Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

GUEST COLUMNIST BEN STURTEVANT

Bruins Stanley Cup quest a family affair

Kennebec Journal Staff

They're like family. That's the best way to describe your favorite sports team when you're a die-hard fan.

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Guest columnist Ben Sturtevant

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They're there when you wake up with your morning paper -- or website for those of you under 30. They're there when you go to bed with the postgame highlights and analysis on TV.

For me, the Boston Bruins and their cousins, the Red Sox and Patriots, are like family. But the Bruins are my closest relative. I've been a fan for 40 years.

Love of the black-and-gold spoked B was instilled in me in the early 1970s by my father.

Dad signed us up for youth hockey at the Kennebec Ice Arena in 1974. I played defense and center. He was one of the assistant coaches. He bought me new skates and outfitted me with hand-me-down pads from the older kids.

The rink, now in a scrap metal yard somewhere after collapsing in February, had just been built on Whitten Road in Hallowell.

I have to think the Bruins had something to do with the construction of the place. The Bobby Orr-led Big, Bad Bruins, who won Stanley Cup championships in 1970 and '72, were the most successful franchise in the NHL at the time. The Bruins' heroics sparked a surge of youth hockey interest in New England. Ice was needed.

I was too young to remember much detail of the Bruins of that era. My first vivid memory of the team was at an end-of-season party with my Mite-level, 7- and 8-year-old youth hockey team.

Someone brought a piñata to the party. It was an effigy of Dave "The Hammer" Schultz, the feared Philadelphia Flyers enforcer who set the NHL single-season record for penalties.

Schultz and his Flyers, the Broad Street Bullies, put an end to the Bruins dominance that spring, beating the Bs for the Cup four games to two.

That did not sit well with most members the Kennebec Valley Youth Hockey Association. We needed to vent our frustration.

The Schultz piñata was filled with candy and trinkets. It didn't take long for my Mites teammates to tear into Schultz with our hockey sticks and enjoy the spoils.

I thought about those days and other hockey memories this past week as I watched the Bruins beat the Vancouver Canucks to win first the Stanley Cup for Boston in nearly 40 years.

I thought about my college days in Boston during the late '80s.

The Bruins, with Cam Neely and Ray Bourque leading the charge, enjoyed a resurgence. My roommates and I spent many a winter night watching the Bruins on NESN, serenaded by the golden voice of the great play-by-play man Fred Cusick.

In 1988, the Bruins beat the hated Montreal Canadiens in a playoff series for the first time in 45 years.

After clinching the series in Game 5 at the Montreal Forum, the Bruins flew back to Boston, arriving at Logan International Airport around 1 a.m. I was there at the gate with several hundred other fans to congratulate them as they exited the plane. The Bruins advanced to the finals that season, only to lose to the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers.

That was OK with most of us. "Hey, at least they beat the Habs," we shrugged.

I thought about my favorite Bruins of the past -- Neely, Rick "Nifty" Middleton, Bourque, Terry O'Reilly, Gilles Gilbert, Lyndon Byers, Stan Jonathan, and Gerry Cheevers -- the Bruins goalie who was famous for wearing a goalie mask painted with stitches. That mask became my Facebook profile photo during the finals.

I thought about the time I skated against the Bruins oldtimers in a charity game at KIA.

I thought about how last year's Bruins blew a 3-0 lead and lost in seven games to the Flyers.

I thought about how brutally long the hockey season is. I tried to imagine how tough and fit NHL players have to be to play from October to June.

The farther this year's Bruins team went, the more closely I followed.

When I was unable to watch, my friend Tony, texted the results to my cell phone. I watched the end of Game 1 of the Bruins-Flyers conference semifinals series at Boston's North Station after arriving by train for a Red Sox game in April. I stopped shaving and grew a playoff beard. At work, I printed out Bruins logos, hung them in the office. I trash-talked with the boss, a devout Montreal Canadiens fan.

Now it had come down to the final game. Where would I watch Game 7?

At home with my pregnant wife, a former Hartford Whalers fan, who detested my yelling at the TV and wondered why hockey was still being played when it's 80 degree outside?

In front of a 60-inch plasma at a local watering hole with my men's hockey league teammates, strangers and barflies?

Neither venue offered much promise for a memorable Game 7, a game I was fairly certain would be won by the Bruins.

This would be a historical moment for those of us in the Bruins tribe. It had been 39 years since they'd last won the Cup, after all. I wanted this victory to have an extra special place in my heart.

In the end, the choice was easy. I would watch Game 7 with Dad.

We sat down to watch the game like a couple of little kids. We cheered as Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand scored to put the Bruins up 2-0 about halfway through.

"Boy, that Marchand can really stickhandle," my dad said.

We swore at the TV when the announcer claimed Bergeron's second goal, a shorthander to give the B's a 3-0 cushion, should have been disallowed.

We panicked whenever the Canucks' Swedish Sedin twins had the puck. We seethed when Vancouver's Danish forward Jannik Hansen cracked Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference with a cheapshot from behind.

As the clocked ticked down in the third period, my mother suggested we should relax and enjoy the game.

Aren't the Bruins going to win, she asked?

No. It's too early to celebrate. "Not 'til the fat lady sings," Dad said.

With about two minutes left, Marchand scored the empty-netter to make it 4-0.

It was over. The Cup was ours.

Dad and I jumped out of our chairs and screamed with joy. For a few minutes, we were one big happy family again -- Dad, the Bruins, and me.

Ben Sturtevant is a former sports editor at the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel who lives in Hallowell.