The Boston Bruins hear your call. We hear you.
When temperatures dropped below 70 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday night, I realized that although it's still July, September or October isn't that far away.
I'm dreaming of another game night. I can't see you coming down the stairs from TD Garden, but your voices sparkle for a moment like sunlight through the gaps between the elevator doors and floors, especially as we pass the seventh and fourth floors. As the 9 to 3 Express stops after its postgame run, we step out of the elevator and onto the events floor.
The noise passes through the walls and follows us.
“Wow!”
What's interesting is that media people like me board the ride just as the first notes of “Dirty Water” hit, so we're glued to the back wall of the elevator, staring at the backs of motionless heads (I unconsciously remember the bald heads of so many NHL executives). Home and away management ride together, win or lose, and the silence is deafening.
That's where you come in, speaking out your feelings as a surrogate for the lemmings packed into that short ride that can feel so long some nights. If I can feel the vibe and vainly try to hide my smile, how much more so can the men in black, whose livelihoods and even lives and families are utterly caught up in the outcome.
You talk, we listen, and they will listen.
They may stand still, barely breathing, during our collective free fall from press level, but in their minds they are bouncing off reverberating walls.
“Wow!”
As someone who chronicles the fortunes of the Boston Bruins, I find myself nostalgic for the days that were commonplace just 12 years ago.
Outside the arena, working 90 feet below, the bull gang is assembling the Celtics floor. “Beep, beep, beep,” a flatbed cart wheeles the numbered floorboards into place and swiftly installs them. Then the parquet. Everyone's on deck. The teamwork is incredible.
For reporters meeting deadlines from their assigned game seats rather than the media room downstairs, those little flat-bottom trucks are the background music to playoff blitzes and last-minute flight plans. It's music to the ears.
Is this the year?
Some believe the Boston Bruins are in decline because half the goalie hugs are gone and Jake DeBrusk's opportunistic strikes are gone. I don't understand the logic.
What hockey team sits in first place for most of the season and competes for the Presidents Trophy with only one established centerman? Not many, but this team added another established centerman and a stout defenseman, along with a couple of tough contenders in the bottom six.
While any team can go off track for various reasons, from a roster composition standpoint, this Boston Bruins team is already better than last year's.
Now, about the asterisk.
As the hot days pass without an announcement that the Boston Bruins and Jeremy Swayman have come to terms with a lifetime contract with the star goaltender, ironically it is the veterans who are feeling the most anxiety.
In these situations, older fans are usually the rational voice. When Bruins Nation panics, it's older fans who are happy to throw on the “SMH” emoji on their smartphones if they can find it. But in Swayman's case, this is not the sentiment of older fans. And you know why?
While we may not all look back to the days when Gerry Cheevers ascended to the World Hockey Association in 1972, it was only 20 years ago that Andrew Raycroft won the Calder Trophy that season.
Known mostly these days as a studio analyst for Boston Bruins television station NESN and one half of the “Morning Bru” podcast with Billy Jaffe, “Razer” (wasn't it originally spelled Rayzor?) was the team's best goaltender prospect since future Conn Smythe Trophy winner Bill Ranford (1986-88, 1996-97).
I don't blame Lazor if he wants to forget that he and Nick Boyington were harmed by the Boston Bruins' failed lockout strategy in 2004-05.
Club owner Jeremy Jacobs once told me the Bruins were simply following Commissioner Gary Bettman's instructions to all teams to prepare for a salary-capped world, but when the NHL Players Association's proposal for a across-the-board 24 percent rollback was incorporated by the league into its first-ever $39.5 million salary cap, powerhouses like the Detroit Red Wings suddenly found themselves able to keep their teams intact for the 2005-06 season.
The Bruins had several veterans on expiring contracts and were preparing for a rush to acquire new talent, but general manager Mike O'Connell had to scramble like a grocery shopper at 6 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday.
As a result, for example, the Islanders' enigmatic Brad Isbister has become the new Mike Knubble — a hulking, right-handed left wing; elite New England skaters Brian Leetch and Sean McCutchen are giving it another go; and veterans like Alexei Zhamunov are appearing in black and gold on the back nine.
The season started poorly and Joe Thornton's performance in San Jose was disappointing, but it was overshadowed by the loss of Boston's top two restricted free agents, Raycroft and Nick Boyington.
Raycroft was the NHL Rookie of the Year in 2003-04, and Boynton, whose developmental surge came from experiencing all-around hockey with AHL Providence in 2000-01, was a mainstay on Boston's top three blue line for three straight years before the league locked him out for the entire 2004-05 season in order to secure a salary cap hit that had long been desired.
Neither player produced much during the lockout year and neither carried any momentum into the Boston Bruins' 2005-06 training camp as last-minute “take it or leave it” RFAs.
Both were integral to the Bruins' fortunes, but neither was a member of the Bruins when Peter Chiarelli officially took over as general manager from O'Connell.
Interim Bruins GM Jeff Gorton, now a Montreal Canadiens visionary, played a large role in the transition period, following Chiarelli's lead while he was still with the Ottawa Senators, through the 2005 NHL Draft and a free-agent signing period that famously produced Marc Savard and Zdeno Chara, in that order.
Boynton was traded to Arizona for homegrown defenseman Paul Mara, while Raycroft was traded to Toronto for the rights to promising Finnish goaltender Tuukka Rask.
It's no wonder that older Bruins fans are feeling uneasy about Swayman's situation. The situations aren't comparable, but fans and players alike remember bad times.
Finally, will Delaware North buy the Boston Celtics? It makes sense that Bobby Orr would share the prime spot in front of the escalators at TD Garden with the late Bill Russell. And that's the only way it's going to happen.
