I'm 46 years old. I never got to see the Flyers' glory years of the 1970s; however, I heard a lot about those years and those teams. The best I got to see was of the Flyers was in those special, "oh-so-close" years from 1995 to 2005.
I've also never met Bernie Parent. I've met just a tiny handful of Flyers in my life. The only one I really had any sort of prolonged experience with was Gene Hart. I met him at a charity function, and as most people were crowded around the players, or themselves, Mr. Hart took the time and spoke with me, an awkward, shy teen, for 20-30 minutes. The only connection I have to Bernie Parent was an autographed puck I had and, unfortunately, had to sell when times got tough for me a few years ago.
So how can I, someone who has never met or interacted with the greatest goalie in Flyers history (sorry, Hexy), be qualified to say goodbye?
The hockey community is a tight-knit one. We share our joys, like with the 4 Nations Tournament this past spring. We also share our sorrows. We've seen the NHL community rally around each other the last few years over the tragic passings of Johnny Gaudreau and Jimmy Hayes.
As Flyers fans, we can also be quite rabid. We can "out Philly" our Eagles and Phillies fan brethren in the best of moments, like the three fans who got ejected from Pittsburgh for their hilariously offensive custom "Malkin-Crosby-Neal" jerseys. So, in that hockey community sense, we grieve.
We also grieve the loss of a great player. In the 1970s, there was no goalie better. His back-to-back seasons with 12 shutouts are the second most in the modern hockey era, bested only by Dominik Hasek in the 90s. Let's be honest...how many of us would be willing to chop off some body part right now if we could have a goalie who'd have a GAA of 1.89 for a whole season? (Do I really need my pinky toes?) He is a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest goalies ever to play the game.
More importantly, he was a great man, a hall of famer in life. There are thousands of stories floating around about how genuinely nice Parent was to people he'd meet doing everyday things. Everybody he met was special to him, and he would take time out of his day to make a fan happy.
A little more than 10 years ago, he began writing columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Among his columns were exhortations on being kind to people and being grateful for all you have. These are lessons we can all learn from today.
Being a great goalie is one thing, but the hole that is left with our collective loss of Bernie is simply the man he was. Someone of his stature who was kind and gentle to everyone he met in the craziest sports town you can find is a great person. He went out of his way to be ingratiated into every aspect of Philadelphia and fully embraced it.
More than that, we embraced him. He may have been a French Canadian from Montreal, but he is an adopted Philadelphian. We lost a great one this past week, and that hole will be hard to fill. I may not have known you personally, but in one way or another, you touched most of our lives. We'll miss you, friend.