On December 2, 1963, 51 years ago, twin boys were born in Viking, Alberta Canada. This would normally not strike anyone as a big deal or very newsworthy.
However, with a hockey lineage attributed to the last name of Sutter, it was the arrival of two more boys to add into the pipeline headed to the NHL. Rich and Ron – the youngest of six boys – would later don the orange and black of the Flyers and play together in the Spectrum in the mid-1980s. They would join their brothers Duane, Brent, Darryl and Brian who were already in the NHL.
Ron was drafted fourth overall by the Flyers in the 1982 NHL Draft, six spots ahead of his brother Rich who was selected by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ron started his career in Philadelphia in 1983-84 and played in parts of nine seasons here, tallying double digit goal totals in all but one of them.
In the 1988-89 season, he started to blossom into a terrific two-way player, scoring a career high 26 goals in just 55 games. Unfortunately, he suffered a broken jaw in November of that season which interrupted his stellar play.
Overall, Ron played 555 games as a Flyer, collecting 137 goals, 222 assists for 359 points and was a Selke finalist (best defensive forward) five times. He was traded to the St. Louis Blues in September of 1991, along with defenseman Murray Baron for center Rod Brind’Amour and C/LW Dan Quinn.
Rich Sutter was brought over to the Flyers in a huge trade with Pittsburgh that saw multiple players and draft picks change hands. The most notable player was the Flyers’ Ron Flockhart heading west.
With the two brothers now together and on the same line, they played in over 200 regular season games as Flyers. Unfortunately, the Flyers traded Rich over to Vancouver in the summer of 1986 along with some draft picks in exchange for defenseman J.J. Daigneault. In 204 games as a Flyer, Rich amassed 36 goals,47 assists for 83 points. He spent a few seasons in Vancouver before being dealt to St. Louis in 1990.
With the trade of Ron to the Blues from the Flyers in 1991, the twins would be together again in St. Louis. They rekindled their stellar play once again, shutting down the best lines in the NHL with the same grit as they had in Philadelphia.
Overall, Rich and Ron enjoyed long careers in hockey as their services at the face off circle and playing against the top forwards in the league were always in demand. Ron played in 1093 games with stops in San Jose, Calgary, Boston, Colorado and the NY Islanders before calling it a career in 2001 having scored 534 regular season points.
Rich played in 874 NHL regular season games in his 13 year career with stops later on with Chicago, TampaBay and the Toronto Maple Leafs amassing 315 points.
To this day, the Sutter family has seen all six boys play in an astounding 4994 NHL regular season games. These six also have had boys of their own and as a surprise to no one, they are filling the pipeline again to the NHL. Leading the way, is Brandon Sutter – son of Brett – already in his seventh NHL season with the Penguins and more are sure to be on the way.
Mike Watson is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on twitter @Mwats_99.
