PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Joe Watson spent more than a decade with the Flyers as one of their top defensemen. As a key member of the "Broad Street Bullies," he helped them win their two Stanley Cup titles.
Watson and the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup in 1974, beating the Boston Bruins in six games. Game 6 was a 1-0 win as the Flyers had to make a first period goal by Rick MacLeish stand up. Watson remembered the final minutes as Flyers goalie Bernie Parent kept the Bruins at bay.
"I'll never forget, there was about three minutes to go in the game and Kenny Hodge comes down, a big right-winger, he gets a pass from [Boston star Phil] Esposito and he lets the shot go from about 30-35 feet out and Bernie gets his toe on the puck," he recalled.
"I'm on the bench, I can see this and Bernie sticks his toe out there. I said, when he made that save, I knew we were going to win the Cup."
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Watson had a lot of great moments during his career in Philadelphia. One came on January 11, 1976 as the Flyers were in the process of beating the Soviet Red Army team 4-1 in a legendary exhibition match-up.
"I never really got involved in the offense that much, but I scored a short-handed goal in the second period against the Russians and we go up 3-0," he said.
"After the game, [head coach] Fred Shero comes in and congratulates us and everything else and then he said to me in front of all the players, 'Joe, by scoring that short-handed goal, you're going to set the Russian program back 20 years.' And you know what, they still haven't recovered!"
You can listen to the entire conversation with Joe Watson by checking out the latest episode, above, of the KYW Newsradio original podcast, "1-on-1 with Matt Leon." For more, subscribe on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.