35 years ago today, Broad Street Bullies ran Soviet Red Army out of the Spectrum

PLAYING IT BACK, like a train wreck in slow motion, Ed Van Impe can vividly remember the hit that made the Soviets fold like a tent.

The date: 35 years ago today, at the Spectrum, with the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Flyers facing the Red Army team in the final game of the 1976 exhibition Super Series.

Van Impe darted from the penalty box, about midway through the first period, and watched the Soviets' breakout develop as he got a glimpse of his favorite kind of pass.

"It was a sucker pass,'' Van Impe, 70, said yesterday from his home in Vancouver. "I could see the play developing. The winger made a sucker pass and [Valeri] Kharlamov had to turn his head to get it. I remember watching it, almost in slow motion. And the same time the puck connected with Kharlamov, I connected with him and flattened him.

"I just wanted to welcome him to Philadelphia.''

Red Army coach Konstantin Loktev wasn't feeling welcome.

"We have never played [against] such animal hockey,'' he is quoted as saying after the game, a 4-1 Flyers romp.

Van Impe knocked Kharlamov out cold and the Soviets, who had smoked the Rangers and Bruins but tied that season's Stanley Cup winner, Montreal, in the inaugural series between the Soviet Union's top team and the NHL circuit, famously left the ice for 17 minutes in a protest.

"I had never seen anything like it before,'' Flyers chairman Ed Snider said. "I went downstairs [to ice level] and wanted to know exactly what was going on. [NHL president] Clarence Campbell was down there and so was Alan Eagleson and they were going back and forth with interpreters.''

Meanwhile, down the hallway, the Flyers were undoubtedly having a good time at the expense of the Soviets' unexpected exit.

"We were feeling really good about ourselves,'' Van Impe, the Flyers' second captain, recalled with a laugh. "We were really dominating. I was absolutely shocked when they left the ice. I had never seen anything like that ever happen before at any level, anywhere, where a team quits because things weren't going their way. But I knew they had to return, the game was being televised across Europe.''

Snider knew the only way to bruise the Soviets more was to hit their wallet equally hard. Since it was the final contest of the four-game set, the Soviets were supposed to receive a fat check from Eagleson for $200,000, $50,000 per game.