Pens, Flyers Rivalry Transforms

Traversing the hundreds of miles of agrarian Pennsylvania between them, the Philadelphia Flyers… Traversing the hundreds of miles of agrarian Pennsylvania between them, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins battle every winter to provethe professional worth of their highly lauded teams. Clad in thick pads and equipped with club-like sticks, both teams seek victory not just for their hockey clubs, but also for their side of the state.

On Pitt’s campus, the rivalry is particularly amplified with almost as many Philadelphians present in orange and black as native Yinzers in black and gold. Even so, the contest between Eastern and Western Pennsylvania dates back to a time before either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia had a sports team.

“It goes back to the historical rivalry between the frontier West and the supposedly more civilized East,” said Rob Ruck, a senior lecturer in Pitt’s history department. He noted that the contest goes back to the early colonial period.

“It’s a question of political power,” Ruck said. “Why do you think that Harrisburg is in the center of the state?”

Despite their differences, the teams and cities now have more similarities than they did in the past.The Penguins and Flyers franchises both were established in 1967. While the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup in the early 1970s, the Penguins accomplished the same feat on a very memorable day in late May of 1991.

“When the Pens won their first Stanley Cup, I wasn’t even 2 years old, but my parents naturally took me along to a playoff party,” Pitt senior Jamie Novak said. “During the ensuing celebration, as a bunch of crazed fans passed around a replica Stanley Cup full of champagne, I was reportedly offered the Cup. I stuck my whole face in it … and loved it. I think my team allegiance was pretty much set from then on out.”

Hockey fans from the other side of the state have had similar experiences — with family playing an important part in what makes hockey so compelling to watch.

“Growing up in a suburb outside of Philadelphia, I was surrounded by Flyers fans,” sophomore Vince Cuce said. “During high school my friends and I would always talk about the Flyers and how they were doing, but during the last couple seasons my younger brother has become an avid Flyers fan as well, and we always watch games together whenever I’m home now.”

Today, Novak and Cuce might be known to argue for their respective teams, but their passion for the sport comes from a very real love of the the game.

“The main thing that attracted me to hockey is the intensity,” Cuce said. “The players skate for 60 minutes end to end, not to mention it has such a quick pace with high-caliber players on all 30 teams.”

The concentrated physicality of the sport easily inspires passion for Novak.

“The aspect of hockey that attracts me the most is the incomparable level of intensity,” Novak said. “I have seen professional games go eight minutes without a stoppage in play. And for that entire duration, the players never stop moving, circulating, checking, passing and shooting.”

In Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh was the first city to have a team enter the NHL. Named after the Pirates team that had transferred from an amateur league in 1925, the freshman hockey team couldn’t maintain the winning numbers to ensure longevity.

“Due to sagging attendance and tight finances, the team’s owners were unable to secure enough talent to keep the team competitive,” sports writer Rick Buker of the Penguin Poop blog said. During this time the team played at Duquesne Gardens, an arena located on North Craig Street where the Saint Paul Cathedral now stands.

“During its final season in Pittsburgh — 1929-1930 — the team switched its colors from black and gold to orange and black,” Buker said. With that iconic color change, the team headed to a more favorable market in Philadelphia, changing its name to the Quakers. The Flyers still use the black and orange color scheme to this day.

Philadelphia entered the NHL in the 1930-1931 season. Unfortunately, the team fared worse than when in Pittsburgh: The Quakers were awful. After one losing season, the team folded, and only minor league hockey would hold up in Pennsylvania for the next 37 years.

When the NHL decided to expand from six to 12 teams in the mid-1960s, the frozen fields and asphalt streets of Pennsylvania appealed to the league as a prime hockey market. Wearing their respective blue and orange, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers played the first home game in Philadelphia’s Spectrum Arena on Oct. 19, 1967. This first meeting resulted in a 1-0 victory for the Flyers, who would dominate the ice for the following decade.

During the 1970s, the Flyers’ tendency to spar frequently on the ice earned them a reputation for violent tactics and the nickname “The Broad Street Bullies.” Throughout this era Philadelphia dominated — not just the Penguins, but also the league, becoming the first expansion team to win a Stanley Cup in 1974.

