About Me
In 1924, at the convincing of Boston grocery magnate Charles Adams, the NHL decided to expand into the United States. As a long-time hockey hotbed, Boston was a natural for the NHL's first genuine expansion team.
Logo (1927-1932)Adams and his family would own the team for most of the next fifty years, and his club, which he named the Bruins, finished last in the league in their first season but garnered overwhelming fan support. The color scheme of brown and gold (in later years changing to black and gold) came from Adams' grocery chain.In only their third season (1926-27), the team's fortune changed. Art Ross, the canny general manager of the team, took advantage of the collapse of the Western Hockey League to purchase several western stars, including the team's first great star, defenseman Eddie Shore. The Bruins reached the Stanley Cup final, losing then to the Ottawa Senators, but won their first Cup two years later by defeating the New York Rangers behind Shore, Harry Oliver, Dutch Gainor and superstar goaltender Tiny Thompson. The season after that (1929-30), the Bruins posted the best-ever regular season winning percentage in the NHL (an astonishing .875), but would lose to the Montreal Canadiens in the finals.
Logo (1939-1947)Except for a couple seasons, the Bruins would remain excellent through the 1930s with superb players such as Shore, Thompson, Dit Clapper, Babe Siebert, and Cooney Weiland, but failed to capture their second Cup until 1939. That year, in a move considered insane by hockey pundits, Ross dealt Thompson in favor of untried rookie goaltender Frank Brimsek. "Mr. Zero" Brimsek would electrify the league in his rookie season, and headlined by the "Kraut Line" (center Milt Schmidt, left winger Bobby Bauer, and right winger Woody Dumart), playmaking wizard Bill Cowley, Shore, Clapper, and unexpected hero "Sudden Death" Mel Hill (who scored three overtime goals in one playoff series), the Bruins won the Cup. Shore was dealt to the New York Americans for his final NHL season the next year, but the season following, the Bruins -- having led the league in a magnificent regular season, with only eight losses, won their third Stanley Cup with Weiland as their new coach, behind the brilliance of Cowley, the Krauts and Brimsek.World War II and the "Original Six" Era
The "Kraut Line": Woody Dumart, Milt Schmidt and Bobby BauerUnfortunately, World War II decimated the Bruins worse than most teams; Brimsek, Schmidt, Dumart and Bauer all enlisted after the 1941 season, and lost the most productive years of their careers at war. Cowley, assisted by elder statesmen Clapper and Busher Jackson, was the team's remaining star. Even though the NHL had by 1943 pared down to the six teams that would in a later era be -- erroneously -- called the "Original Six", talent was depleted enough that freak seasons could predominate, as in 1944, when Bruin Herb Cain would set the NHL record for points in a season with 82. The Bruins wouldn't make the playoffs that year, and Cain would be out of the bigs two years after that.
Milt Schmidt, Hall of Famer and captain of the Bruins in the early FiftiesThe stars would return for the 1945-46 NHL season, and Boston would make the playoffs for the next four seasons under Clapper as the new coach. Unfortunately, Brimsek was not again as good as he was pre-war, and after 1946 the Bruins lost in the first playoff round three straight years, resulting in Clapper's ouster. An ominous bit of misfortune came with the banning of young star Don Gallinger for life on suspicion of gambling, and the only remaining quality young player who remained with the team for any length was forward Johnny Peirson, who would later be the team's TV color announcer in the Seventies.Although there were some flashes of success thereafter (such as making the Stanley Cup finals in 1953, 1957, and 1958, only to lose to the Montreal Canadiens each time), the Bruins won no more Cups over the next twenty-five years after 1941. Further, in an era dominated by the Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings, the Bruins mustered only four winning seasons between 1947 and 1967. They missed the playoffs eight straight years between 1960 and 1967, but fan support remained high -- the Bruins consistently outdrew the Boston Celtics team, perennial professional basketball world champions.During this period, the farm system of the Bruins was not as expansive or well developed as most of the other five teams. The Bruins sought players not protected by the other teams and in 1958 signed Willie O'Ree the first black player in the NHL and in 1962 signed Tommy Williams from the gold medal winning American national men's hockey team at the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics who was at the time the only American player in the NHL.Expansion and the Big, Bad Bruins
Bobby Orr, the greatest blueliner in NHL historyThere came change by the late 1960s. The Bruins drafted young Bobby Orr who entered the league in 1966 and would be in the eyes of many the greatest defenseman of all time. They would then obtain Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield from the Chicago Blackhawks in one of the most one-sided deals in history. Hodge and Stanfield became useful players in Boston, but Esposito would blossom into the league's top goal scorer, being the first NHL player to break the one hundred point mark and setting many goal and point scoring records. With other stars like wingers Johnny Bucyk, John McKenzie, Hodge and Derek Sanderson, steady defenders like Dallas Smith and goaltender Gerry Cheevers, the "Big, Bad Bruins" became one of the league's top teams from the late 1960s through the 1970s, combining a rugged, barroom style of play with one of the greatest offensive juggernauts the NHL had ever seen.In 1970, a 29-year Stanley Cup drought came to an end in Boston, as the Bruins swept the St. Louis Blues in four games in the finals. Bobby Orr scored the game-winning goal in overtime of Game Four. The famous image of Orr scoring, while being tripped up and flying through the air after the goal, his arms raised in victory, remains perhaps the best-known photograph in professional hockey to this present day.
