Pelle Lindbergh was a rising star, a fan favorite projected as the goalie who would one day lead the Philadelphia Flyers to their first Stanley Cup championship since the great Bernie Parent was in the nets.

But Lindbergh’s life was tragically cut short at age 26 when he died in an alcohol-related car accident in 1985.

Lindbergh’s life and brief-but-impactful career are brought into focus in The Swede from Philadelphia. This emotional, one-hour and 40-minute documentary will open Nov. 7 in selective AMC theaters in Philadelphia and South Jersey. The movie will run for at least a week, and information is available at swedeofphiladelphia.com.

Less than five months after he won the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goalie and helped the Flyers reach the Stanley Cup final, Lindbergh drove his $117,000 Porsche 930 into a stone wall in Somerdale, N.J. He died the next day; two passengers in the crash suffered extensive injuries but survived.

At the time of the accident, Lindbergh was legally intoxicated and driving approximately 80 miles per hour in a 35-mph zone when the car crashed at 5:41 a.m. on Nov. 10, 1985, according to the documentary, which states that none of the passengers wore seatbelts.

Charlie Minn, who did the film, once played goalie for Boston University’s B team and said that because he was small, he always had an affinity for the way Lindbergh excelled, despite Pelle being only 5-foot-9 and about 170 pounds. Lindbergh overcame his lack of size with ultra-quick reflexes.

Sending A Message

Minn said he wanted to make the film – this was his 45th – because he was fascinated with Lindbergh’s success and because he wanted to send a message about the dangers of drunk driving.

“Everybody has to be careful about any decision they make in life,” he said, “because it can have a devastating consequence… Maybe someone will think twice about drinking before driving” after watching the film. “Pelle was over two times the legal limit, and he wasn’t even an avid drinker.”

Minn said the fact that this was the 40th anniversary of the tragedy also inspired him to make the documentary, and that he was tired of doing “so many mass-shooting films that I wanted to divert from that.”

Parent, who served as Lindbergh’s goalie coach and was a father figure to the Swede, was filmed for the documentary at a Chickie’s and Pete’s Restaurant in May. That was about four months before Parent died suddenly at age 80.

Parent, saying he felt he “lost a son” when Lindbergh died, gave what now seems like a chilling response when asked what he would tell Lindbergh if he had one last moment with him.

“I miss you, buddy. I miss you a lot,” Parent said in a low, sincere tone. “And we’ll get together soon – not too soon. I know you’re happy where you’re at, and I’m happy where I’m at, too. But we will get together. Wow. What a time this is going to be for eternal life. Isn’t that awesome? I miss you, and I love you.”

Bernie Parent Remembered: More Than A Goalie, A Hall Of Fame Friend And Citizen When you think of the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/philadelphia-flyers">Philadelphia Flyers</a> teams that won consecutive Stanley Cup championships in 1974 and 1975, Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent, Dave Schultz, Rick MacLeish and Bill Barber probably first pop into your mind, among others.

Rare Interviews

The documentary features rare interviews with the two hard-to-find people who were Lindbergh’s friends  – Ed Parvin Jr. and Kathy McNeal – who were passengers in the goalie’s sports car when it crashed into a low wall in front of a school, located a couple of miles from the bar where the goalie and his teammates were drinking. McNeal now lives in Arizona, while Parvin resides in Mt. Ephraim, N.J., a tiny town close to Philadelphia and about six miles from Lindbergh’s crash in Somerdale.

Minn praised Parvin and McNeal for their candidness about things leading up to the crash.

McNeal was extremely emotional in the film. 

“She’s still living with this, and you can probably tell from the interviews,” Minn said. “What struck me was when she said, ‘My son is now 31 years old – Pelle’s number.’ I think Pelle is still a state of mind with her, even 40 years later.”

Parvin, whose father sold real estate to many of the Flyers, remembers virtually nothing about the crash. He had been asleep in the car, Minn said. 

“He said, ‘The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital after 10 days in a coma,’ ” the filmmaker said. “But that’s all he remembers. Maybe it’s better he didn’t know.”

McNeal, however, gave details about the crash and what preceded it. The film also has reactions from the responders who arrived on the scene – police and officers, EMTs and investigators.

“It’s a miracle those two lived,” Minn said.

Happy-Go-Lucky Personality

Lindbergh, a playful and happy-go-lucky sort, and many of his teammates went out partying that night because the Flyers had a 10-game winning streak and were given the next two days off by coach Mike Keenan, said Minn in an interview. The Flyers had beaten Boston that night, after which Lindbergh had dinner with his fiancee, Kerstin Pietzsch-Somnell, and then spent time with his mom.

“Pelle wasn’t even going to go out that night because his mom was in from Sweden,” Minn said. “So that was even more of a reason for him to stay in.”

But his teammates apparently talked him into joining them, and he left his Marlton, N.J., house shortly before 1 a.m. 

“When he left, he basically said he’d be back in an hour or two,” Minn said. “Two hours became three, three hours became four, four became five.”

The players were at two bars that early morning, according to the documentary. The last stop was the Coliseum’s after-hours bar in Voorhees, next to the team’s practice facility.  Lindbergh and some of his friends left the Coliseum around 5:35 a.m.

For the film, Minn was in a car that re-enacted the drive leading to the crash. The filmmaker interviewed some of Lindbergh’s teammates, including current Flyers coach Rick Tocchet, about the events leading up to the tragedy. After the accident, Tocchet went to a Camden hospital (Cooper) and was asked to identify a badly injured person. He thought it was going to be Lindbergh, but it turned out to be Parvin. Lindbergh and McNeal had been taken to a different hospital (Kennedy) in Stratford, N.J.

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