Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

CHICAGO -- The words painted on the wall inside the Flyers dressing room read, "You play for the crest on the front of the jersey, NOT the name on the back."

Because in every Stanley Cup final, the 20 players who pull on a sweater carry the hopes of their city, sometimes a country, and for sure an entire organization that wakes up every morning to go to work at getting to this point.

They play for everyone from the secretaries to the owners, all of whom have a stake in what has become a best-of-three Stanley Cup final. In this series, there are three men in particular who are in the press box every night, living and dying with each and every shift.

Together, scouts Marc Bergevin, Dennis Bonvie and Dave Brown have played 3,431 professional hockey games -- International, American and National Hockey League combined. They've bled for numerous organizations, to the tune of 9,203 penalty minutes combined.

Brown, the Flyers director of player personnel, might have been the toughest man in the NHL in his day. Today, he is more likely to be voted the nicest guy in the front office. He played 10 years for the Flyers and bleeds Philly orange, but had to go to the 1990 Edmonton Oilers to get his lone Stanley Cup ring.

Chicago scout Dennis Bonvie, is professional hockey's penalty minute king. His 4,493 penalty minutes is more than anyone else ever totaled in the AHL.

But he barely got a sniff at the NHL level, and never got near a Stanley Cup final.

Then there is Bergevin, one of the funniest, most well-liked, well-travelled and well-respected former players you can name. He is Brown's opposite number in Chicago now, and after 20 years of pro hockey, eight NHL organizations, 1271 NHL games, and 170 more in the minor leagues, Bergevin is Chicago hockey's Ernie Banks, never once making it to a Stanley Cup final.

Until now.

"It's been, for me, over 20 years and I've never won it," Bergevin said. "Even now that I've retired, sitting there I want it as bad as all the players do. The desire will never go away."

The man we all call "Bergy" isn't real serious a lot of the time. They don't come any funnier than this guy, but there is no trademark grin when he tells you about his lifelong pursuit of Stanley.

"It's been there since I was a little boy growing up in Montreal," the 44-year-old said. "Seeing Scotty (Bowman) and the Montreal Canadiens winning all those Cups. Going to the parades as a kid. I've never won one -- it's something I will never stop chasing."

Bonvie was a minor league legend who, upon finding himself next to Bob Probert one night in Chicago, asked permission for a fight that put him on the map among NHL heavies. You look up "game" in the dictionary, and his picture is right there.

"When you're in the game, you want to win. You want to win it all," said Bonvie, who had 969 minor league games and 4,856 PIMs in total. "You play to win coming up in minor hockey. Then you play pro, and you want the Calder Cup. You play in the NHL? It's the Stanley Cup."

His minor league career ended when his Wilkes-Barre Penguins lost the Calder Cup final to Chicago two springs ago. He married there and lives in Wilkes-Barre, a local hockey legend who now scours the eastern seaboard for the Blackhawks, working "about 150, 160 games a year."

"To stay in the game as part of a great organization like the Chicago Blackhawks, it is still the ultimate prize. It's why you do the job, to give yourself an opportunity to win a Stanley Cup," he said.

Of the three, only Brown has played in a Stanley Cup. Well, sort of. He played in just three playoff games in 1990 as the Oilers won their fifth Cup.

"I was disappointed I didn't play more, but I felt like I was still part of the team," he said. "I knew we had a better chance to win it if some other guys were playing. I knew we had the young, fourth line (Martin Gelinas, Adam Graves and Joe Murphy), and they were better players to suit those games than I was."

He was dealt back to Philly after the 1990-91 season. It was like coming home.

"You're young and impressionable," he said. "They drafted me and they won me first. You always held that in your heart. I've been down here longer than I was back home (in Saskatoon). This is home, and it would be extremely rewarding to win it as an executive. I would be as proud of that as the one I won with Edmonton, I can tell you that."

Brown has helped to build this Flyers team, while Bergevin and Bonvie have their fingerprints all over the Blackhawks.

"This is why you do it," Bonvie said. "Do you do it just to make the playoffs? No. You do it to win the Stanley Cup.

"To make the organization the utmost. The best it can be."