Boston Bruins: How the 2018-19 team brought back a hockey fan

The Boston Bruins are flaming hot moving into the Eastern Conference Finals and has made me fall back in love with hockey.

This 2018-19 Boston Bruins team has won back a fan.

As a sports fan, growing up just an hour away from Boston has been an incredible experience. Forgetting the immense team success for a second, just the athletes that have made up our professional sports teams have been excellent.

From Paul Pierce to David Ortiz or even Tim Thomas, these athletes helped shape the city of Boston and did so much more than compete the sport we all yearned to watch them play. It always has been bigger than sports around here.

I have to admit that in recent years, I haven’t felt that way about the Bruins. Something just wasn’t right about the team and organization. Winning had absolutely nothing to do with it, as they have technically had more recent successes than the Boston Celtics, by having both a more recent Finals appearance as well as Finals birth. It is something hard to explain, but other fans of the team have noticed it too.

After 2014, Claude Julian’s team just lacked effort. It was ever apparent in the late season playoff surges, a time a team is supposed to play with heart. The B’s roster whether it was the players or lack of coaching the team just never played with a sense of urgency.

Being that I am a large Celtics fan, as well as greatly enjoy college basketball, I slowly moved away from the Boston Bruins. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I just didn’t feel compelled to watch a group that didn’t want to win hockey games. It is the first and only time I’ve ever stopped being up to date with one of the teams I grew to love.

Fast forward to this year, and I remember flipping through the channels on a random a Monday and watching the B’s take on the Carolina Hurricanes (how ironic) to see a new era Boston Bruins.

The team was flying around the ice, and their effort was top notch. Next to every loose puck guys like Charlie McAvoy and Jake DeBusk were right next to it trying to gain possession for the team. It was excellent to watch and brought an immediate smile to my face.

The fact they just look invested in the game was so nice, and they had a cause that I could get behind. I can’t tell you when this flip of the switch in the team really occurred, but if I had to bet it would be due to Bruce Cassidy.

Of all Boston sports, Bill Belichick is the undisputed favorite (how could he not be?) , but I would have to say Cassidy has catapulted his way into second place. Cassidy has this undeniable swagger to him that is so refreshing in a modern coach in 2019 to watch transpire. His reactions are priceless, and the words he voices when you can see him are just that of a fan. You can tell the guys love him, and they play for him with everything they have. He has this amazing ability of “waking everyone up”, and when in a rut his coaching can ignite the whole team into firing on all cylinders.

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Cassidy is fantastic, but the players on the ice also are the ones that also deserve all the credit in the world for their entertaining brand of hockey and exuberant personalities.

The team has”It”

There are some positional groups in sports that just define the entire team, and I’d have to argue that the forwards define this current Boston Bruins roster. It all starts with the charisma of my personal team favorite Jake DeBrusk.

DeBrusk may be a bit more reserved in interviews, but on the ice, he is far from it. He is full of energy on the ice, crashing into the boards and always trying to get in scoring opportunity. That sounds so basic, but DeBrusk is one of those guys that the announcers mention more than most during the game, and leaves his mark on the contest. He may not be the best player on the team as of yet, but at just 22 DeBrusk is the future of the franchise.

Brad Marchand has that edge to him that as a Bruins fan you can’t help but enjoy. He gets under the opposing team’s skin and backs it up by his stellar play.

Marchy helps the team tick, and for that, he is extremely vital. However, Charlie Coyle has probably been the best player to watch through the playoffs. A Massachusetts native, Coyle is one of the few people that can ever say they played for the team they grew up rooting for. Not only has he played great, but you can just see it when he scores that he is living his childhood dream.

The defense has that hard-nosed toughness back, that was lacking for quite some time. Chara may be old and slow, but he is still the heart of the team. After 13 years of wearing the black and gold, the end is clearly near for Zdeno, but the fact he leaves everything out there is something special.

On the flip side, Charlie McAvoy is barely old enough to drink, yet still has been very productive. McAvoy played excellent hockey during the Columbus series, and single handily broke up multiple scoring opportunities for the Jackets in Game 5. He jumps around, goes to every loose puck, and plays with great intensity. His stamina gets criticized, but when available he is the Bruins best defender.

In between the pipes is who I believe is the overall face of the team, and that is, of course, Tuukka Rask. Being that I grew up infatuated with Tim Thomas, I never was that fond of Rask when he took over. It wasn’t personal, but he simply was not as good as my childhood legend. Tuuka has finally shut me up, and I have become a big fan.

Always humble about his success, Tuuka has had plenty of great moments during the playoff run. The media was so impressed with Blue Jackets keeper Sergei Bobrovsky, that they completely lost sight of the fact that Tuukka was outperforming him in nearly every metric. Incredible save after incredible save, Rask was playing as if he wanted a statue outside of the Garden during the last two rounds. Boston would not have been able to accomplish this success without the Finnish stud in the net.

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This team has made me feel guilty for ever stop watching Boston Bruins hockey. I can only imagine how good it feels to watch this teams success after the years of low effort, an unorganized brand of hockey the team was displayed on the ice.

All I know is that the Bruins gained one more viewer and a fan that can’t wait for Game 1 against Carolina on Thursday night.

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