Yet across the state, the Penguins weren’t content to continue their losing streak. A man named Mario would soon give the Penguins’ name glory.

“The Penguins were on life support when they drafted Mario Lemieux with the first overall pick in the 1984 Draft,” Buker said. Within the next five years, Lemieux and the 1988 Penguins accomplished what had seemed impossible: defeating the Flyers in the Spectrum on Feb. 2, 1989.

The Penguins would go on to thrash the entire league during the early 1990s, winning two Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992.

“A couple of generations since then have grown up loving hockey,” Ruck said. With their uniforms changed to the colors of other famed Pittsburgh teams — black and gold — and the development of a Pittsburgh-worthy winning record, the Penguins became an integral part of the city.

In an effort to improve their standings, the Broad Street Bullies acquired hockey protegé Eric Lindros and embraced a different type of play from their cross-state rivals.

“While the Pens embraced a more skilled, artistic approach,” Buker said, “the Flyers returned to their bristling, body-banging roots.” A tradition of the Flyers’ “old-time hockey” remained, and by 2000, a series of close contests between well-balanced players created a sense of camaraderie across the state.

“The bad blood that flowed for years gave way to mutual respect,” Buker said. While the Flyers remained victorious during this time, yet another Pittsburgh arrival would change the game. Canada’s latest import, who spent his childhood shooting pucks at his dryer, would turn the Penguins’ luck in the rivalry across the state.

Sidney Crosby is a polarizing figure who receives an equal amount of scorn from fans of other franchises as he garners praise from Penguins fans, who adore their team’s captain.

“You always expect the unexpected with Crosby,” Novak said. “You believe the unbelievable. I realize that you may have just gagged at that cheesiness, but it doesn’t negate the fact that it’s true.”

The popularity of an athlete hailed as “the next great one” is easily visible in the variety of jerseys that move along Forbes and Fifth avenues on a game day. Eighty-seven — a number correlating with Crosby’s birthday, Aug. 7, 1987 — is blocked out in Pittsburgh’s traditional black and gold, or the throwback dark blue jerseys show Penguins pride.

In 2009, Crosby led the Penguins to their first Stanley Cup victory in 17 years. His skill and ever-growing celebrity overwhelms at least one Flyers fan.

“I guess it’s good for the Penguins,” Cuce noted of Crosby’s recent return to the ice. “I think it was kind of over-hyped and blown way out of proportion, though.” This sentiment underlines the phenomenon that allows a player to be an asset to one team and an ominous figure to another.

The Flyers have continued a successful run for the past few years with stars of their own, watched by their many fans from dorms, apartments or wherever the game can be caught in this “out-of-market” region.

Cuce pointed toward Philadelphia’s sharp-eyed center Claude Giroux, Finnish-born defenseman Kimmo Timonen and newcomer Matt Read from the AHL’s Adirondack Phantoms.

“They leave everything on the ice each night and give it their best in every game they lace up their skates,” Cuce said. With the addition of seasoned players like former Penguin Jaromír Jágr, the Flyers have shown their own resilience in light of a changing lineup.

“No one expected the Flyers to be able to recover so quickly from the departures of Mike Richards and Jeff Carter,” Cuce said. “But the Flyers sit at the top of the league in goals scored so far this season.”

As the season moves forward, the Penguins prepare to meet the Flyers Dec. 8 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The arguments are going to get tougher for Novak, Cuce and other students who wear hockey on their sleeves.

“I tend to only have respect for Flyers fans when, one: they’ve been Flyers fans their whole lives like me, they didn’t have much of a choice,” Novak said. “And two: when they recognize that their team consists of a bunch of goons.”

“I don’t really have a bad perception about the people living across the state. The only bad perception I have is of their hockey team,” Cuce said. Despite their differences and criticisms, there is a great deal in common between Pennsylvania’s two teams.

“I think it’s a good thing to have friends that are both Penguins and Flyers fans,” Cuce said. “It makes the rivalry fun and exciting.”

“If it’s obvious that a person truly loves the sport of hockey in general, then we’ll get along well enough,” Novak said.

“After all, Vince and I both hate WVU.”