"When The Bruins Won the Stanley Cup"
When I was a kid, my mom's second husband was a computer/math whiz. It was the second best thing to being a military brat, because we moved from Minneapolis, to Boston, to a suburb of Washington DC, to Chicago and back to the Twin Cities when I was in 9th grade.
I really enjoyed the Boston Area. I loved the history, the food, and the people in our neighborhood. Then, as now, New Englanders are serious sports fans. Massachusetts, along with my native Minnesota and Michigan are the three states where Hockey is a major sport, and not a "niche sport", like it is in most of the rest of the U.S.A.
When we lived in the Boston area, it was during the beginning of the Golden era for the "Big, Bad Bruins". The Bruins had great players like Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk, and of course, Bobby Orr. At the time we were living in the Boston area, the Bruins had not won a Stanley Cup since 1941. During the 1969-70 season, the Bruins blitzed through the Stanley Cup playoffs to face the Saint Louis Blues in the Finals. I remember watching game four in our basement. The game had gone to overtime when Bobby Orr worked a neat give-and-go with Derek Sanderson, Orr tucked the puck past Blues Goaltender Glenn Hall. As he was scoring the goal, Orr was lifted in the air by Blues Defenseman Noel Picard. The image is still considered one of the greatest hockey shots ever taken:
The comedian-and Boston native-Denis Leary has talked about how when he was a kid playing hockey with his friends,kids would try to recreate the goal to the point of having another kid try to trip them in the air a`la` Picard. It's true-when whe played out street hockey games, and we played street hockey all of the time when we lived in the Boston Area, we would try to recreate that goal.
It was pretty cool to live in a REAL hockey place like New England and experience the local team winning the Stanley Cup. It's not like today, when in recent years you have had teams in Dallas, Carolina, Anaheim and Tampa winning the Stanley Cup in places where the average local could give a shit. It would be like the U.S winning the FIFA World Cup-a cruel joke to places who hold soccer in high regard.
I still have fond memories of the roughly 15 months I lived in the Boston area. We had great friends, we saw a lot...and it was before Boston fans became insufferable like Red Sox and New England Patriot fans are now.(How bad have Red Sox fans become? This season, I actually hope the Yankees win the East)
I still wish the Bruins well. They have not won a Stanley Cup since 1972. I could give a rip about the Celtics, Red Sox or Patriots, but I will always have a soft spot for the Black and Gold of the Boston Bruins. It brings back memories of Esposito scoring from the slot, Gerry Cheevers making acrobatic saves,Derek Sanderson's rock star hair flowing while he skated, John Mackenzie flattening somebody in the corners, but mostly, I think of Bobby Orr orchestrating rushes from the back of his net and stick handling past his opponents as if they were disks at hockey practice. What made Orr so great was that as great of a player he was-and he revolutionized the defenseman becoming an offensive weapon- he was a decent, unassuming, generous person away from the ice who was, and still is involved with children's charities in the Boston area.
That year in Boston was a great time to be a kid.In retrospect, I think it was one of the happiest years of my chilhood.
