![]() ![]() Tyler Bertuzzi was added at the trade deadline and was a top-six player with the Detroit Red Wings, but will more than likely slot in on the third line with Coyle and Hall when returns to the lineup. ![]() Win two Stanley Cups in three years.Taylor Hall, Boston Bruins ( Amy Irvin / The Hockey Writers) Zdeno Chara and his merry band are trying to do what Orr's Bruins did. The Boston Garden was.gasp!.smashed by a wrecking ball.īut patience is, indeed, a virtue. ![]() There was an infamous too-many-men-on the ice penalty in the '79 semis and Ulf Samuelsson's hit on Cam Neely that probably cost the Bruins a shot at the Cup in the early '90s. Who would have thought it would take 39 years for our beloved Bruins to hoist the Stanley Cup again? There were finals losses to the Flyers (1974), Canadiens (1977, 1978) and Oilers (1988, 1990). What you see in that picture, in that illusion, is magic." And rather than bracing for the moment when gravity would surely reassert itself, rather than panicking at the sudden loss of control, in mid-air, in mid-flight, he exults, lifting both of his arms to the heavens. "But that image, frozen in one of the greatest sports photographs ever captured, was singular and spectacular and laden with symbolism. "In real time, it all goes by in a flash," wrote Canadian sportswriter Stephen Blunt in Searching for Bobby Orr. It was the goal that clinched the Bruins first Stanley Cup since 1941. Ray Lussier's black and white snapshot of Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring the game-winning goal against the St. His Holiness, en route to performing Mass on the Boston Common, was pretty popular although clearly no match for Robert Gordon Orr, the only hockey player to win the Norris, Ross, Hart and Conn Smythe trophies all in the same year. A few years later the Pope-mobile navigated through those same streets. We skipped school to go to the Bruins' Stanley Cup championship parades in 19 - as if the nuns didn't know where we were? - and I remember chasing the convertible that Bobby Orr was riding in. Meanwhile, real hockey rinks were being built in the Boston suburbs every day. There was the Seventh Player Award.Īt night, all the neighborhood dads stood with water hoses in the bone-chilling cold, flooding the yard so we could skate on it the next morning. On the radio, we listened to the great Bob Wilson. We watched the games on TV Channel 38, whose Bruins' theme song was the coolest of all time - the Ventures "Nutty," a rollicking cover of B Bumble and the Stingers "Nut Rocker." The announcers were the late Fred Cusick and John Pierson, whose voices I still hear. The Boston Bruins were our real life superheroes. There was Gerry Cheevers and all those black stitches painted onto his goalie mask, which rivaled anything in Marvel Comics. There was Freddie Stanfield, Ed Westfall, Dallas Smith, Donnie Marcotte, Don Awrey, Ace Bailey and Teddie Green. There was the high-scoring top line of Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Wayne Cashman. There was Derek "Turk" Sanderson, Johnny "Pie" McKenzie, and Johnny "The Chief" Bucyk. There was Bobby Orr, the greatest play-ah ev-ah. And there, adjacent to the elevated train tracks, next to the Madison Hotel, stood the Mecca of professional hockey in the 1970s. ![]() By car, it was a straight drive on Route 99, past the LNG tanks, the Schraffts candy factory in Sullivan Square, onto Rutherford Avenue and past Bunker Hill Community College, where Robin Williams taught in "Good Will Hunting," and over the Charlestown Bridge, the one the cops cordoned off in "The Town." After a quick peek at the USS Constitution, which was docked in Boston Harbor, you'd take a right onto Causeway Street. Getting to the Garden, which sat above North Station, was just two train stops away on the Orange Line. The Beatles said they were bigger than Jesus. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |