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The regular season came to a close on April 7, 1974. Both the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins played that night, though with opposite outcomes, and both featured goalies who set records. Bernie Parent led the Flyers to his 47th victory of the season. Andy Brown, the last remaining NHL goalie to forgo wearing a face mask, played his final NHL game as the Penguins failed to make playoffs.

For a Spectrum crowd of 17,007, the first-place Flyers worked to end on a high note, defeating the eighth-place Minnesota North Stars 6-2. Minnesota’s coach, Parker MacDonald, bemoaned, “It’s hard to get your team up when it doesn’t mean anything and the other team is going for all those records. We had nowhere to go.” His goalie, Gump Worsley, who had to watch what would have been his final NHL game, groused, “We have somewhere to go, home.”

The records the Flyers took included having the most wins and fewest losses by a West Division team. Philadelphia became only the third NHL team to win 50 games in one season, after Boston had accomplished the feat three times and Montreal had managed once. However, the Flyers just missed having the best overall points that season by accumulating 112, one shy of the Bruins’ total. Obviously, the Flyers topped the West Division with a record of 50-16-12.

As the man in the net, Parent received credit for the victory. With that 47th victory, he set the record for most regular-season wins. That record held until the 2006-07 season, when Martin Brodeur won 48 games with the New Jersey Devils. Parent himself almost reached his own record with 44 wins the following season. On the way to earning all his victories, Parent started in a record 73 (of 78) games. He ended the 1973-74 season with a record of 47-13-12 with a league-leading 1.89 goals-against average from only 136 goals against.

Parent’s goals against combined with those of backup Bobby Taylor amounted to 164 goals against for the Flyers, almost 100 fewer than the previous season. Just the game before, on April 6, poor Taylor had suffered a 6-1 loss to Pittsburgh that seemed like it had ruined the chances of Parent receiving the Vezina Trophy for fewest goals against. Instead, the biggest competition, Tony Esposito of the Chicago Blackhawks, had the misfortune of having Marcel Dionne score on him with 66 seconds remaining in their season. After Chicago’s 7-4 victory over the Detroit Red Wings, they also had 164 goals against. Parent and Esposito officially tied for the Vezina Trophy. Taylor was relieved. “This perks me up a little. I never felt so bad in my life – all I could think was I had lost it for Bernie.” Parent clowned, “Tell that Dionne I’ll kiss him and take him fishing all summer. Isn’t that great? I don’t know how Esposito feels, but I feel great.” For the first time since the Vezina Trophy was established 48 years prior, two goalies from different teams had their names inscribed.

All of this success came right on the heels of Parent’s disastrous season with the WHA. After starting with the Bruins in 1965, Philadelphia selected Parent during the 1967 Expansion Draft. Having been traded to Toronto in early 1971, Parent left for the WHA when it began in 1972. Thanks to a broken anklebone, he had to sit out a month. Then, the night before the Philadelphia Blazers’ second playoff game, Parent walked out on the team that had failed to pay the remainder of the insurance on his hefty salary. Consequently, the Blazers suspended him. Meanwhile, in the NHL, Toronto traded him back to Philadelphia, where he happily remained until February 17, 1979, when an eye injury impaired his vision.

While Philadelphia had a fantastic night, the Penguins went down in Atlanta’s flames. The sold-out Omni held a crowd of 15,141 to watch their Flames defeat the Penguins 6-3. That put them nine points over Pittsburgh as the teams finished fourth and fifth, respectively, in the West Division.

From the Penguins’ perspective, there would not have been anything special about their final game of the season if it were not for their goalie. Andy Brown only played in 62 NHL games with this being his last. During the 1973-74 season, he saw more ice time than the other three goalies carried by Pittsburgh and finished with a record of 13-16-4 and 115 goals against. Since it looked like Pittsburgh planned to go with other goalies, Brown then signed with the Indianapolis Racers of the WHA. He tended goal for them from 1974 until his spinal injury limited him to ten games during the 1976-77 season.

Throughout his career, both in the NHL and WHA, Brown refused to wear a protective mask during games even though he would wear one during practices. The official reasoning he gave was that the mask limited his visual range. Brown also once said, “So why don’t I wear a mask? Well, I think it’s mind over matter. I’ve never worn one and I can’t say I’m horrified at the thought of what might happen without one. I’m myself and I say different strokes for different folks.” He even joked, “When those TV cameras zoom in on the guys with the masks, they look like monsters. When they zoom in on me – they see an untouched marvel!” As masks became mandatory, Brown’s final NHL appearance also became the final NHL appearance of a maskless goaltender.

Another distinction Brown held was that he incurred the most penalties by a NHL goaltender. During the 1973-74 season, his 60 penalty minutes crushed Billy Smith’s record 42 from the previous season. Brown held the record until Gerry Cheevers amassed 62 minutes during the 1979-80 season. Brown also set the same record for the WHA when he accrued 75 penalty minutes during the 1974-75 season.

During the 1973-74 postseason, the Flyers swept the Flames during the quarter-finals and then took seven games to eliminate the New York Rangers. The Flyers became the first expansion team to with the Stanley Cup upon defeating the Boston Bruins four games to two in the finals. Parent was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, and he said, “To play here, and win like this, it’s the greatest feeling in the world.” Both the Flyers and Parent duplicated their awards the following season, winning back-to-back the Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe Trophy, and Vezina Trophy. In acknowledgement, the Flyers retired Parent’s No. 1, and he became the first of their franchise inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984.

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