Boston Bruins

Team information

• Inaugural season: 1924
• Home arena: TD Garden, Boston, Massachusetts
• Owner: Jeremy Jacobs
• Team colors: Black and gold

Overview

The Boston Bruins are a National Hockey League (NHL) team that plays in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. One of the Original Six NHL teams alongside the Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs, the Bruins first took the ice in 1924. Over the course of their long history, the Bruins have won multiple Stanley Cup championships and earned numerous other accolades. The NHL’s oldest American franchise, the Bruins have long been a fan-favorite team and a perennial post-season contender. The Bruins are also one of the NHL’s most financially successful teams, worth an estimated $1.4 billion in 2022.

In addition to their on-ice play, the Boston Bruins also maintain a strong commitment to charitable endeavors, primarily through the Boston Bruins Foundation. The Boston Bruins Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works with other charitable organizations focused on health and wellness, education, and athletics. Through its efforts, the Foundation aims to create a strong support system for children and families that will benefit the entire community of Greater Boston. Since its creation in 2003, the Foundation has raised more than $54 million through various programs and events. One of the Foundation’s most notable efforts was B Inclusive, a partnership with Special Olympics Massachusetts that included a $1 million donation and an array of initiatives designed to encourage inclusion and support overall health and wellness.

History

The history of the Boston Bruins began with Boston grocery store magnate Charles Adams. After watching the 1924 Stanley Cup Finals, Adams became enamored with the sport of hockey and set his sights on bringing an NHL franchise to Boston. He pitched his idea to league officials and ultimately convinced them to grant him an expansion team. Up to that point, the NHL operated exclusively in Canada. As a result, Adams’s new Boston team would be the first American NHL franchise. In creating his team’s image, Adams chose brown with yellow trim to match the color scheme of his grocery stores. As for the name, Adams wanted to go with an animal known for its size and strength and held a contest to find the best fit. Ultimately, however, it was his own secretary who came up with Bruins, the moniker that eventually stuck.

The Boston Bruins took the ice for the first time at Boston Arena on December 1, 1924, and earned a 2–1 win over the Montreal Maroons. Despite this strong start, the Bruins struggled through their first two seasons. In their third year, however, the team not only made the playoffs for the first time, but also reached the Stanley Cup Finals. While the Bruins were defeated by the Ottawa Senators at the time, they returned to the Finals two years later in 1929. This time facing the New York Rangers, the Bruins emerged victorious to claim their first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history. By that point, the team had moved from its original home at Boston Arena to the legendary Boston Garden, a new arena that would be synonymous with the Bruins for more than sixty years.

The Bruins’s success continued into the 1930s, with the team earning five first-place divisional titles and winning many accolades. The culmination of their efforts in that decade came in the 1938–1939 season. That year, the Bruins returned to the Stanley Cup Finals and defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs in five games to claim their second Stanley Cup championship.

Over the next thirty years, the Bruins experienced one of the most tumultuous periods in franchise history. The era started off well, with the team making yet another Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 1941 and sweeping the Detroit Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup for the third time. After that, however, the team’s performance began to decline. In the years that followed, the Bruins failed to make the playoffs in eleven seasons, including during an eight-year stretch between 1959 and 1960 and 1966–1967. While the Bruins did make it back to the Stanley Cup Finals on three occasions in the 1950s, they failed to claim another championship win.

After a fruitful rebuilding period in the latter half of the 1960s that saw the arrival of all-time greats like Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, the Bruins finally returned to form in the early 1970s. At the conclusion of the 1969–1970 season, the Bruins charged back to the Stanley Cup Finals to face the St. Louis Blues. On the verge of a sweep in Game 4, Orr scored an iconic overtime goal on a play that saw him dramatically soaring through the air as he put the puck in the net to secure the Stanley Cup for the Bruins. The Bruins subsequently returned to the Stanley Cup Finals in each of the next two seasons, ultimately winning their second Stanley Cup in 1972. Despite returning to the Stanley Cup Finals three more times in the 1970s—against the Philadelphia Flyers in 1974 and the Montreal Canadiens in 1977 and 1978—the team would not lift the Cup again that decade.

The 1980s brought another rebuilding period leading to a strong run at the end of the decade that includes Stanley Cup Finals appearances in the 1987–1988 and 1989–1990 seasons, but no further Cup wins. One of the biggest developments for the Bruins in the 1990s was their departure from the famed Boston Garden in favor of a new state-of-the-art facility originally known as the FleetCenter and later the TD Garden.

After struggling through much of the 2000s, the Bruins once more found success in the 2010s, making it to the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals and defeating the Vancouver Canucks to win the sixth Stanley Cup championship in franchise history. The Bruins returned to the Stanley Cup Finals two more times that decade, facing the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and the St. Louis Blues in 2019. Although they fell short of winning the Stanley Cup again in these campaigns, the Bruins remained one of the NHL’s most formidable teams.

