I would be lying if I said that the born-and-raised Flyers fan in me is not a little envious of the folks in Boston in Vancouver today. It has been 24 years since the Flyers were last in the position of being one win away from the Stanley Cup. Even last year, Philly fell a game shy of knowing it was playing for the Cup in its next game.

I can remember the day of Sunday, May 31, 1987 as if it happened yesterday. Three days had passed since the Flyers' dramatic third-period comeback in Game 6 and the euphoria of that night had been replaced by the nervous anticipation of a game in Edmonton for all the marbles. I remember going to a Clover store early in the morning to buy a pack of blank VHS tapes, keeping my fingers crossed that I would use them not only to record not only the championship game but also the postgame coverage of the Flyers' celebration, the local news broadcasts in the days that followed and the parade on Broad Street.

That Sunday passed very slowly. I remember counting down the hours. Time moved slowly. I was too nervous to eat or even listen to music. I needed to move around.

Early in the afternoon, I went out and set up a street hockey net, and fired orange Mylec street hockey balls into it with the Bobby Clarke street hockey stick I'd had since I was 5 -- and which took until I was a teenager to actually be the proper length for me.

The Phillies had a road game against the Los Angeles Dodgers that day and I remember watching that game at 4 PM eastern time. In an effort to pass the remaining hours, I kept score of the baseball game and I remember that it was actually very briskly played. Phillies then-ace Shane Rawley outdueled the Dodgers' Rick Honeycutt and the Phils won, 3-1, courtesy of a home run by third baseman Rick Schu. Eventual Cy Young award winner Steve Bedrosian nailed down the save.

When the baseball game ended, there was still a short time to go until the Flyers broadcast started on Channel 57. I put on my trusty Mark Howe jersey and nervously paced back and forth in the family room, driving my mother insane and making my grandmom so nervous, too, that she and my mom went upstairs (lest they be subjected to my histrionics once the game began).

The Flyers Stanley Cup dream burned brightly early in the first period, when Murray Craven soon made Edmonton pay for a Mark Messier cross-checking penalty in the opening minute of play. Messier got the goal back a few minutes later, and the game went to the first intermission tied, 1-1.

By this point, the Flyers were running on fumes. They had seemed to be running out of gas in Game 6 before the improbable comeback spurred by Brian Propp and J.J. Daigneault. Tonight, the tank was on empty, and only the team's never-say-die work ethic and the extraordinary goaltending of Ron Hextall kept them in the game (Edmonton ended up outshooting the Flyers by something like 44-25 on the night, and Philly only had 14 shots over the final two periods). The talent-packed Oilers skated circles around Mike Keenan's team, yet the game remained tied 1-1 heading into the latter stages of the middle period.

When Brad Marsh was sent off for hooking, I knew the Flyers were in deep trouble. Somehow, they managed to get through the penalty kill, but moments later, Jari Kurri scored to give Edmonton a lead it would never relinquish.

I remember spending the final five minutes of the second period and most of the third period hoping against hope that the Flyers had one final surge left in them. They didn't. Philly could barely get over the offensive blueline. But the team remained one seeing-eye shot away from tying the game and forcing a potential overtime. That is, until Glen Anderson scored -- on a shot Hexy should have had -- with 2:24 left in the game.

The dream was dead. The Flyers lost the game, 3-1, and Edmonton celebrated with the Cup. For the final time in my life, I cried over the result of a sporting event. I remember after the game, Gene Hart spoke about celebrating the courage and ambition that had fueled the magical run to the brink of beating what was clearly the best hockey team in the world at that time. I remember that, on the postgame show, Steve Coates introduced a montage of highlights, set to (awful) 80s pop song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."

I wasn't ready yet think about what a magnificent season it had been. But I did feel awful proud of that Flyers team -- and have never again had such an emotional stake in whether a team wins or loses. I couldn't possibly have felt any prouder to call myself a Flyers fan, even if they had won the Cup.

As time passed, it became to be easier and easier to recall the 1986-87 season with nothing but tremendous fondness. Although the Broad Street Bullies of the 1970s were the team of my childhood and what made me love hockey in the first place, the teams of the mid 1980s were the nearest and dearest to my heart.

To be 100 percent honest, if the Flyers win a Stanley Cup again in the near future, I will be very happy (and, in my writing, I think I could still separate the journalist in me from the guy who bled orange and black growing up). But it won't be the same degree of emotion I felt back then.

Today, on June 15, 2011, I can feel for what both Vancouver Canucks supporters and Boston Bruins fans are going through. I don't have a particular rooting interest in the game. I am slightly favoring the Bruins, because they play a style that I'd like to see the Flyers play again. But I wouldn't care at all if Vancouver won.

I do know this: Whichever team wins will be deserving champions. I strongly suspect that whichever team scores first will win the game. I also know that, for whichever team loses team, next year will seem a long way off and the pain of coming so close will be intense. All I can say is that eventually it subsides.

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