There is an alarming trend happening in America.  Okay, there are several alarming trends happening in America (please stop running So You Think You Can Dance promos in Canada.  That screaming airhead haunts my dreams), but there is one that stands out above all others. The fastest growing team sport in the U.S. is ultimate frisbee!!  No, wait.  That's not it.  Here it is!  Roller hockey is all but extinct!!

As Puck Daddy has correctly pointed it out, this can only mean awful, horrible things for the NHL.  Without millions of pudgy children wobbling and wheeling their way around suburban tennis courts in Glendale Arizona, Boca Raton Florida or even (gasp!) Burbank California, how ever will these same children familiarize themselves with hockey enough to eventually realize that they should be playing it on ice, like God intended?  And without that realization, how ever will they then become true card carrying, mouth breathing hockey fans, validating The Commissar's Southern Expansion by blindly throwing gobs of money at failing franchises?  Obviously, this cannot be allowed to stand.

A keen sense of public duty has always been one of the twin pillars upon which Five For Smiting was founded (the other being "LEAFS SUCK!"), and it occurred to me, that amongst my literally tens of loyal readers (Hi Mom!), at least three of them are Americans.  And so, with that in mind I have taken upon myself the heavy mantle of responsibility, so casually discarded by the Lords of Roller Hockey, of familiarizing new fans with this great sport I love.

I propose to accomplish this with a brief look, a précis if you will, of the Northeast Division, the greatest division in the National Hockey League.  It is hoped that the casual reader, once steeped in the history, tradition, bile and hatred of these five storied franchises, will have no choice but to give over their sporting souls to hockey, and join civilized peoples the world over in mocking Leaf Nation.

We begin today, with the history* of the Boston Bruins.

*history may not be entirely accurate

The Pre-World War II Years:

The Boston Bruins were founded in 1924 by local grocery tycoon, Charles Adams.  One of Adams' first actions was to hire the great Art Ross as General Manager, and saddled him with the responsibility of creating a nickname and colour scheme for the nascent franchise.  A habit of Art's when faced with such daunting tasks was to clear his head with a hike through the bright colours and fresh crisp air of a New England forest.  One day, while on such a trek, he was attacked by a mother bear suspicious of Ross' intentions toward her cub, and thus, the name "Bruins" was born.  Later recuperating in hospital, Ross found himself reflecting upon the inherent links between bears and woods, and settled on brown and yellow for the team colours.

The 1928–29 season was the first played at Boston Garden, which Adams had built after guaranteeing his backers that there would never, ever be any renovations done to the building that might cost them money, ever, a promise all subsequent owners proudly upheld until the Garden was finally condemned as a rat infested death trap in 1995. It was at the end of that 1929 season where Boston would claim it's first Stanley Cup, over the New York Rangers (following the series Rangers minority owner Thadeus Bartholomew Wang would file a protest with the League office, blaming "those meddlin' newsies" for the loss and signing goaltender Lorne Chabot to an eighteen year contract).

In 1929–30, the Bruins posted the best-ever regular season winning percentage in the NHL (an astonishing .875, winning 38 out of 44 games, a record which still stands), but would lose to the Montreal Canadiens in the Final, the first of what would become another long held and cherished tradition by Bruins fans.

In 1939 the team, realizing that a colour scheme patterned after bear excrement was putting a sizable dent in their merchandise sales, and over the protestations of the Art Ross family who over the years had amassed a rather impressive fortune through their fecal souvenir business, changed their official colours to black and gold, and promptly captured their second Stanley Cup.  A third would follow in 1941.  It was their last Championship for 29 years.

World War II and the Original Six Era:

World War II affected the Bruins more than most teams, as most of their star players (the famous "Krauts" -- Frank Brimasek, Roy Conacher and Bobby Bauer among others) were rounded up as obvious German sympathizers and sent to toil in "resettlement" camps in the Arizona desert (theories that this led to the eventual establishment of the Phoenix Coyotes remain strictly apocryphal).