Boston's logo used from 1967 to 19941971 was in respects the high watermark of the Seventies for Boston. The Bruins' dominance was cataclysmic, shattering dozens of offensive scoring records. They had seven of the league's top ten scorers -- a feat not achieved before or since -- set the record for wins in a season, and in a league that had never seen a 100-point scorer before 1969, the Bruins had four that season. All (Orr, Esposito, Bucyk and Hodge) were named First Team All-Stars, a feat matched in the expansion era only by the 1977 Canadiens. Boston looked poised to repeat as Cup champions, but ran into a roadblock in the playoffs. Up 5-1 at one point in Game Two of a quarter-final match against the Canadiens (and rookie goaltender Ken Dryden), the Bruins squandered it to lose 7-5. They never recovered and lost the series in seven games.While the Bruins were not quite as dominant the next season (although only three points behind the 1971 pace), they returned to glory in the playoffs, defeating a strong challenge from the New York Rangers in six games in the Cup finals behind Orr's wizardry. The 1972 Cup win is Boston's most recent to date.
Home SweaterBoston continued to dominate through the 1970s (despite losing Cheevers, McKenzie, Sanderson and other stars to the renegade World Hockey Association), only to come up short in the playoffs. Although they had three 100-point scorers on the team (Esposito, Orr and Hodge), they would lose the 1974 finals to the rough Philadelphia Flyers.The flamboyant Don Cherry stepped behind the bench as the new coach in 1974-75. The Bruins stocked themselves with enforcers and remained a threat under Cherry's reign, the so-called "Lunch Pail A.C.," behind players such as slick Gregg Sheppard, rugged Terry O'Reilly and high-scoring Peter McNab.
Away SweaterOrr, however, did not. He left the Bruins for the Chicago Blackhawks after the 1975-76 NHL season and retired after many knee operations in 1979. The Bruins excelled without him (picking up another great blueliner, Brad Park, from the Rangers (along with Jean Ratelle) in a blockbuster trade early in the season that would see Esposito join the New York squad) as they made the semi-finals again, losing to the Flyers.Cheevers returned from the WHA in 1977, and the Bruins would get past the Flyers in the semi-finals, but would lose to the Canadiens in the race for the Cup. The story would repeat itself in 1978.The 1979 semi-final series against the Canadiens proved to be Cherry's undoing. In the deciding seventh game, the Bruins, up by a goal, were called for having too many men on the ice in the late stages of the third period. Montreal tied the game on the ensuing power play and won in overtime.The Eighties and Nineties
Ray Bourque, highest scoring defenseman of all-timeCoupled with front office dislike of Cherry's outspoken ways, the following season saw his replacement as coach by Fred Creighton in 1979, a newly-retired Cheevers the following year, and the coming of Ray Bourque. The defenseman -- one of the true greats of NHL history -- was an icon for the team for over two decades, although in the end it took a trade to the Colorado Avalanche for him to win the Stanley Cup.The Bruins made the playoffs every year through the 1980s behind stars such as Park, Bourque and Rick Middleton -- and had the league's best record in 1983 behind a Vezina-winning season from ex-Flyer goaltender Pete Peeters -- but usually did not get very far. By the late 1980s, they were once again a force. In addition to Bourque, players like the indomitable Cam Neely, Keith Crowder, and Don Sweeney would lead the Bruins to another finals appearance in 1988 against the Edmonton Oilers. The Bruins lost in a four-game sweep, but created a memorable moment in Game 4, when the lights at the Boston Garden went out in the second period with the game tied. The rest of the game was cancelled and the series shifted to Edmonton.Boston returned to the finals in 1990 (with Neely, Bourque, Craig Janney, and Bobby Carpenter leading the team in scoring, and Andy Moog and Rejean Lemelin splitting goaltending duties), but would again lose to