Blood, Sweat, and Good Old Boston Grit

Go ahead Crosby, pick a fight with the biggest guy on the ice, lemme know how that works out

Is anyone else as excited as I am for Game 2 of the NHL's Eastern Conference Finals tonight? My hometown Bruins vs those hot shot Pittsburgh Penguins, should be an absolutely fantastic game. Why am I so excited you ask? Because this series is such a testament to how far Boston sports have come over the past decade.

Let's take a trip down memory lane to the early 2000's. Boston sports teams were a bit of a laughingstock. The Red Sox were still stricken by the Curse of the Bambino, destined to break your heart whenever you thought they were about to break through. We placed our hopes and dreams on the shoulders of Casey Fossum, Carlos Baerga, Troy O'Leary, and Brian Daubach. We foolishly believed that such dirt dogs would undo eighty-plus years of suffering. The Celtics were in a similar position, good enough make the playoffs but nowhere near good enough to go far enough. Same with the Bruins, a promising young team that we were told would break through, only to disappoint again and again. Being a Boston sports fan promised you that you were scheduled for a seemingly endless cycle of heartbreak every season. All this anger was pent up and it was the Red Sox who saw it pour out on the field. We took our anger out on New York, loathing them with a passion. They were like our more successful older brother and we let our hatred for them pour out. Every Red Sox/Yankees game felt like a full pot of boiling water, teetering on the edge of boiling over. Even though we were down on our luck, the Boston teams always had fight, we had venom. But then things changed...

Red Sox/Yankees used to be this...

The turning point was when the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2001 and the whole Boston sports scene turned on it's head. The Patriots won again in 2003 and 2004. The Red Sox broke the curse emphatically in 2004 and amazingly won the World Series again in 2007. The Celtics acquire Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett enroute to the 2008 NBA Championship. Finally, the Bruins won in 2011 and Boston's hard luck reputation was finally broken. For the first time in years, Boston was the envy of every other city. For years we had watched as every other city celebrated winning while we sat at home watching saying "when's our turn?" Finally, our time had come, Boston was back on top.

An amazing time to be a Boston fan

But winning did something to us Boston fans, it made us soft, it made us...complacent. The 2012 Bruins put up a lame title defense, spiraling out in the first round of the playoffs. The Patriots were pathetic in the 2008 and 2012 Super Bowl's. The Red Sox were the worst of all, falling flat on their faces with the worst collapse in MLB history in 2011. We forgot all that it had taken to get this point. Before Boston tasted victory during the past decade their teams always fought with this "nobody believes in us spirit". The only team that seemed to hold up that belief was the Celtics, who continued to fight against age and injury. Red Sox/Yankees games had become boring affairs in which the teams might as well have sat down and had tea on the field. We're Boston, we're supposed to be cocky smartasses, the thorn in everyone's sides. Since when had the teams that I loved become so boring? We'd forgotten what the taste of defeat felt like, the taste that had we'd become so accustomed to during those cold years in the 2000's.

But once again, my view was shaken when Patrice Bergeron and Evgeni Malkin went at it this past Saturday at center ice. I saw grit, I saw fire, this Bruins team is returning to the "nobody believes in us" way. The Bruins are like that angry little brother to the Penguins. All this week we've heard about how the Penguins front line is so talented, that the Bruins don't have enough in the locker. What I saw on Saturday was more than enough to convince me that this Bruins team has the fight. These are players willing to bleed for the city and thats a passion that over the past year and a half or so has been missing from Boston sports. This is the same venom that the Red Sox attacked the Yankees with all those years ago.  No matter how many titles we win, no matter how much success comes to us, we must always remember those times in the 2000's when our hearts were broken again and again. But the chippiness of Saturday's game is symbolic of another thing, how Boston really has put that hard luck identity behind us and changed it into a new identity. We're now the big brother to those teams out there. Teams get so frustrated trying to beat us at the game that they throw fits and actually fight us when they can't. Boston sports teams have a new identity now, we're big brother but we still have that venom from the hard luck days. It took winning, getting complacent, and coming all the way back to form this new identity and the Bruins are the standard bearers.

So thats what I'm looking forward to, seeing the Bruins fight through this chippy series, ruffle a few feathers, get in the Penguins heads. They've embraced this identity as the bad guys, the team everyone is out to beat, all while retaining that "we're little bro" spirit, willing to fight back when other teams try and push us around like the old days. I can't wait to watch the Bruins play tonight, I can't wait to see the Red Sox continue to prove people wrong this season, and I can't wait for the Celtics to show once again next season that they've still got it. We're big bro now, but we'll never forget where we came from and we'll always carry a little of that resentment with us. We're Boston Strong.