Meet the Bruins Brown bears may look warm and cuddly but they can be unpredictable and dangerous The same could be said of the d of the Boston Bruins a bruin is another name for a brown bear The eeaarr TThhee ty This Bruins are known for striking quickly and with great ferocity This yy has helped them win the Stanley Cup six times The Bruins like to build around players with unusual talents nts Sometimes that player is a superstar who can control the game me all by himself Sometimes he is a role player who finds amazing g ways to make his teammates better The people who run the Bruins know just where to locate these players They are good at finding talent where others fail to look This book tells the story of the Bruins They win games by mixing strong defense with powerful skating and shooting They win championships when they have a dressing room full of dynamic players They win fans by playing hard and never giving up Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron offers words of encouragement to Tyler Seguin during the 2012 13 season 5
Glory Days In the early 1920s the National Hockey League NHL was only national in Canada No NHL team was located in the United States That changed in 1924 when the Boston Bruins joined the league The NHL soon had an entire American Division which also included teams in Chicago Pittsburgh Detroit and New York Boston won only six games in its first season However by the end of the decade the Bruins were one of the top NHL teams They reached the Stanley Cup Finals three times in four years and won the championship once Boston’s stars included Cooney Weiland Dit Clapper Harry Oliver Lionel Hitchman and Cecil Tiny Thompson The player who made the Bruins roar was Eddie Shore Boston fans loved him Shore was a violent and aggressive defensive player who loved to ambush opponents by charging toward the net from his 6
position on defense Most defensemen at this time preferred to conserve their energy and stay back to protect their own goal How popular was Shore After warm ups in Boston Garden he would remain on the ice wait for the lights to go dark and then skate into the spotlight The organist would play Hail to the Chief the same song played for the President of the United States Shore led the Bruins to their second Stanley Cup in 1939 The team continued to win after he retired the following year Boston captured its third Stanley Cup in 1941 That club was led by Milt Schmidt Woody Dumart and Bobby Bauer Other stars included goalie Frank Brimsek playmaker Bill Cowley and Roy Conacher who topped the NHL in scoring as a rookie During the 1950s and 1960s the Bruins put more fine players on the ice One of their best was a rugged defenseman named Fern Flaman Three others Johnny Bucyk Vic Stasiuk and Rudy Bronco Horvath formed the high-scoring Uke Line The trio earned that nickname because all were from Ukraine They helped the Bruins reach the Stanley Cup Finals in 1958 LEFT Cecil Tiny Thompson always stood tall in goal for the Bruins ABOVE No player was more popular with Boston fans than Eddie Shore 7
