, while Lehtonen fell to 0-10-2 lifetime against the Flyers.
March 19 Flyers’ trades:
1996 — Philadelphia made a trio of deals at the deadline, with two having some interesting longer-term ramifications.
Former-Flyer defender Kerry Huffman — who was originally selected by the Flyers in the first round (20th-overall) of the 1986 entry draft and appeared in more than 200 contests with the Orange-and-Black before being shipped to the Quebec Nordiques as part of the gigantic haul required to acquire Eric Lindros — was re-acquired (as so many ex-Flyers have been through the years), with Huffman being brought back from the Ottawa Senators in exchange for a 1996 ninth-round selection. While Huffman saw action in just four Flyers games after the deal, Ottawa used that pick to take defenseman Sami Salo, who garnered Calder Trophy consideration and went on to play in nearly 900 NHL games into the 2013/14 campaign.
Philly also shipped a 1996 fourth-round pick to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for John Druce and a 1997 seventh-rounder. While Druce didn’t catch the lightning in a bottle that he had with the Washington Capitals several years earlier in the postseason, he did provide a jumpstart down the stretch, with four goals and eight points in 13 games. That was about the most effective time for Druce in varying attempts for the Flyers, and his run with the club ended after seeing action in just a couple of playoff contests in 1998. The draft pick was used to select Todd Fedoruk, who appeared in over 250 games in an enforcer role in two stints with the team.
2002 — Hoping to rejuvenate a slumping offense and a 27th-ranked power play — and a situation made more dire with the trade deadline news that pivots Jeremy Roenick (knee, at least a month) and Keith Primeau (ribs, at least a week) would be on the shelf for some time — the Flyers sent top goaltending prospect Maxime Ouellett, along with their 2002 first, second, and third round draft picks to the Washington Capitals, in exchange for 39-year-old centerman Adam Oates. The extremely steep price was paid for a very temporary fix, as Oates lasted for just the final 14 games of the regular season — posting three goals and 10 points to go along with a -2 rating — and five postseason contests — recording a pair of helpers — before signing with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim as an unrestricted free agent.
