Who's Canadian Now? (or, the Absolution of Ron Hextall, part I)

As you are doubtless unaware, the Philadelphia Flyers recently defeated the Montreal Canadiens in the second round of the NHL playoffs. You are doubtless further unaware that this was the first playoff meeting between these two teams since 1989, when they met in the Wales Conference finals, with the Flyers losing in six games. That series ended in the melee shown above, when, with the Flyers down two goals in the final minutes of play, goalie Ron Hextall charged out of the net in order to kick the bejesus out of the Canadiens' Chris Chelios. Chelios had been targeted by the Flyers ever since game 1 of the series, when he had incapacitated Flyers forward Brian Propp with a blow to the temple that left Propp unconscious and bloodied on the ice (and for which Chelios failed to receive even a minor penalty, despite having had his elbow up). You can see that hit here (warning: not for the faint of heart).

As you can tell from the video above, the Philadelphia crowd went nuts with delight when Hextall went after Chelios. Between that incident, his various other brawls and slashings, and the multiple goals he scored during his career as a goalie, Hextall has achieved something like folk hero status in Philadelphia. So it's fitting that, in the first Philly-Montreal playoff series since then, the Flyers brought the hammer down hard on the Habs. Making things even more interesting is the fact that, though Hextall has long since retired, Chelios is not only still playing, but his team (Detroit) is still in the playoffs. So it's possible that, in addition to avenging their '89 loss to the Canadiens this year, the Flyers could meet the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals and have a chance to take down Chelios and finally free Ron Hextall's hockey spirit from hockey purgatory (which I think is not far from Nashville). Stay tuned (if you can find the games on TV, that is).

A final curiosity: the Flyers-Canadiens series this year received a particularly large amount of attention in Canada, because Montreal was the last Canadian team left in the playoffs. But as mentioned here, there are actually more Canadian Flyers than Canadian Canadiens this year.