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Hockey Heartbreak? Mine Was 40 Yrs Ago; Scott Niedermayer on Thur's Buzz

May 21, 2020, 11:46 AM ET [77 Comments]
Eklund
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Today we are talking about hockey heartbreak...That one moment in your life where this sport, the sport that you love above all else, just crushed you. For me, it's too easy.

In 1979-80 I was in 6th grade. I met my best friend and the guy who would be my best man at my wedding that year. Our two elementary school were both too small for a sixth grade, so I got bussed over to his school. We were classmates, but soon we learned something even more important. We were both huge hockey fans and beyond that we had both put together unbeatable street hockey teams in our respective schools. We scheduled a game where the two powerhouses would play each other and the game was epic. I was a goalie and I can still remember playing that game in a fenced-in area behind Barclay School in Cherry Hill, NJ. I still remember goals that I let up in that game. My team, named the Red Devils, three years before there would be a team in New Jersey named the Devils, lost that day for the first time.

After the game we all talked and decided we should merge our teams and dominate the schoolyard...which we did, and I still play men's hockey with some of those guys.. The other thing we talked about that day was "How good will the Flyers be?"

Well as it turned out, pretty damn good. That season the Flyers started off with a win and then got smoked by the Atlanta Flames 9-2....They rebounded from that beating pretty well though going the next 35 games without a loss. They had 1 loss at Christmas. It was an unbelievable time to be a kid who was a Flyers fan.

The Flyers streak ended on January 7th, 5 days before my 12th birthday. That was sad, but not heartbreaking. Even at the ripe age of 11 I knew the Flyers would eventually lose and the streak would come to an end. My hockey spirits were lifted pretty nicely when 30 days later, on February 22, 1980 a little thing called the Miracle in Ice Happened...A great time to be a hockey fan!

When the NHL season ended, the Flyers sat 25 points ahead of the second-place NY Islanders, and the Stanley Cup felt definitely within reach. A team that went 35 games without losing could surely not be beaten in a seven-game series right?

On May 13th in Game 1 the Islanders shocked the Flyers winning 4-3 in OT. What I remember the most was how angry I was that the Islanders won in OT on a power play. Back then penalties were NEVER given in overtimes in the playoffs. In fact, that goal, by Dennis Potvin, was the first overtime power play goal in Stanley Cup Finals history.

On May 15th the Flyers came out pissed and blew the Isles away 8-3, a game made famous by tough guy Paul Holmgren somehow netting a hattrick. I thought, OK, we are good now...but history tells us that when a team blows another team away in a playoff series, the rest of the series gets dicey.

Sure enough,the Isles would hold serve and win the next two games in NY 6-2 and 5-2.

On May 22, with the series at 3-1 and the Cup in the building in Philly the Flyers responded..winning the game 6-3...and sending it back to NY for game 6. The Flyers were sure to win that one and there was NO way the Islanders win a game 7 back in Philly...

Then came my day of Hockey Heartbreak. May 24, 1980. The game was played in the afternoon because CBS picked it up in the US. I still hate afternoon playoff games.

With the game tied at 1-1, the Islanders scored one of the most infamous goals in hockey history on a blown off-sides call. The Flyers thought the offsides was so obvious they let up and stopped playing. The goal counted and the Flyers did tie it minutes later. The game would eventually head to overtime tied at 4.

At 7:11 of overtime my heart was crushed by Bobby Nystrom and John Tonelli. The Islanders would win their first of four Cups that day and the Flyers still haven't won the Cup since...

I cried. I actually cried.

What is your moment of hockey heartbreak?



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