Hextall nets special Flyers honor

Even if you had your eyes closed, you knew Ron Hextall was guarding the net.

All you had to do was listen, and you'd hear the loud clang of Hextall's stick against the uprights and the crossbar, a ritual but also a sort of siren call that the goalie was daring any shooter to come his way.

Of course, when Hextall was playing goal for the Flyers 20 years ago, you wanted to keep your eyes open, focused on him, because you never knew what you might see.

He was unique. When Hextall came into the NHL as a 22-year-old rookie for the 1986-87 season, the league had never quite seen anything like him: a tall, rangy, athletic goalie who wandered far out of the net to deftly stickhandle the puck. He'd go on to become the first goalie to score a goal by actually shooting the puck into the net. He did it twice.

Hextall also used his stick in more violent ways, chopping down intruders around the crease as if they were so much timber. The league didn't always appreciate Hextall's stick-wielding, which is why it suspended him for eight games for slashing Kent Nilsson in the back of the leg during the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals against Edmonton. He still holds the record for most penalty minutes by a goalie, 113 in the 1988-89 season.

And Hextall was a goalie who played with an anger that seethed just below his engaging, mild-mannered surface, a goalie with a hair-trigger temper who was quick to drop the gloves and join the fray.

Who can forget Hextall's racing out of the net and throwing his blocker at Chris Chelios in Game 6 of the conference finals in 1989 to avenge a vicious hit Chelios made on Brian Propp earlier in the series?

Tonight at the Wachovia Center, Hextall, now assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Kings, will become the 19th member of the Flyers' organization to be inducted into the team's Hall of Fame, and the first since Dave Poulin in 2004.

Before the game, there will be a highlight video and a ceremonial puck drop. Between the first and second periods, Hextall will be joined on the ice by his family for a tribute video and the induction.

"It means a great deal," Hextall said yesterday by telephone from Los Angeles. "Everybody knows I have extremely strong ties to the Flyers and to the city of Philadelphia. To be honored means a lot to me, and to have my family and friends there, and obviously the fans, it's going to be great."

The Flyers' promotions department will have little trouble filling the jumbo video screen with highlights from Hextall's colorful past.

A year after Vezina Trophy winner Pelle Lindbergh was killed when he drove his turbocharged Porsche into a wall in front of Somerdale Elementary School in South Jersey, Flyers coach Mike Keenan made Hextall, just up from the minors, his No. 1 goalie.

In his first game, Hextall stopped Wayne Gretzky on a breakaway to preserve a 2-1 Flyers win over Edmonton.

According to Full Spectrum, a detailed history of the Flyers by Jay Greenberg, Gretzky said to Hextall, "Who the hell are you?" Hextall snapped back at The Great One, "Who the hell are you?"

The victory was the start of an unforgettable season by Hextall and a young Flyers team. With some of the most remarkable goaltending by any netminder from any era, Hextall strapped the Flyers onto his back and carried them into the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals against Edmonton, probably the greatest offensive power in NHL history.

Hextall was spectacular in Game 6 at the Spectrum, which shook from the crowd's roar after J.J. Daigneault scored to complete a come-from-behind 3-2 win over the Oilers. To this day, just about anyone who was inside the Spectrum that night of May 28, 1987, says they never heard a louder arena.

"Winning Game 6 at the Spectrum was absolutely insane," Hextall recalled. "One of the best moments of my career, if not the best."

The series shifted back to Edmonton for the ultimate game and, again, the 6-foot-3 Hextall was brilliant, holding off the Oilers until Glenn Anderson scored with three minutes remaining to seal a 3-1 Flyers loss.

Long after the game, a tearful Hextall sat in the corner of the locker room, too devastated to remove his uniform. The pain, he said, still lingers.

"I can't explain to people how difficult that was for not only myself but every guy in that room," he said. "To be so close and to have gone through what we went through for the two months leading up to Game 7 and to be sitting in that locker room after the game with a hollow feeling, that all that work kind of went for naught.

"I mean, I can say it took me two, three months that summer to kind of get over the real, real stinging part. But there's a pain there that will never go away for me."

Hextall won the Vezina Trophy and became only the fourth player from a losing team to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the most valuable player in the playoffs.

At the time, it seemed impossible that Hextall could repeat such a stunning rookie season. For various reasons, including injuries that forced him to alter his style, he never did.

"That's a special team and special year for me," he said.

He never allowed a goal he didn't think he should have stopped, and he was always man enough to accept blame.

The goalie was included in the huge package the Flyers sent to Quebec for the rights to Eric Lindros in June 1992. Hextall returned to the Flyers in '94 for five more seasons and helped reenergize a team that had gone five straight years without making the playoffs.

Hextall, who had boldly predicted he would one day score a goal, did so early in his second season, against Boston on Dec. 8, 1987. (He repeated the feat against Washington in 1989.) Eight years earlier, the Islanders' Billy Smith had been credited with a goal because he was the last offensive player to touch the puck. But Hextall became the first to shoot it into the net.

"I remember [the media] bugging me every day: When are you going to score a goal? When are you going to score a goal?" Hextall recalled. "I remember the fans started to chant whenever the net was empty. I was like, just give me time. I was looking for the right opportunity, and it presented itself."