Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent, and Dave Schultz may have been the heart and soul of the Philadelphia Flyers' iconic Broad Street Bullies teams on the way to two Stanley Cup victories— but Joe "Thundermouth" Watson was the voice and conscience.
From using frozen horse turds as pucks in his native Smithers, British Columbia, through his fourteen-year NHL playing career—including two All-Star selections—to suiting up regularly for the Flyers Alumni Team deep into his seventies, Watson may be the ultimate hockey lifer. With an unmistakable voice that boomed as loud as the hits he laid on opposing forwards, Watson was a fixture of 1970s hockey just as the league was becoming the NHL that we know today—growing from six teams when he joined in 1964 to twenty-one by the time he retired in 1979.
Along the way, he roomed with Bobby Orr, became part of one of the first sibling tandems in NHL history, and scored the dramatic shorthanded goal against the powerhouse 1976 Red Army team that—as legendary coach Fred Shero joked—"set Russian hockey back twenty years." In retirement, he couldn't leave the game alone— cementing his status as a Philly legend by serving as a top advertising executive in the Flyers front office for more than four decades, creating and running a thriving alumni program, and eventually being inducted into the team's Hall of Fame.
As much a love letter to the sport of ice hockey as it is a memoir of life on and off the ice,
Thundermouth
is an old-fashioned sporting autobiography and a riveting snapshot of a time—as Bernie Parent might say—when hockey was hockey.