Iconic Flyers broadcaster Gene Hart’s passion was teaching — whether it was hockey or high school history

Another in a series remembering the Flyers, who won their first Stanley Cup championship 50 years ago.

The chartered flight left Philadelphia for Montreal on Friday afternoon, giving Gene Hart just enough time to get to the airport after the final bell sounded at Audubon High School. He was the Flyers’ broadcaster, the voice of the Broad Street Bullies who started with the team before they even secured a radio deal.

Hart was also a high school teacher who had to finish his history lessons before joining the team for a road trip.

“It was wheels up at 4 o’clock,” said Lou Nolan, the team’s longtime public address announcer. “But he made it all the time. He was running hard from wherever it was in South Jersey that he had his Friday afternoon classes. He would be one of the last guys on the plane.”

Philadelphia gravitated toward the Broad Street Bullies, a group of rough-and-rowdy Canadians who captured the imagination of the region by winning back-to-back Stanley Cups. The fans drank with them at Rexy’s, played softball against them in Avalon, babysat their kids in South Jersey, and even had the team’s broadcaster as a teacher. At the Spectrum, the Flyers were cooler than the Ice Capades. Away from the arena, they were your neighbors.

Philadelphia had hockey before the Flyers arrived in 1967 as the Ramblers played in West Philadelphia and the Jersey Devils played in Cherry Hill. But the sport was still foreign to most. Philadelphia soon became a premier hockey town with a passionate fan base that filled the Spectrum enough that a third level of seats was needed. The fans first had to learn what icing meant.

» READ MORE: ‘It was our watering hole’: How a South Jersey bar became the Broad Street Bullies’ favorite hangout

It seemed appropriate that the voice that helped the region learn the game every night was a teacher during the day. Hart also taught at Lenape High School, the Leesburg State Prison near Millville, and a small three-room school near Atlantic City.

He was a wordsmith who broadcasted with the rapid-fire delivery of a one-timer and the passion of a fan in that third level. He also called the game with the knowledge of a New York City kid who fell in love with hockey at Madison Square Garden and dreamed of becoming a hockey broadcaster while listening to the radio.

He explained to Philadelphia what it meant to be offside, described how a goalie made a save, and took his time to explain what icing actually was. Like a good teacher, Hart met his pupils where they were. If listeners didn’t know anything, he taught them the basics. If they knew a little bit, they gained even more.

“He had the innate ability to take you from in front of your radio to rink-side to watch the game and begin to understand it,” Nolan said. “He may explain the first two icings differently than the third and then maybe you said, ‘Oh, yeah. I know that. I’m beginning to understand it.’ When you listened to Gene explain it, it put you in the building, and gave you the knowledge for how it was going to be.”

Hart’s calls — “He shoots and scores for a case of Tastykakes” — were classic; and he captured the big moments — “Ladies and gentleman, the Flyers are going to win the Stanley Cup” — with perfection. He called more than 2,000 NHL games during 28 seasons, worked six Stanley Cup Finals, wished everyone a “good night and good hockey,” and even translated for the Soviet Union players before the Flyers chased away the Red Army.

Hart was an icon. First, he was a teacher.

“He was the perfect guy to teach Philly hockey,” said Hart’s daughter, Lauren. “What made his broadcast really great is that he was a teacher. He wasn’t only bringing the here and now but he was bringing in interesting facts about players and where they came from and stories. He was a great storyteller and that’s why he was a great teacher and a great broadcaster. The man knew how to tell a story and engage people and get them excited about what was in front of them.”

Hart served in the Army during the Korean War, returned home, and found work as a repo man. He had a car and made his own hours, so Hart, who graduated from Pleasantville High after his family moved from New York, carved out time to referee high school and college basketball games.

» READ MORE: The Broad Street Bullies had iconic Stanley Cup banners. The Flyers say they’ll look into hanging them again.

After working a game at Atlantic City High School, Hart overheard that the school’s radio broadcast would be down a man for the next game in Trenton.

“I suppose it was at that moment on a Friday night in February of 1958 that my career actually started,” Hart wrote in Score, his autobiography. “When I said, ‘Well, I’ll go along.’ ”

Hart’s debut went well and he kept picking up more high school games. The future Hall of Fame broadcaster earned $5 a night. It was a start. He left his repo job for the classroom and became a teacher. Hart was recruited in 1965 to work at Aquarama, the Sea World-esque attraction on South Broad Street.

He kept calling high school games while also working as the announcer for the seal, whale, and dolphin show in South Philly.

Hart still dreamed of becoming a hockey broadcaster, but the NHL was not yet in Philly. He became the radio announcer for the Jersey Devils, calling the third period of their games at the Cherry Hill Ice House. It wasn’t the big leagues but it was close. And Philadelphia was about to get a team.

» READ MORE: Fifty years ago, the Broad Street Bullies fell in love with Avalon. Some never left.

Aquarama was just a short walk from where the Spectrum was rising, so Hart would walk over to the construction site on his lunch break and dream about working there. He gazed at the arena’s shell, visualizing where the dressing rooms and press box would be. Hart just needed a chance.

