Now, all of that said, the Bruins making a run for the Cup was a pretty big deal. Most guys who have an obsession with sports get it generationally. We inherit our love of sports from our dads. We love the teams our dads loved (generally speaking) and watching games together is a kind of glue that holds us together. I know when my parents were divorced when I was 9, it was a tough time, but when we couldn’t talk about anything else, when feelings couldn’t be expressed, my dad and I could always watch a Bruins game together and nothing else mattered during those two and-a-half hours except whether or not Terry O’Reilly and Brad Park and Rick Middleton and the rest of the boys were going to win. Along the same lines, I always knew that my dad would be there at my hockey games or baseball games to cheer me on. Sports, particularly hockey, remained the one constant in a time of turmoil.
I was at BU during the 80’s when Boston made two runs at the Cup and ran into the Edmonton dynasties of Gretzky and Messier. That was just depressing. I loved those teams with Cam Neely, Lyndon Byers, Ray Bourque, and the rest. Again, the Bruins provided a kind of glue to friendships with some of the guys with whom I played intramural hockey at BU. The Bruins were a cause to rally around.
The common refrain in all of the years the Bruins fell short was the lament by the fans that they would never win it with the owners (the Jacobs Brothers) at the helm because they wouldn’t pay top dollar for top talent – we always needed another sniper/goal scorer and Jeremy Jacobs – with the skinflinted Harry Sinden as the General Manager and later, Mike O’Connell – was never going to pay top money for high-end talent. That has been the knock on the Bruins for as long as I can remember.
So, how did they finally do it?
Did the Jacobs finally loosen up the purse-strings after some magical moment like Scrooge had with Marley’s ghost? Nope. Bruins fans today owe their joy to the idiotic player strike/lockout of 2004. You can read about it here, but it was the first time in sports history (North American sports, anyway) that an entire season was lost. I’m normally a players’ guy, but they fucked that up badly and Ted Saskin (the players’ negotiator) should be saddled for life with the moniker of “Biggest Dumbass Negotiator of All Time” because at the open of the next season, the players actually got a worse deal than had been originally offered by the NHL in negotiations that previous year with Saskin. Moron. The sport is still recovering from it.
So, how does this relate to the Bruins? The new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in 2005 set a hard salary cap for teams, meaning no team could spend above $39 million on player salaries. That was right about what the Bruins were spending for salaries, a number that put them consistently in the middle of the pack or lower among NHL teams, which was a bit surprising since Boston, like New York and some other teams, is a relatively “big market” team for hockey (hence the complaints forever of Jacobs being a cheap-ass, as well as his being an absentee owner from Buffalo). But the hard cap meant the Bruins were maxed out for player salaries – and have been ever since – but it also meant no one else could outbuy them for top-level talent.
Thus, the new era of the CBA gave the Bruins a realistic chance to compete, even with a cheap-ass owner, provided they could get the right GM and talent development folks in place. It took 6 years for all of the pieces to come together, but Peter Chiarelli (the GM) and his team deserve a lot of credit. The Bruins organization – which includes the Providence Bruins AHL affiliate – have become a team deep in talent and very good at player development. I attend P-Bruins games (or used to) and they produce guys who are ready to move north and contribute when the need arises. Witness this year’s Cup team – Adam McQuaid, Johnny Boychuk, Steven Kampfer, Tuukka Rask, and Brad Marchand (off the top of my head), all played significant time down in Providence. I know because I watched all of them play at one point or another in the Dunkin Donuts’ center.
So, live it up Bruins fans. You now possess the most coveted trophy in North American sports – and the hardest to acquire. (I could spend days trying to explain how unique the Stanley Cup is, but this commercial does it better than anything I could write – it is simply brilliant and goosebump producing).
This is as good for Bruins fans as 2004 was for Sox fans. Yes, I know 39 years is a lot shorter than the 86 years that Sox fans waited, but this was a magical run by the Bruins, with three Game 7 wins, including an overtime Game 7 win against the hated Canadiens. This will always be, for me, my team, the group that brought hockey – my dad’s sport and mine – back to its rightful place in New England. And when that Cup makes its way around, you can bet I’ll find a way to stand next to it and touch Lord Stanley’s Cup – and take a picture to send to my dad.
Cheers, Boys. You’re Stanley Cup Champions.
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| Conn Smythe Winner Tim Thomas holds aloft the hockey chalice |