Why the Bruins Should Lose the Stanley Cup

There are tons of perfectly good reasons to jump on the Bruins bandwagon, especially if you’re from bandwagon country: New England. From Augusta to Quincy, everyone agrees there is nothing more quintessentially New England than a blue-collar hero rising above all odds to hoist some token of triumph. “We want The Cup! We want The Cup!” No kidding, New England sports fans, everyone wants The Cup. Welcome to the NHL.

This year, it seems, the Bruins are the team that New England can thoughtlessly rally behind. The Bruins: A beloved bunch of rag-tag, lunch-pail carrying wage-earners looking to chalk up another New England sports title. It’s true the Bruins seem roughneck, taunting the Canucks to bite their fingers. (If it were twenty years ago, fists would fly without a moment of hesitation.) But are the Bruins really roughneck, or is it just the hard-nosed nature of the NHL, of hockey in general?

Vancouver and Boston have the top two per-player average salaries in the NHL, both clocking in at 2.7 million per year. So, the top teams make the most money and still get called blue-collar? It must be the NHL. If you want to root for a “blue-collar” team, go for the Islanders.

Only one Bruin potted 30 goals this season, and he’s a gritty two-way player from Vancouver. So far the Bruins’ leading scorer in the Vancouver series is a 21-year NHL veteran, also from B.C. The Bruins’ goalie was the 217th overall draft pick to the Quebec Nordics in 1994–a great year for netminders, as hockey fans know, Vancouver fans bitterly. The Bruins’ goalie slogged for years in the minors and in Europe. He didn’t become a starter in the NHL until age 31. Six years later, at the moment, he might be the best goalie in the game. Maybe team USA would have had better luck in the Vancouver Winter Olympics’ Gold-medal game if they’d given him the nod over Ryan Miller. Who knows? For now, the Gold medal lives in Canada, and so should the Stanley Cup.

But Canadians aren’t the only ones rooting against Boston. Blackhawks fans want Boston to lose, and Red Wings fans, too. Everyone in Minnesota has made Boston Bruins Voodoo dolls to stick hot needles into if it comes down to it. There is none of that Red-Sox-Nation crap going on in the NHL. And when New England sports fans complain about “The Drought,” how its been 39 years since wining a Stanley Cup, everyone knows they’ve has been too busy with Rajon Rondo, Tom Brady, and whatever under-performing Red Sox pitcher to name a single multi-season Bruins starter (aside from Ray Bourque) since 72’.

I predict that sooner or later New England sports fans will come around and get behind their MSL team, The New England Revolution. Of course, this won’t happen until the Revolution threaten to win something substantial.

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