Curt Bennett’s memory of the night he scored on a penalty shot against Hall of Famer Bernie Parent of the Philadelphia Flyers hasn’t faded even though it happened five decades ago.

“It was such a moment,” recalled Bennett recently from his home in Maui.

The date was Oct. 10, 1976. Bennett’s Atlanta Flames were hosting the Flyers, Stanley Cup champions in 1974 and 1975, at the Omni before a crowd of 13,091.

Parent was in the sweet spot of a career that would culminate in his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984. He’d won the Vezina Trophy (best goaltender) and the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP) in ’74 and ’75 and was a First-Team All-Star both years. He finished second in Hart Trophy (MVP) voting in 1974.

He was so beloved in Philadelphia that a popular bumper sticker celebrated his heroics: “Only the Lord Saves More Than Bernie Parent”

The 28-year-old Bennett, a high school star at Cranston East and an All-American at Brown University, was blossoming into one of the best American players of that era, a time when Yanks were just starting to gain a foothold in the NHL.

In his third season with the Flames after breaking in with the St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers, Bennett scored 31 goals for Atlanta in 1974-75 and would go on to score a career-best 34 in ’75-76. He was the first American-trained player to hit the 30-goal plateau. That level of production by an American player was simply unheard of at the time.

A member of the Rhode Island Hockey Hall of Fame’s charter class in 2018, Bennett opened the scoring in the Flames-Flyers game with a goal at 1:43 of the first period.

Minutes later, at 4:46, Bennett was breaking in alone on Parent when he was tripped from behind by Philly defenseman Moose Dupont. Penalty shots were rarer in that era than they are today, but referee Brian Lewis didn’t hesitate in making the call.

Gary Ronberg covered the Flyers for the Philadelphia Inquirer and interviewed Bennett for his game story.

“It was really a weird feeling,” Bennett told him. “Everybody along the boards and just me and Bernie and the referee out there. And the crowd screaming so loud you couldn’t hear.

“Before I took the shot, I went over to (Atlanta coach) Fred (Creighton) and asked him what I should do. He said, ‘Just put it in the net.’ I asked both our goaltenders (Dan Bouchard and Phil Myre) what to do but I couldn’t hear them.

“So when I finally got out there, and the referee signaled me to come ahead, I don’t really know what I was thinking. And in a situation like that, that’s good. It’s kind of like jumping out of a plane. You start thinking about it and you won’t go through with it.”

The left-shooting Bennett skated in and “about 20 feet from the net he fired a low, quick, half-slap shot that whistled past Parent’s outstretched glove for a 2-0 lead,” wrote Ronberg.

“All I can say is that I’m glad that’s over,” Bennett told Ronberg. “You miss one of those and you’ll never forget it. And out there alone, with all those people watching, it must have been like watching a murder. I’m just glad it wasn’t me that got murdered.”

Looking back all these years later, Bennett said the first goal he scored in the game helped him on the penalty shot.

“I had scored earlier so I was kind of confident. If I hadn’t scored, I’d have been more nervous. I remember Dan Bouchard, our goalie, and Moose Dupont, both French Canadians, were betting with each other on whether I would score or not,” he said.

“Most guys would deke (on a penalty shot). I’d been using a different type of stick with a curve on it. So, I did something I normally never did. I took a quick slapshot below his glove. It happened so fast – that was it.” It was only the second time in Parent’s Hall of Fame career that he had been beaten on a penalty shot.

Bennett’s teammates poured off the bench to congratulate him. “It was a good team spirit thing,” he said. The Flames went on to a 4-3 victory.

It was a special moment in Bennett’s career, right alongside playing in the NHL All-Star game in 1975 and 1976 and representing the United States in the 1976 Canada Cup and the1978 and 1979 IIHF World Championships.

If there is video of Bennett’s goal that has survived the 48 years since it happened, Bennett hasn’t seen it, which is unfortunate.

“There’s video of a (Flames-Flyers) brawl in the playoffs on YouTube, but I never saw that goal,” he said.

But the memory lives on. “I can still vividly see it in my head right now.”

By Mark Divver