Today in The Flyers Organizations History Marks a Special Day

Fourteen years ago today on April 10, 2009, the AHL Philadelphia Phantoms played the last regular season hockey game ever contested at the now sadly long gone Spectrum beating their arch rivals, the Hershey Bears, 5-2 in front of 17,380 fans in the SRO crowd. The event was commemorated with the raising of a banner to go along with the club's two Calder Cup championship banners from 1998 and 2005 with «FINAL GAME APRIL 10, 2009» followed by Flyers' Hall of Fame voice Gene Hart's popular sign-off phrase «GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD HOCKEY».

It was certainly a bitter sweet night for me as I walked out of the building at age 63 (I am 76 now) which I had first entered 42 years earlier in October, 1967 at age 21, in which I had graduated from Temple University in June, 1968, and where I drank from the Stanley Cup in the Flyers' lockerroom on May 19, 1974. In the four plus decades the Spectrum was open I spent about 2,000 days and nights there attending and/or covering events the vast majority of which were Flyers, Phantoms and Bulldogs hockey games and Wings lacrosse games accounting for more then 10,000 hours of my life!!
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO POST A COMMENT WITH WHAT THE SPECTRUM MEANT TO YOU!!