Boston Bruins Game Night Calls from Afar

The Boston Bruins hear you calling, and so do we.

When the temperature dipped below 70F on Saturday night, it occurred to me that, while we’re still in July, September and October aren’t that far away.

I dream of the next game night. I cannot see you pouring down the stairs on your way out of TD Garden, but your voices momentarily flash like flickers of sunlight through the seam in the elevator doors and floors especially as we pass Levels 7 and 4. When the 9-to-3 express completes its postgame run and stops, we spill out of the elevator and onto event level.

The noise follows us right through the walls.

“Wooooo!”

The fun part of all this is media types like myself board that ride at the first note of “Dirty Water.” Therefore, we are pinned to the back wall of the elevator as we stare forward at the back of motionless heads (I’ve involuntarily memorized many NHL executives’ bald spots). Home and away management share the ride and, win or lose, the silence is deafening.

That’s where you come in, speaking out your emotions like a vicarious consciousness for the lemmings stuffed into that short ride that on some nights can seem so long. If I feel the vibe and try in vain to hide my grin, how much more so those men in black whose lives and families, not just livelihoods, are totally wrapped around that result.

You speak and we listen, so they definitely listen.

They may stand still, barely breathing during our collective free fall from press level, but inside they’re bouncing off those walls that reverberate.

“Wooooo!”

As a chronicler of the Boston Bruins’ fortunes, I long for the days that were commonplace only a dozen years ago.
You’ve left the arena, and the bullgang working 90 feet below is putting together the floor for the Celtics. “Beep, beep, beep,” the flatbed carts carry numbered floorboards into prescribed areas for rapid installation. Then the parquet itself. All hands are on deck. The teamwork is amazing.

For the writers meeting deadlines from their assigned game seats rather than from the media workroom downstairs, those little flatbed trucks are our soundtrack for deep playoff runs and last-minute flight plans. It’s music to our ears.

Is this the year?

Some people think the Boston Bruins, minus half of the goalie hug and minus Jake DeBrusk’s opportunistic strikes, are headed downhill. I don’t understand the logic.

What hockey team spends most of a season in first place and contends for…