Veteranscribe's Blog

Boston’s got the ghosts. Vancouver doesn’t. That’s why the Boston Bruins are the Stanley Cup champions.

The Canucks, excellent hockey team that they are, still have no ghosts of their own. They can’t look back onto chapters and chapters of stories past.  They can’t call on their memories, both sweet and bitter, to sustain and inspire them. Boston can, Boston does, and Boston did.

Many Boston titans of former ages, thankfully, are still with us in the flesh as well as in spirit. Franchise patriarch Milton Conrad Schmidt is here. Milt played on two Stanley Cup winners before World War II, went off to war with the Royal Canadian Air Force, came back, and played in two more Cup Final series. He coached the Bruins to the finals twice. His eye for talent and his mastery of the trade routes, in the years when he was general manager, built the last two Bruins Stanley Cup champion teams.

Vancouver will get its Stanley Cup eventually. But as long as they play hockey out there, they’ll never have a Milt Schmidt. Nor will they ever see the likes of Bobby Orr, the game’s finest player ever.  Orr is here, along with most of the members of his rollicking retinue from the last golden era. They were watching tonight. You know their names: Esposito, Cheevers, Stanfield, Hodge, Bucyk, Sanderson, Cashman and compatriots. Joining them were so many others – O’Reilly, Bourque, Middleton, Neely and their mates – who battled valiantly in more recent years, carried the tradition with pride, but did not bring home the ultimate prize.

Higher up in the Virtual Boston Garden this evening, in the Second Balcony that we used to call the heavens, it was Standing Room Only. Eddie Shore, Frank Brimsek, Cooney Weiland, Art Ross, Bobby Bauer, Woody Dumart, Lionel Hitchman, Dit Clapper, Tiny Thompson and Dutch Gainor all cheered lustily. They’ve already reserved a place of honor in their club for Thomas and Chara – and let us hope that it will be many decades before those two show up to claim their seats.

Over on the Vancouver side of the house, it was empty. A couple of series ago, that part of the Virtual Garden was well populated when Rocket Richard, Toe Blake, Doug Harvey, Howie Morenz, Aurel Joliat, George Hainsworth, Jacques Plante, Georges Vezina and Bernie Geoffrion all showed up to yell for the Bleu-Blanc-Rouge. On the lower levels, during that series, we saw a crew that included Cournoyer, Lemaire, Dryden, Lafleur, Laperriere and Gainey.  They matched Orr and his gang cheer for cheer, and this time they’re the ones who went home disappointed.

That’s the only thing missing from this wonderful Stanley Cup Final series. The ghosts of ancient rivalry. We cherish no memories of Boston against Vancouver in decades past. When we speak of Montreal and others, we bring back fond reveries, the tales of triumphs and tragedies that we tell and re-tell and have woven into the sporting soul of this great city. But these seven games, marvelous though they were, are like a summer fling, an intense and beautiful encounter that we know, deep down, will probably not ever be repeated.

The way that hockey has expanded and reorganized, it’s almost impossible to establish another traditional rivalry that’s appropriately rich and textured. Vancouver was capable of winning. But they didn’t, and I can’t help but wonder whether the Ghosts of Causeway Street gave the Boston Bruins an advantage that just couldn’t be overcome . We may never see the Vancouver Canucks again, in the context of a Stanley Cup Final series. No matter. Clap and cheer, my Boston friends, and know that you’ve got hundreds and hundreds more good and loyal Bruins hockey immortals clapping and cheering right along with you.

Today, as we prepare for Game Six of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, “The Starter” statue of my grandfather George V. Brown sports a Bruins’ sweater as he watches over the Boston Marathon starting line.

George V. is perhaps best know for his long affiliation with the sport of track and with the BAA Marathon, but he was a pioneer in ice hockey as well. BAA players made up most of the first teams that he organized to represent America in international play. George also managed the Boston Arena and Boston Garden in the days Eddie Shore, “The Edmonton Express,” was making mincemeat out of opposing forwards. Here is the story in the Hopkinton Crier.

As I write this, the series stands at 3-2 in favor of Vancouver.  Sure, I’m rooting for Boston. They may yet win it.  Vancouver is a better team, but not by that much. But even if the Bruins don’t pull it out, I’m proud of them. I hope you are too. This memorable series shows why hockey players – fearless, selfless – are the Navy Seals of the sporting world.  In hockey, it’s all about the team and the mission.

I was there for the final years of the Original Six, those seasons when the Bruins and Rangers always finished out of the playoffs. I was there when Milt Schmidt’s Grand Theft Trade brought Esposito, Hodge, and Stanfield to Boston – and when Milt added Eddie Shack to the rollicking supporting cast for Bobby Orr, hockey’s greatest player ever. I was in the old Boston Garden when Orr scored his iconic overtime goal against the great Glenn Hall in 1970, suffered through the Dryden debacle in 1971, and cheered the return of the Cup in 1972. It seemed like the good times would never end. But end they did.

Good times have returned.  But take it from me. They may not stay. Enjoy and appreciate while you can.