Seeking a Mythical Hockey Team
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by Rawbeezeitz
I’ve heard stories about a professional hockey team playing in Boston. When I first heard about these “Bruins” playing in Boston, I thought maybe UCLA was in town to play a local college in some sport. But when I learned that these Bruins played hockey, I knew it wasn’t UCLA.
I thought it impossible that a pro hockey team could slip under my nose, especially one playing only a few miles away in Boston. Sports are a quasi-religion to me, and hockey is one of my favorites.
The tales I heard of these Bruins spoke of a Garden, a TD BankNorth Garden. This is where the Celtics play. But the whispers about the Bruins mentioned the Garden as the home of this mythical hockey team.
So I went there. I saw all the Celtics paraphernalia, all their retired numbers, all their championship banners. I saw pictures of Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy. I also saw newer pictures of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen. Spotting no evidence of a hockey team, I decided to take a picture of the Garden’s banners for my records. When the film was developed, what I saw astonished me.
Look in the background, behind all those white and green Celtics banners. Look to the right, behind the Celtics’ retired numbers. There’s a banner with a bear on it, and the words “Boston Bruins!” Even further back, there are banners for the Bruins and their various championships, divisional titles, and retired numbers. I felt like the guy who took that blurry picture of the Loch Ness monster. I had evidence suggesting the existence of the Bruins, but still no solid proof. Were these banners real, or just a product of poor film development? Maybe they were real, but the team left town long ago. I needed to know more.
It was time to bring out the big guns in my search, the proverbial Ace up my sleeve…Google. I searched for Boston Bruins, and found a web-site claiming to be “The Official Web Site” of the team. But I was suspicious. I couldn’t shake the notion that I was being tricked somehow. This whole thing smelled fishy. Fake web-sites are easy to manufacture, and are often used to steal people’s passwords, or their credit card info. I treaded lightly.
I found what claimed to be the Bruins schedule. The site claimed that this team was 5-2-0 to begin the season, with wins over Phoenix, Los Angeles, the Rangers, Tampa Bay, and San Jose. Now I knew this was a hoax. LA, the Rangers, Tampa, and San Jose all made the playoffs last season. The site even said that the Bruins lost 2-1 to the Stanley Cup Champions in Anaheim. This just couldn’t be true. If there were a hockey team in Boston that was 5-2-0 against that competition, wouldn’t they be mentioned in the news, or in the papers?
I thought my investigation was over. I would verify through these other teams that they had, in fact, not played any team from Boston.
I called up they Coyotes, and they said they lost 3-1 to Boston. The guy in Phoenix said that Patrice Bergeron and Marco Sturm scored on power play goals, and that Chuck Kobasew scored short-handed. He said goalie Tim Thomas stopped 36 of 37 shots he faced. I hung up in disbelief. Then I realized, it’s Arizona, what the hell do they know about hockey? Do they even know what hockey is? That it’s played on ice?
I sent an e-mail to Anaheim. They replied and said that the Bruins put up a heck of a fight. Kobasew scored in the first, but the Ducks were able to get a goal in the second, then one in the middle of the third.
At the same time, I sent a fax to the LA Kings. (I like to use different modes of communication in my investigative pursuits) My reply came quickly. They said that the Bruins won 8-6. I instantly threw out the fax because 8-6 is a baseball score. The guy was obviously lying. I looked at it again later that night and saw that Manny Fernandez got the win. Now that’s obviously a baseball name, not a hockey one.
I sent a text message to the San Jose Sharks. They said that Patrice Bergeron got a goal in the first. San Jose tied it with 38 seconds left in the third, but 26 seconds later, Aaron Ward scored the game winning goal, assisted by Marco Sturm, and that Bergeron guy. Once again, Tim Thomas got the win. I had my doubts about that name, though, it sounded made up. And it didn’t sound Canadian at all. And we all know that the only people who can be goalies are French Canadians and Eastern Europeans.
I didn’t even bother to get in touch with the Tampa Bay Lightning. I was done talking with warm weather cities about hockey. I couldn’t tell if they knew what I was talking about, or if they were lying to me, or they were just trying to tell me what I wanted to hear.
I went down to New York, to meet with the entire Rangers organization, face-to-face, man-to-men. I knew that these New Yorkers would expose this whole Bruins hoax for what it was. Considering how poorly New York’s sports are doing compared to New England's, I doubted they would help contribute to the notion that yet another Boston team had beaten a New York team.
I asked them about their “trip” to Boston, and they all put their heads down. “We couldn’t score on them” said Jaromir Jagr. “No matter how long I held onto the puck, no matter how little I passed it to my teammates, I couldn’t get a goal off that Fernandez guy. They beat us in penalty shots, 1-0.”
The stories were true. The Bruins do exist! Or did they? I had still only heard of three professional sports teams in the Boston area.
But last night, I was flipping through the channels, and I landed on some obscure station called “Versus.” And there were the Bruins playing in Montreal. There was Bergeron, Sturm, Philip Kessel, Marc Savard, Zdeno Chara, and Kobasew. Fernandez was there, unfortunately, and not Thomas.
Manny Fernandez failed to handle the rebound of a shot off his chest, and the Canadiens scored. Later, Fernandez covered up instead of playing the puck, Montreal won the faceoff and immediately scored. A Canadiens 2 on 1 breakaway was nearly broken up by the defenseman, but a pass that went right past Fernandez’s stick was tipped in by Montreal. After that, it was a feeding frenzy. The Habs went on to win 6-1.
However, the Bruins do exist. They are 5-3-0 to start the season. They’ve beaten 4 playoff teams, 3 of them on the road. They might just be contenders.
Note: I did almost none of the things I claimed to have done in this article.
