After playing two seasons with the WHL's New Westmister Bruins, Daryl Stanley signed as a free agent with the Flyers in 1981 and worked his way through the system until making his NHL debut in the 1983-84 season. The split that year between the team's AHL affiliate in Springfield, but Stanley saw his first action in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Stanley's 1984-85 season was spent in Hershey with the Bears until he was in a car accident. He suffered a dislocated vertebra in the neck, a minor concussion, and a bruised kidney. Doctors feared he would never play hockey again, but Stanley came back from surgery to play in Philadelphia the next season.
The 1986-87 season saw Stanley and the Flyers go all the way to the Cup finals and forced the powerful Oilers to a seventh and deciding game. In the end, Edmonton won the championship, and during the off season Stanley was dealt to the Vancouver Canucks where he played for three years until retiring after the 1989-90 season.