“I wasn’t a 12-year-old kid. I was 35,” Hart wrote in his book. “But I still had that hunger. ‘If only I could get that job.’ ”

Bobby Taylor stopped his car at the red light, reached for his tape recorder, and started to describe what he saw at the intersection: the street names, the restaurants, the cars driving past, the people on the corner.

“One of my buddies goes, ‘What the hell are you doing?,’ ” Taylor said. “I said ‘Ah. It’s an exercise I have to do for my job.’ ”

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Taylor was Bernie Parent’s backup with the Broad Street Bullies and transitioned to broadcasting after retiring in 1976. He knew hockey. But “The Chief” needed to learn how to describe it. So Hart, the high school teacher by day, gave Taylor homework.

“I carried this damn tape recorder around with me all the time,” Taylor said. “He said, ‘What I want you to do is describe a red light in four or five words. And what’s the purpose of it? Because then you have to condense everything in your head into very few words but still have people understand what you’re saying. It’s a lot harder to put into words when you’re trying to explain something. You have to remember that you’re talking to a blind person because they can’t see on radio.’”

Hart retired from the classroom after the first Stanley Cup, but he never stopped teaching. The broadcast became his classroom and his partners weren’t exempt from assignments.

» READ MORE: What are the Broad Street Bullies doing now? Some are enjoying retirement, but others can’t quit hockey.

“He was a taskmaster, but he was a guy who taught me so much about broadcasting and how you don’t just show up and do the game,” Taylor said. “You have to do your homework. You have to study the game. You have to talk to people from the other team. You have to get background information.

“He always said, ‘The reason why you do this is because every game is different. And everyone knows all about the stars, but it’s the third- and fourth- line guys or fifth and sixth defenseman or backup goalie who might get the chance to play and if you don’t know anything about him, you’re not going to inform people very well.’”

Hart learned how to prepare when he was calling high school games as he would drive to the opposing school a day before the game to chat with coaches. He paid his own way there, but it was worth it as it taught Hart how to do the job.

» READ MORE: Toughest Broad Street Bully of them all? Barry Ashbee’s legacy lives on.

“If you were lucky, you got to use 20 percent of what you studied,” Taylor said. “But out of that 20 percent, 10 of it was something you would have never known if you didn’t pay attention and did your homework. I was always grateful that he taught me that ‘you have to prepare, You have to prepare.’ That’s something I’ve been really thankful for all these years.”

Hart learned to speak Russian while serving in the Army, had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan, and spent his summers announcing at a horse track. He loved art, was interested in politics, and studied history. He was more than just a hockey announcer.

“He always had opera playing in his car,” Taylor said. “I used to bust him on it. I said, ‘You have to be kidding me, Gene.’ Finally, he took me with him.”

Hart’s seats at The Met were about 15 rows from the stage in the center of the theater. He told Taylor that the opera crowd reminded him of hockey fans as they yelled, screamed, and clapped. Taylor skated in every famous hockey arena. But his night at the theater amazed him.

» READ MORE: Bernie Parent was the Broad Street Bullies’ brightest star. Now he’s the Flyers’ de facto mascot.

“What really blew my mind is when you sit down and the curtain is ready to go up, the chandeliers retracted into the roof,” Taylor said. “As you can tell, it made a real impression on me. This is like 100 years later. I had no idea what the guy was singing about, but boy did he have a good voice.”

The guy who loved opera and was born in New York City found a way to connect with Philadelphia. He may have been the smartest guy in the room — “Basically, he did know everything,” Taylor said — but he was not afraid to let others in on what he knew. And that’s what made him a great teacher.

“He was an amazing guy and very, very bright,” said Don Saleski, the Broad Street Bully known as Big Bird. “He had special talents and it was all his intellect.”

Hart got his wish in 1967 when the Flyers offered him a job. But it was to be the public address announcer as the radio deal was not yet finished. It beat announcing the dolphin show on the other side of Broad Street. The games were soon on radio and Hart’s boyhood dream came true. He was an NHL broadcaster.

“He was part of the team,” Saleski said. “We were the kind of team that was always ribbing each other and making jokes. I can tell you that there were more fat jokes about Gene Hart and he would just give it right back to you. He would say, ‘I might be fat, but I can change that. You’re dumb. You can’t change that.’ He was just part of us. He was a key part of the Broad Street Bullies. He brought us alive. A lot of people listened on the radio back then and the Voice of the Flyers is really what brought us to life.”

The Flyers often returned late at night from road games and Hart stood the next morning in front of his class. He was passionate about both careers, finding a way to be energized both in the classroom during the day and the arena that night.

“Some kids who lived near me in Medford had Gene as a teacher and I was really curious how he was,” Taylor said. “They said he was the best teacher that they ever had because every class was interesting. He made it interesting. They said you really did learn a lot from him. They sang his praises, but it also may have helped that he was a Flyers broadcaster and we walked on water during those Broad Street Bully days.”

Hart worked his final Flyers game in 1995 and died on July 14,1999. He was 68. By then, the Philadelphia sports fan was well entrenched in a game that was once so foreign. And for many Philadelphia hockey fans, Hart was their teacher.

“Gene had that ability to connect with people. It was marvelous,” Nolan said. “He explained things and could make you feel like you were there.”