Shero finally gets call to Hall

ON THE DAY he was inducted into the Flyers' Hall of Fame in 1990, Fred Shero was approached by one of his former players.

"It's great to have you back, Freddie," Shero's son, Ray Shero, recounted the conversation. "My dad replied, 'Yeah, to be in the Flyers' Hall of Fame means a lot. Maybe one day, I'll be in the big one.' "

Fred Shero passed away just 8 months later at the age of 65.

Some 23 years later, "The Fog'' has been lifted. Turns out, the Hockey Hall of Fame does have room for one of the game's great innovators. Finally.

More than 32 years after last setting foot on an NHL bench, the Flyers' only Stanley Cup-winning coach was elected to hockey's hallowed Hall yesterday in Toronto. Shero will be posthumously enshrined in the "Builders" category on Nov. 11 along with former players Chris Chelios, Scott Niedermayer and Geraldine Heaney. Former Flyer Eric Lindros did not make the cut in his fourth year of eligibility.

Shero was a two-time Stanley Cup winner and the first-ever Jack Adams Award winner in 1974 as coach of the year. He is the first coach to be inducted since Herb Brooks in 2006 and just the seventh since 1990.

For each of the last 8 years, Flyers chairman Ed Snider and Bob Clarke - both Hall of Fame members - have been imploring the Hall's 18-member selection committee to consider Shero via letters. He finally got the 14 votes required.

"No one deserves it more than Fred Shero, in my opinion," Snider said. "He was the guy that put it all together. We gave him the parts and he made it work. There's no sense looking back as to why it didn't happen sooner, because today's a happy day to celebrate the fact that a guy that deserves it immensely has finally been elected to the Hall of Fame."

Shero is the eighth member of the Flyers to join the Hockey Hall of Fame, located in downtown Toronto. He joins Bernie Parent (1984), Clarke (1987), Snider (1988), Bill Barber (1990), former general manager Keith Allen (1992), broadcaster Gene Hart (1997) and Mark Howe (2011).

"Other than Keith Allen, Freddie Shero was the person who should have gone into the Hall of Fame ahead of myself, any of us who have gone in," Clarke said. "He was that important to the success of the Flyers."

He was also an important innovator for the game. Shero is often recognized as the first coach to employ a system or tactical approach, the first to hire a full-time assistant (Mike Nykoluk), the first to enact a mandatory pregame skate to get his players active on game days, the first to use in-season strength training, and the first to travel to Russia to study the Soviet Union's style of play. All of those firsts are still used in the NHL.

"He did more in 10 years that he coached than some guys did in 30 years," former Flyers defenseman Joe Watson said.

Though all of the United States and Canada were rooting for Shero and the Flyers when they were the only NHL team to knock off the Soviet Red Army, 4-1, on Jan. 11, 1976, many believed the bias against Philadelphia's non-traditional, rough-and-tumble style kept him out of the Hall.

"We were the Broad Street Bullies," Watson said at Shero's funeral in 1990. "It was hooliganism, and people held that against him."

Hockey's balloting process is secret, so selection-committee members aren't even allowed to say who is up for consideration. Ray Shero, the Penguins' general manager since 2006, was stunned committee members told him they were unaware his father wasn't in the Hall.

Ray Shero said he was playing football with his kids on vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., yesterday when he got the call. He was surprised; all these years later, it stopped crossing his mind each year when the committee met.

Fred Shero's teams could play as well as fight. He is one of only three coaches (Mike Babcock, Scotty Bowman) in NHL history to lead a team to three consecutive 50-plus win seasons, as he did with the Flyers from 1973-74 through 1975-76. In perspective, the Original Six Maple Leafs have never had a 50-win season; the dynastic Oilers and Islanders never strung together three straight.

"I swear I have never told a player to attack another player," Shero said in an old interview, aired in 2009. "In fact, I told my players if they ever hear me say anything like this, they can break a stick over my skull. I ask only that they play aggressively. I had a team that liked fighting, so I let them fight."

Shero, still the Flyers' all-time leader in every coaching category at 308-151-95 (.642), was known to build his team around a family-first atmosphere. He was famous for his inspirational quotes scrawled on chalkboards in the dressing room, none more famous than the "Win today and we will walk together forever," scribbled prior to Game 6 of the 1974 Stanley Cup finals.

Watson joked it sometimes took weeks to figure out what Shero's quotes meant.

"That quote went further than just the team, it meant the whole city," Bernie Parent said. "Today, 39 years later, it means as much to people as it did then."

Shero was known for his shy, often philosophical personality. He enjoyed reading. He played the violin. He once threatened to quit coaching, after the Flyers' first Stanley Cup, to pursue a career in law, and proclaimed himself as the "first New York Ranger to own a New York public library card."

He was different. He was a nurturing, father-type figure. But he also had fun. There are famous stories of Shero directing the team bus toward the players' favorite watering hole, Hennessey's in Chicago, with the rest of the bus screaming: "Way to go Freddie!"

"I think hockey is a game, a child's game, played by men, and to play it effectively you must have fun just like children do," Shero said in the 1975 film "Silver Fantasy.'' "My players don't live in fear. They get up in the morning, they're happy and they go to bed, they're happy. And that's the type of person I am."

Shero, a Winnipeg native and son of Russian immigrants, played 145 games for the Rangers from 1947-50. He also coached the Rangers for parts of three seasons, leading them to the 1979 Stanley Cup finals, but said he knew he made a mistake the minute he left the Flyers.

In a 1999 Daily News poll, Shero was voted the city's greatest professional coach/manager, topping Connie Mack, Dick Vermeil and Greasy Neal. He was 390-225-119 in 734 career NHL games. Shero is survived by his sons, Ray and Jean-Paul. His wife of 32 years, Mariette, passed away in 2010 at the age of 86.

"If you looked inside Freddie's brain," Marriette Shero said in 1996, "I think you would find a miniature hockey rink."

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