Bill Clement, Al Morganti Go into Hockey HOF for Media Excellence

Two media members gave the Hockey Hall of Fame a Philadelphia flavor Monday in Toronto.

Bill Clement, the hard-working center who won two Stanley Cups with the Philadelphia Flyers and later was a TV analyst for the team, received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for outstanding contributions as a hockey broadcaster.

Morganti, who covered the Flyers for The Inquirer from  1979 to 1989 and then shifted to radio and TV, earned the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award for excellence in hockey journalism.

Dave Scott, chairman of the Philadelphia Flyers’ parent company, Comcast Spectacor, saluted the honorees.

Scott called them “legends here in Philadelphia, and they will always be beloved members of the Flyers family.”

Bill Clement and Al Morganti, Hockey HOF’s for their media excellence over the years. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/hgInR7BKEy

— Sam Carchidi (@BroadStBull) November 15, 2022

Six others were inducted into the Hall on Monday.

Salutes fans

In an interview after it was announced he was going into the Hall, Morganti credited the fans for indirectly pushing him.

“The fans in Philly make the media better because they’re so jacked up that you have to be jacked up,” he said at the time.

He said it was “no coincidence that so many good media people have come out of Philly. Just like the players have to raise their game because of the fans, you have to raise your game because they know their stuff.”

Clement spent 15 years as a lead hockey analyst for ESPN’s broadcasts of hockey games. He also did Flyers games for PRISM and Comcast/NBC Sports Philadelphia.

He said he “never aspired for individual accolades. I want team rewards. And when I look at it, this is what this is.”

Clement said he had many great producers and play-by-play partners over the years. He had great chemistry with the three broadcast partners he worked with the most — Gary Thorne at ESPN, Mike “Doc” Emrick at ESPN and PRISM, and Jim Jackson at Comcast/NBC Sports Philadelphia.

Morganti is a long-time sports-talk co-host at WIP, and a Flyers analyst at NBC Sports Philadelphia. Clement retired two years ago and lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Waynesville, N.C.

Said Scott in a statement: “On behalf of our entire organization, I am so proud of Bill and Al for this incredible, well-deserved honor.”