Following the War, the Bruins were never the same.  From 1947 to 1967, they managed to muster only four winning seasons.  This did not, however, prevent them from carrying on the proud tradition of being pwned by the Habs, losing to Montreal in the '53, '57, and '58 Cup Finals.

On January 18, 1958, a milestone in NHL history occurred, as the first black player ever to play in the NHL stepped onto the ice for the Bruins, Fredericton, New Brunswick left winger Willie O'Ree. He would play in 45 games for the Bruins, in the 1957–58 and 1960–61 seasons, scoring six goals and ten assists in his NHL career.  To this day, the anniversary of O'Ree's debut is celebrated in typical Bostonian style, with "HEAHS TO DAT FAHKING DAHRKIE Day" free skates held in all municipal arenas on the South Side.

Expansion and The Big Bad Bruins:

In 1964 the Bruins would draft some gangly kid out of Parry Sound, Ontario named Bobby Orr who entered the league in 1966 and would eventually become the masturbatory fantasy of one Donald S. Cherry.  Oh, and he was a pretty decent player too.

Surrounding Orr with the likes of Phil Esposito, Wayne Cashman and Ken Hodge, and taking advantage of the League's rather convenient decision of creating a separate conference for the six new weak pathetic should never have been allowed on the same ice expansion teams, the Bruins would capture their fourth Cup by demolishing the St Louis Blues in four games in 1970.  They would win again in 1972, their fifth, and to date, last Stanley Cup banner.

Having lost the '76 Finals to Bobby Clarke and the Broadstreet Bullies, the Bruins ownership decided to go in a different direction.  Out were skill players like Cheevers, Sanderson and McKenzie, and in came the likes of Terry O'Reilley, Greg Sheppard and Stan Jonathan, with pugnacious minor leaguer Don Cherry acting as Head Coach.  While mildly successful, the new brand of Boston hockey proved a rather hazardous experience for innocent passers by:

Due to a tragic inability to count to five, an affliction that had dogged Cherry from childhood, the Bruins blew a one goal lead with less than a minute to go to lose the 1979 Semi Finals to Montreal (natch).  Cherry was fired the following off season, whereupon he exacted his revenge upon the hockey world by performing unspeakable atrocities to household upholstery before somehow landing his own television gig.  For their part, the Bruins entered a long period known colloquially around the Greater Boston Area as the Holy Shit The Bs Suck Decade.

1980's to the Present:

In 1988, the Bruins took a break from their regularly scheduled ass poundings at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens and made it all the way to the Finals.  There, two things conspired against them.  The first was their misfortune of drawing Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers as an opponent, possibly the greatest collection of hockey talent ever assembled after the '76 Habs.  The second was Harry Sinden.

In the second period of game four, down 3 games to none in the series, with the home crowd being Boston's only hope to climb back into it and with the game tied 3–3, a blown three dollar fuse put the lights out at the Boston Garden. The rest of the game was cancelled and the series shifted back to Edmonton. The Oilers won 6-3, completing the sweep.  Glen Sather promptly dedicated the win to Harry Sinden's genetic inability to spend any money on anything related to the Garden.

The next twenty years have been somewhat uneventful.  The team made one last appearance in the 1990 Cup Final (losing to...you guessed it...Edmonton), and since then have bounced between mediocre and plain gawd awful.

A slight glimmer of hope has appeared with the arrival of Peter Chiarelli as GM who in one fell swoop managed to slay the Sinden Dragon and outright steal the current captain, Zdeno Chara out from the nose of the Ottawa Senators.  For this obvious crime, there will naturally remain a bounty on Mr. Chiarelli's head until such time as he gives Zee back to us.  But I digress.

So there you have it, neophite hockey fans.  The Boston Bruins, a proud franchise, with many proud players.  Ray Bourque, Cam Neely, Guy Lapointe, Jean Ratelle, Brian Leetch, Paul Coffey, Joe Mullen...just some of the Hall of Famers who have sported the famed Spoked B.  And never won jack.

Please join us next time, as we continue our series with a look at the Buffalo Sabres.

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