the Oilers.The 1990s were not kind to the Bruins. Despite picking up more talent like Adam Oates, Rick Tocchet, and Jozef Stumpel, they did not get past the second round of the playoffs after 1992 (their second consecutive conference final loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins). In 1997, they missed the playoffs for the first time in 30 years, having set the North American major professional record for most consecutive seasons in the playoffs.The 1990s also saw the Bruins moving from the storied Boston Garden, to their new home, the FleetCenter, now known as the TD Banknorth Garden.Their bitterest archrivals have historically been the Montreal Canadiens, but the Canadiens' lack of success in recent years has muted the century-old rivalry.The 21st Century
Alternate SweaterThe Bruins got off to a poor start in the new century. Despite a 15 point improvement from the previous season, the Bruins missed the playoffs in 2000-01. They finished with 88 points, which left them out of the playoff picture, in a tie with the 8th place Carolina Hurricanes, behind the coaching of both Pat Burns and Mike Keenan.The following season (2001-02) saw the Bruins with a 13 point improvement, their first Northeast Division title since 1993 and a solid core built around Joe Thornton, Sergei Samsonov, Brian Rolston, Bill Guerin, and the newly acquired Glen Murray. Their regular season success didn't translate to postseason success, as they bowed out in six games to the underdog 8th-place Montreal Canadiens. Goaltending was the biggest flaw in the previous season, as Byron Dafoe struggled in the playoffs.The 2002-03 season saw very little improvement between the pipes, as the Bruins entered the season with weak goaltending once again. They platooned between the inconsistent Steve Shields and the inexperienced John Grahame for most of the season, but a mid-season trade brought in veteran Jeff Hackett, who showed signs of improvement, but wasn't the answer to the Bruins problems. The Bruins managed to finish 7th and lose to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion New Jersey Devils in 5 games.The 2003-04 season was sure to be an odd season, with two rookies playing key roles. The Bruins again failed to bring in a solid goaltender and began the season with yet another inconsistent goalie between the pipes, Felix Potvin. Potvin started out solid, but struggled soon enough, forcing the Bruins to put rookie Andrew Raycroft into the starting role. Raycroft proved superb and finally gave the Bruins an answer to their goaltending problems. Raycroft, as well as Thornton, Samsonov, Rolston, Murray, Mike Knuble, Nick Boynton, and rookie Patrice Bergeron carried the Bruins to another division title. The Bruins appeared destined to get out of the first round for the first time in five years, with a solid 3-1 series lead on the rival Montreal Canadiens. The Canadiens miraculously rallied back to win three straight games, upsetting the Bruins once again. The Bruins continue to search for the right coach, as they've gone through 5 coaches in 3 years.The 2004-05 NHL season was wiped out by a lockout, and the Bruins appear to be in good position, with a lot of space in the salary cap that will be implemented in time for the 2005-06 NHL season. The salary cap space was used to bring in big name free agents such as Alexei Zhamnov, Brian Leetch and re-signing Glen Murray. Early in the 2005-2006 season, backup goaltender Hannu Toivonen has displayed his case, in relief of a struggling Raycroft, to be the Bruins number one goalie for years to come.On November 30th, 2005, after struggling and underachieving immensely 2 months into the season, the Bruins traded their franchise player, Joe Thornton. In exchange, the Bruins recieved Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau from the San Jose Sharks. After losing 10 of 11 games, the Bruins stormed back in the first game after the trade with a 3-0 victory over the 19-3 Ottawa Senators, as rookie goaltender Hannu Toivonen's first ever NHL shutout victory.This profile was edited with MySpace Help - Profile Creator and Editor MySpace Profile Help!