Following a coaching change in the 2022 off-season that saw the firing of longtime coach Bruce Cassidy, the Bruins, under the leadership of head coach Jim Montgomery, went on to set several historic records during the 2022–23 season, including becoming the fastest team to reach 100 points in a season and the fastest team to reach 50 wins in a season. By the end of the regular season, the team had set the record for most regular season wins and most regular season points in the history of the league. However, a loss in game seven of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Florida Panthers ended any hopes of postseason glory.

Notable players

Numerous former Boston Bruins players have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Ontario. Perhaps first and foremost among these greats is Bobby Orr, a legendary defenseman who is often considered one of the best to ever play the game. Orr played ten seasons for the Bruins from 1966 to 1976 and led the team to its 1970 and 1972 Stanley Cup championships. During that time, Orr contributed a total of 264 goals and 624 assists. Another major figure in the Bruins’s 1970s success and eventual Hall of Famer was center Phil Esposito. A fixture on the Bruins roster from 1967 to 1975, Esposito racked up 459 goals and 553 assists as the team experienced one of its most successful periods in franchise history. Although he only played forty-five games over two seasons in the NHL, Willie O’Ree is one of the Bruins’s most historically significant Hall of Fame players. Making his debut in 1957, O’Ree broke hockey’s color barrier to become the first African American to play in the NHL. Defensive legend Eddie Shore accumulated 103 goals and 176 assists during his fourteen years with the Bruins from 1926 to 1939. Defenseman Ray Bourque spent most of his twenty-two-year NHL career with the Bruins, scoring 395 goals and recording 1,111 assists in that time. Right winger Cam Neely was a key member of Bruins squads in the 1980s and 1990s who racked up 344 goals and 346 assists during the decade he played in Boston. Center Adam Oates spent six years of his Hall of Fame career as a Bruin and recorded 357 goals and 499 assists in that time.

Boston has seen many other notable Bruins as well. A Bruin for ten years from 1924 to 1934, Lionel Hitchman distinguished himself as one of the team’s all-time great defensemen. Right winger Rick Middleton was a major contributor to the Bruins’s success in the 1970s and 1980s, recording 402 goals and 496 assists during his twelve-year stay in Boston. Left winger Wayne Cashman played his entire seventeen-year career as a Bruin, scoring 277 goals and recording 516 assists during that span. Soon after making his 2003 Bruins debut, center Patrice Bergeron established himself as one of the team’s top players. Heading into the 2023–2024 season, Bergeron had a total of 427 goals and 613 assists. The same could be said of Bergeron’s longtime teammate David Krejčí, a dominant center who joined the Bruins in 2006. By the end of the 2022–2023 season, Krejčí had recorded 231 goals and 555 assists. Towering 6-foot 9-inch defenseman Zdeno Chára also joined the Bruins in 2006 and served as the team's captain until his departure in 2020. One of the most important contributors to the Bruins’s 2010–2011 championship run was goaltender Tim Thomas. Through his eight years in Boston, Thomas made 10,533 saves and backstopped the Bruins on their way to winning the Stanley Cup. After making his debut with the Bruins in 2009, Brad Marchand proved to be an integral member of the team and had scored 372 goals and 490 assists by the end of the 2022–23 season. Meanwhile, David Pastrňák established a reputation as one of the best goal scorers in the league after joining the team in 2014, and by the end of the 2022–23 season he had recorded 301 goals and 316 assists.

Bibliography

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“Boston Bruins.” Internet Hockey Database, 2024, www.hockeydb.com/stte/boston-bruins-4919.html. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

“Boston Bruins.” Sports E-Cyclopedia, 2020, sportsecyclopedia.com/nhl/boston/bruins.html. Accessed 26 Mar. 2020.

“Boston Bruins History.” NHL, 2020, www.nhl.com/bruins/team/history. Accessed 26 Mar. 2020.

“Boston Bruins Foundation.” Boston Bruins, www.nhl.com/bruins/community/foundation-about. Accessed 28 June 2023.

“Boston Bruins Team History.” Sports Team History, 2020, sportsteamhistory.com/boston-bruins. Accessed 26 Mar. 2020.

“#5 Boston Bruins.” Forbes, www.forbes.com/teams/boston-bruins/?sh=6a737fc8524e. Accessed 28 June 2023.

Wyshynski, Greg. “The Bruins' Amazing, Record-Breaking Season by the Numbers.” ESPN, 14 Apr. 2023, www.espn.com/nhl/story/‗/id/36178384/boston-bruins-record-breaking-season-numbers. Accessed 28 June 2023.