The Wild Bunch

Philadelphia Flyers Coach Fred Shero has a simple formula for hockey games: "If you keep the opposition on their asses," he says, "they don't score goals." Since the opening face-off of the season, the Flyers have executed that rough-and-tumble philosophy with savage enthusiasm, sending opponents sprawling across the ice at every opportunity. The tactic has worked: the Flyers finished with the second-best record in the National Hockey League and last week became the first expansion team in the league to play as a serious contender in the Stanley Cup finals.

By the time the Flyers opened the play-off series against the Boston Bruins last week, they had made themselves into one of the most despised teams in sport. With at least four players whose major talent seems to be assault and battery against the opposition, the Flyers have introduced a new dimension of gratuitous violence to an already rough sport. This year they spent a staggering 1,750 min. in the penalty box for slashing, spearing, tripping and generally mauling opponents. No other team has ever topped 1,400 min.

The Flyer who holds hockey's all-time penalty record--348 min.--is Dave ("The Hammer") Schultz. A soft-spoken Canadian who grew up in a Saskatchewan Mennonite community where he attended Bible camp for several summers, Schultz turns into a hired killer on the ice. "I get so worked up I don't know what's going on," he admits. Indeed Schultz at times makes hockey resemble a roller derby or pro wrestling with his wild punching sprees. Against the N.Y. Rangers in a semifinal Stanley Cup game, Schultz slugged Brad Park four times while the Ranger defenseman was pinned to the ice by officials trying to stop the fight. Coach Shero applauds such tough tactics: "Speed, skill and strength make a hockey player," says Shero. "Schultz realizes he does not have speed or skill, so what is he here for? To beat up the other guy."

For Coach Shero, "The Broad Street Bullies" are an extension of his own Darwinian ideas. Explains the former Ranger defenseman: "In professional sport, the strong survive and the weak fall by the wayside." To keep his players tough, Shero does not smother them with compliments when they play well. "That's just the way I am," he says. "I told my wife 'I love you' once, and that was the day we were married."

Force alone did not carry the Flyers into the Stanley Cup finals. Along with its gladiators, the team possesses some first-class athletes. Center Bobby Clarke, last year's Most Valuable Player in the N.H.L., is one of the best skaters, stickhandlers and shooters in hockey. Rick MacLeish, another speedy center, racked up 32 goals this season.

Amateur Philosopher. The key to the Flyers' fortunes, though, is Goal Tender Bernie Parent, who restricted opponents to an average of 1.89 goals per game this year. After nine years of floating between teams and leagues--he spent last year with the rival World Hockey Association--Parent, 29, has become the best goalie in the game. A protege of Jacques Plante, the former Montreal Canadien, Parent does more for the Flyers than fulfill the promise of the bumper sticker on his new Imperial: ONLY THE LORD SAVES MORE THAN BERNIE PARENT.

Off the ice, Parent is something of an amateur philosopher ("Hockey is like marriage--made up of a thousand little things"). He is also traveling psychologist for the Flyers. "If someone is worried about a slump," says Shero, "I put him in Bernie's room on the road for a few days. It usually works."

As the Flyers headed back home from Boston late last week, they needed no counseling. On home ice, the experienced, high-scoring Bruins, led by Superstars Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr, had managed to gain only a split of the first two games in the best-of-seven series. The Flyers were counting on taking control of the series before their fierce Philadelphia public. On their side was a recording of God Bless America by Kate Smith, which is superstitiously played before games that the Flyers must win. Since the tradition started in 1969, the team has responded with a record of 35-3-1. For Parent, the thirst to win was particularly strong. "The night after we beat N.Y.," he recalled, "I moved my little boy out of his bed and put him with my wife. Then I lay on his bed until 6 o'clock in the morning thinking about the win." Quite a few Rangers were probably lying awake that night as well--nursing their bruises.

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