Philadelphia Flyers: The Best Teams That Didn’t Win the Cup

Honorable Mentions

There are two teams who didn’t make my top-5 Flyers teams, even though they made it all the way to the NHL finals.

The 1984-85 Flyers, aka “Keenan’s Kids,” turned a lot of heads around the league.  Mark Howe, probably the best defensemen the Flyers have ever had, was the old man of the team at 29 years old.

Pretty much everyone else was between 19-25 years old, including 25 year old goalie Pelle Lindbergh, who would be awarded the Vezina for his season.  On top of that, they were led by an NHL rookie coach in Mike Keenan.

It was a time of massive transition for the organization.  The old guard of Clarke, Barber, MacLeish and Parent were gone, with Clarke moving up to the GM office.

None of those factors mattered, and the Flyers had a furious 113 point regular season, best in the NHL, and still stands as the 3rd most points any Flyers team has ever achieved.

The dream, however, was not meant to be for Keenan’s Kids.  They were overmatched by Wayne Gretzky and the dynastic Oilers in the Stanley Cup finals, losing 4-1.

The other team worthy of an honorable mention is the 2009-10 Flyers.  They were a bit of Jekyll and Hyde team, enduring a roller coaster season.  They found their game when it mattered most, however, and made it all the way to game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals.

That season had been one of great expectations, as the Flyers added Chris Pronger in the offseason and the Hockey News made them their preseason cup pick.  Things didn’t turn out that smoothly.

The Flyers looked good on paper, with a very good top-4 defense and a solid top-9 group of forwards.  The Flyers, however, were plodding along and out of a playoff position when they fired coach John Stevens in early December, replacing him with Peter Laviolette.

Laviolette hardly waved a magic wand, and the team continued with a 28-24-5 record under Laviolette.  It would take a shootout victory on the last game of the season to clinch a playoff spot, a rather miraculous result given that the Flyers had an awful shootout record.

The playoffs were no less a roller coaster, with Brian Boucher and Michael Leighton trading the starting job due to injuries.  In the second round, the Flyers made a historic comeback against Boston, fighting back from a 3-0 deficit in the series, as well as in game 7, to win.

As often happens, many Flyers fans will look back at their eventual loss to the Blackhawks in the finals and blame the goaltending (and THAT goal, below), but it was hard to ask for much more from an 88-point regular season team against the now 3-time cup winning Blackhawks.

Next: #5