It's been 50 years, but Joe Watson remembers it all clear as day.
The final seconds he had with the puck behind the net against Boston, and a Spectrum so loud that had what seemed like hundreds of fans hopping over the glass in an instant when the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup, and then that war of attrition against Buffalo a year later, when it took until the third period for Bob Kelly and Bill Clement to finally break through for the second.
He remembers the parades, how incredible the first one was and how streaking was in at the time for the second, the highs, the lows, and through all of it, how the stars aligned for a bunch of Canadian kids to come in and give the city of Philadelphia exactly what it needed to rally behind in the Broad Street Bullies – when people needed it the most.
"Oh my god, yeah, I remember those days as if they were like yesterday," the former defenseman said over the phone earlier this week.
And those memories of the back-to-back Cup teams, and how they changed the NHL, have endured. They've been passed down through generations, and have even spread all over the world.
Watson, who spoke in promotion of the Flyers' Alumni Charity Classic Weekend set for next month, has seen it.
When he and a group of Flyers alumni traveled to Russia in early 2017, a place they never figured the team would be welcomed to after they pummeled the Red Army in 1976, he was instead shocked to be met with people enthusiastically wanting to talk about that game and how the Broad Street Bullies did it, and even more so to see some of them wearing Flyers jerseys.
Then, through the release of his autobiography "Thundermouth" last year, he told the story of a Flyers fan from Budapest, Hungary who bought his book and reached out to him, having made his first trip to Philadelphia with his family for a game back in March.
"I didn't even think they had hockey over there," Watson quipped, but he was happy to hear that the Flyers' reach stretched that far, only lamenting that he couldn't tell late founder and owner Ed Snider — who was at the very core of the team's identity but passed in 2016 — any of it.
"He would've been so excited to hear about that," Watson said.
But the memories, and the impact, that those Flyers team left, they don't fade.
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Watson, who played alongside his younger brother Jimmy during the team's golden era, didn't think the Flyers would be without the Cup again for this long, calling back to how close they were in '76, '80, '87, and 2010 as the team changed throughout the years.
He's optimistic, though.
The Flyers, as they're constructed now, still need a few bigger-name players before they can push for the playoffs, then endure all of it after, Watson said. But he believes they're trending upward with Danny Brière and Keith Jones in the front office, and with Rick Tocchet coming in as the new head coach.
"He demands respect," Watson said of Tocchet. "I'm not saying that other coaches don't have his pedigree, but the players look at him, the type of player he was, he was a grind 'em out type of player, and there was no fooling around with him. He got out there, and if there were things going on that he didn't like, he'd jump right in there and handle the situations very well."
It's Tocchet's job now to teach that to the current generation of young Flyers, and it'll be a process.
Until then, Flyers alumni will be gathering to spend time with fans during their now annual charity weekend from June 21-23 throughout the area.
A roster of more than 60 Flyers alumni through the decades, including the Watson brothers, will be around for a pickleball tournament in Malvern, 5K and 10K walks/runs in Conshohocken, and a golf outing in Wilmington, Delaware to round out the weekend.
Watson said he isn't much of a pickleball player or a runner, but he is a golfer and will be around to meet, talk, and cheer with every fan signing up throughout.
"If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have a job," Watson said of the Flyers fans, nor would those Cup teams have become the legends they are.
More info on the Flyers Alumni's Charity Classic Weekend can be found HERE.
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