When fans look up inside the Flyers’ home building, the banners aren’t all about hockey. The franchise has plenty to celebrate there - from Bernie Parent’s No.
1, Bobby Clarke’s No. 16, Eric Lindros’ No. 88, and the two Stanley Cup titles - but a separate group of banners hangs above the ice for a different kind of star power.
Three musicians have earned that space over the years: Billy Joel, Pearl Jam, and Bruce Springsteen.
Joel’s banner comes from a run that became impossible to ignore. He piled up 48 consecutive sellout performances inside Xfinity Mobile Arena, and the building recognized him for it. The artist behind “Piano Man,” “Uptown Girl,” and “Vienna” has also been a regular in Philadelphia beyond the arena, including six straight soldout shows at Citizens Bank Park from 2014 until 2019 and a performance at Lincoln Financial Field in 2023.
Pearl Jam’s place in the rafters is tied to both longevity and a memorable bit of venue history. The band played the final concert at the Spectrum in October 2009 before the building was torn down the next year, and the arena honored them for selling out 10 concerts. That number lined up neatly with the title of their debut album, Ten.
Then there’s Springsteen, which may be the most obvious banner of the bunch. The New Jersey native has been a Philadelphia fixture going back to the Spectrum, where he played his first concert in 1976.
In 1980, he performed and paid tribute to John Lennon the day after Lennon’s murder. By the time the Spectrum was demolished in 2009, Springsteen had played 42 shows there.
On March 16, 2023, he was honored at the then-Wells Fargo Center for 67 sellout concerts in Philadelphia, a total that surpassed Joel’s.
So if the trivia question ever comes up about non-Flyers with banners in the building, the answer is simple: Billy Joel, Pearl Jam, and Bruce Springsteen.
In Other News...
Flyers Just Entered A Connor McDavid Debate Fans Will Obsess Over
EA Sports release of the top 300 player ratings for NHL 27 gave the Flyers another small spotlight, with 10 players making the list, but the bigger ripple around the league came from an NHL Network discussion that inevitably turned into a star-watch exercise. Philadelphia ended up in the conversation when E.J. Hradek floated possible landing spots for Connor McDavid if he ever leaves Edmonton, a list that also included the Rangers and Red Wings, which is the kind of speculation that tends to set off an entire fan base even before there is anything concrete to chew on.
For the Flyers, the appeal is obvious even if the path is anything but simple. Any talk involving a player of McDavids stature quickly shifts to what a team can offer beyond recognition and market size, and that is where the conversation gets interesting for Philadelphia followers who are always tracking whether the roster is close enough to matter in a scenario like that. It is the sort of debate that lives off possibility more than probability, but once a name like McDavid is attached to the Flyers, it is going to linger. [Read more 🡒]
Flyers Fans Will Have Strong Opinions On These NHL 27 Ratings
The first round of NHL 27 ratings has already given Flyers fans something to argue about, with the game unveiling its top 300 players and handing out confirmed numbers to a cluster of Philadelphia skaters. Travis Sanheim, Travis Konecny, Cam York, Dan Vladar, Trevor Zegras, Matvei Michkov and Owen Tippett are all in the mix, giving the orange and black a decent footprint in a list that tends to spark as many debates as it does excitement.
Sanheim and Konecny sit in the same tier near the top of the Flyers group, which is exactly the kind of detail that invites instant comparison from a fan base that knows its roster well. Vladars number may draw even more attention, though, because the early rating has already prompted the familiar question of whether the game is catching up to what he showed in recent play. [Read more 🡒]