The Philadelphia Flyers are a professional
ice hockey team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are
members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of
the National Hockey League (NHL). Part of the 1967 NHL Expansion,
the Flyers were the first of these expansion teams to win the
Stanley Cup in 1974 and again in 1975. Despite five return trips
to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Flyers have not won the Cup since.
More recently, the team suffered the worst
season in franchise history in 200607, finishing dead last
in the NHL standings, as well as missing the playoffs for the
first time since 1994. (It was only the 8th time they had failed
to qualify for the playoffs in their history.) The Flyers all-time
winning percentage of .577 (as of the end of the 200708
season) is the second best in the NHL, behind only the Montreal
Canadiens .591 winning percentage.
The Flyers have played their home games
on Broad Street since their inception, first at The Spectrum from
1967 until 1996, and then at the Wachovia Center from 1996 to
the present. They have had rivalries with several teams over the
years, the most heated rival of late being the New Jersey Devils,
with whom the Flyers traded the Atlantic Division title with every
season between 1995 and 2007 and have faced three times in the
playoffs, winning once in 2004 and losing twice in 1995 and 2000.