Flyers honor late team founder and owner, Ed Snider, who believed in doing ‘great things’ for others
On Saturday, with the Calgary Flames in town, the Flyers held their first Ed Snider Legacy Game — recognizing the late founder and owner, Dan Hilferty said, was long overdue.
It may be a new era for the Flyers, but that doesn’t mean they should forget the past.
On Saturday, with the Calgary Flames in town, the organization held its first Ed Snider Legacy Game on what would have been the team’s founder and owner’s 91st birthday. Snider died in 2016 after a long battle with bladder cancer. He was 83 years old.
Legacy is the best word used to describe the Philadelphia icon. Yes, his legacy lives on with the Flyers but the club is only the tip of the iceberg as his long-lasting impact goes beyond the walls of the Wells Fargo Center.
“He always believed that not only should you pursue greatness in your own life, but you should do great things for other people,” chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Spectacor Dan Hilferty told The Inquirer. “And the Snider Youth Hockey & Education Foundation was just a realization of that, of his vision to help people outside of his own strata.”
Created in 2005, the non-profit provides underserved children from urban neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Camden with the opportunity to learn to play ice hockey with the goal of teaching life lessons through the sport.
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“If it wasn’t for the organization, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said Jasmine Martinez, who started playing through SNIDER at age 5. “I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. My family wouldn’t be so connected with hockey and the hockey family as it is. So Snider’s organizations definitely helped me a lot and just being able to have Snider’s legacy live through not only my family but the entire Snider program is something that’s really cool.”
Martinez, who recently graduated with her master’s in sports business from Neumann University, helped the Flyers announce Cutter Gauthier as the No. 5 pick at the 2022 NHL Draft. This week, in coordination with the Flyers starting a program to provide an annual employment opportunity to a SNIDER graduate, she’ll begin working with the organization.
The connection between the organization and the foundation is one that Hilferty said was long overdue when it came to recognizing the late founder and owner.
The Flyers chairman, who met Snider once at a conference in California years ago, said it’s time for the organization to get back to its storied history, and “like planting a seed in the spring, you can see it beginning to grow.”
“Ed Snider is the ultimate foundational titan of this franchise,” Hilferty said. “There’s a reason his statue is outside of the building. And so, we just felt as we built this new era of orange, we needed to really understand, appreciate, and celebrate our foundation.”
Returning to their roots, rebuilding a proud organization, and growing the game are key strategies for the Flyers moving forward. And they took another step on Saturday.
Prior to a ceremonial puck drop by Lindy Snider, daughter of the late Ed Snider, and Cherelle Parker, the newly elected mayor of Philadelphia, fans watched a video that tributes to Snider. The Flyers also announced a $300,000 donation to SNIDER to build a new ball hockey rink in the area.
The move comes a few months after the Flyers, the Flyers Charities, and SNIDER worked together to build a ball hockey rink at the Joseph Scanlon Recreation Center in Kensington.
“Our lasting identity would be left there through rinks and improving playgrounds, and educational programs that introduced young people who came from maybe a less fortunate background,” Hilferty said, “introduced them not only to the game of hockey, but to this unbelievable person, Ed Snider, who believed that everybody should have a chance to do whatever they wanted to do.
“It’s been a tough couple of years. ... The message today is: We’re paying homage to the past, and you have our pledge that we’re going to be honest with you. We’re going to embrace you. We’re going to reach out to you, the fans, and we’re going to bring you along on this journey that we hope will be a really special one not only for the franchise, not only for the city as a whole, but we want to be the envy of the NHL.”