National Sports Journalism Center

When it comes to sports and success, we always like to teach youngsters that fair play and following the rules are the only way to win.

But how, then, do you explain the success of the mid-1970s-era Philadelphia Flyers, a rowdy, brawling bunch of unpredictable pugs who electrified fans and dismayed National Hockey League officials by winning not one but two Stanley Cup titles in 1974 and 1975?

HBO attempts to tell the tale of hockey’s unlikeliest heroes in Broad Street Bullies, an hour-long documentary airing at 10 tonight that’s as pugnacious and unapologetic as its subjects, catching up with former players, journalists and team officials to tell the story of a squad that – for some – embodied everything that was wrong with early hockey games.

“When I’m sitting in the stands and people are saying ‘We want Schultz,’ they don’t want goals,” said Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, a player whose ferocious fighting style and unbridled attitude helped breathe life into a team that initially struggled to compete in the NHL.

HBO’s film pulls few punches, calling team captain Bobby Clarke a “ruthless, toothless rink rat, whose on-ice antics were semi-legal but fairly effective.” Philadelphia itself was a “hardscrabble beer and a hoagie kind of town” with a “working class population set in its ways” and not looking to welcome a new sport to town.

The film starts in 1967, when a group of ambitious businessmen snagged $2-million in financing to create an expansion hockey team in Philadelphia, bringing the sport of Canada’s youth to a town better known for baseball and hoagie sandwiches piled high with cheese and chipped beef.

Early on, as one of six new expansion teams, the Flyers snagged Canadian players who couldn’t find Philadelphia on a map to create its squad – which didn’t really jell until owners found Schultz and a few other brawny brawlers to keep opposing teams from physically intimidating them.

The archival footage barely does the fights justice, as skaters pounded at each other in the days before mandatory helmets and rules preventing bench-clearing brawls. Schultz himself set a record for minutes in the penalty box during one championship that has yet to be beaten more than 30 years later.

Tagged as the Broad Street Bullies by sportswriter and author Jack Chevalier, the Flyers would eventually embody the dichotomy many sports endure.

On the one hand, their violence and aggression electrified fans in Philadelphia, who took the team to heart strongly enough that crowds of 15,000 would watch them play softball outside the rink. But competing teams called them “animals on skates,” adopting the team’s strategy of recruiting bruisers for brawls until matches devolved into sprawling fights that cheapened the sport.

“We were ultimate fighters without the cage around us,” said former Flyer Bill Clement, laughing heartily. Toronto Sun hockey writer Frank Orr was more somber, adding, “to the purist, they represented everything evil about the game.“

Even their 1976 victory against the Soviet Central Red Army team during an exhibition game came from their unflinching brutality. The Soviet team even tried to quit after a particularly tough shot against one of their players — coaxed back onto the ice after organizers said they wouldn’t be paid if they didn’t finish the game.

With butter-smooth narration from Liev Schreiber and lively interviews with former players, HBO presents a team that seems equally proud of the skill they brought to the game – star goalie Bernie Parent shut out the Boston Bruins in one Stanley Cup final – and the physical intimidation they brought to bear.

In return, they become enduring heroes, known and celebrated by present-day fans as the competitive, hard-working reflection of a working class town that hasn’t seen a Stanley Cup championship since the Bullies took home their two honors more than three decades ago.

Wonder what that says about the whole sportsmanship and fair play thing, after all?

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed, at blogs.tampabay.com/media.