Vincent Albert “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., who
died one year too soon to witness the Providence Bruins’ silver anniversary,
was an archetypal Rhode Island politician, for better and for worse. His two
personal appearances, one with and one without the trademark toupee from his
terms in office, fittingly reflect a split legacy.
The two-time convict was also the
two-stint mayor of the capital city in a state that, in a March 2010 stub, Newsweek’s Nancy Cook ruled the most politically
corrupt in the union “because of its debacles per capita.”
But perhaps the citizens swear by
what students at Providence College learn about Saint Thomas Aquinas and his
assertion that even the most evil minister is still capable of overseeing
sacraments. If that is the case, you could argue that Ocean Staters have long taken
that forgiving principle, occasionally to a fault, by electing several mayors,
governors, state legislators and city councilors who have let unsavory slime
stick to the annals of every decade in recent memory. Just as long as they
oversee progress in their jurisdiction to cloud the stenches of corruption.
Then again, this is a dependably
Democratic state on the national level that has still, in the local and state
realms, given ample opportunity to Republicans like Cianci, a past-party-life
Lincoln Chafee and his ancestors, plus Governors Lincoln Almond and Donald
Carcieri. If partisanship is not going to get in the way, then neither, at
least not often, will ethical concerns hamper a local candidate of either
party.
Come what may, Cianci’s second leadership
go-round after one run-in with the law and ouster from office was partly what
brought professional hockey back to town after a fifteen-year hiatus. And that
was just the first key cog in a wave of rejuvenation that made Providence the “Renaissance
City” at the tail-end of the twentieth century.
For all of the disgraceful and illicit
ways he took advantage of others (read: Operation Plunder Dome), Cianci also
capitalized on that mulligan in the mayoral office. In so doing, after losing
the Rhode Island Reds to Binghamton, New York during the third year of his
first stint, he spearheaded the push to restore the American Hockey League to
the Providence Civic Center and fulfilled that goal in the second year of his
second tenure.
Seven years after avoiding prison on
assault grounds, but relinquishing his office in the process, Cianci resurfaced
and reassumed his position on January 7, 1991. At that time, the Civic Center
was almost two decades old, and was buttering its bread with Providence College
men’s basketball and a laundry A-list of touring musical artists. The latter
was implicitly helped, in part, by artists’ preferences over the aging Boston
Garden, though that building would be replaced with a more pristine, attractive
venue in 1995.
Either way, a second full-time sports
resident would be a solid complement, if possible. Between the exodus of the
Reds and Cianci’s fall and rise back to power, the Civic Center’s only
noteworthy hockey memories had been postseason college events. It had hosted
the 1978, 1980, 1982 and 1986 national semifinals and championship. When the
Hockey East conference began in 1984-85, the Civic Center held the circuit’s
first two playoffs, including a thrilling inaugural championship in which local
boy Chris Terreri backstopped the PC Friars to a 2-1, double-overtime upset of
Boston College.
By Cianci’s second year of his
second chance, Downcity had added an exhibition tilt between the 1992 U.S. and
Canadian Olympic teams to its light log of post-Reds hockey events. That same season,
the Civic Center, along with Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, hosted the first two
NCAA hockey tournament regionals to ever take place away from campus sites.
And don’t think the powers that be were
not sensing the craving for a return to a full-time puck presence at that
point. As P-Bruins chairman and CEO Ed Anderson would later tell the Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs in 1994,
Providence had recently sought membership in the upstart Continental League, a
league that ultimately failed to launch.
That same Jacobs write-up referenced Lou
Lamoriello and his reported interest in using his local connections and his
executive position with the New Jersey Devils to move their development team
from Utica, New York to the Ocean State. It would have made at least some sense,
given that Lamoriello was a Johnston native and a royal figure in Rhode Island
hockey. He had played, coached and served as the athletic director at
Providence College, where he was instrumental in erecting Schneider Arena in
1973 and launching Hockey East a decade later. But obviously, his involvement
in local professional hockey would not materialize.
But around the time of those failures, up
in Portland, Maine, attendance was sagging at the Cumberland County Civic
Center, home of the Anderson-owned Mariners. Boston’s AHL affiliate for five
years running, and the first such partner based in New England since the
intramural Boston Braves left the Garden in 1974, the Mariners hit an all-time
low in 1991-92 with a nightly average only 3,828 fans. Of course, it was also
their worst season on the ice at 23-47-10, but the Portland pucksters patently yearned
for a change of scenery.
Cianci stepped in, and his efforts
would come to give Providence a second chance at high-end minor-league hockey.
They also gave Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs a second chance at basing his
prospects within his geographic sphere of influence. Granted, that fever did
not have lasting steam two hours north in Portland, which almost brushes the
border with New Brunswick. But surely any partially educated person from the
area could appreciate Cianci’s case for his city and state.
No spin was necessary to illustrate the
promise of Providence. It stood out for a multitude of its own unassisted
merits, most of which are still valid today. It is a one-hour car or MBTA train
ride south of Boston. It is the capital of the only state that exclusively
borders the Atlantic Ocean and other New England states. It had been the
second-largest city in New England at the time until Worcester barely surpassed
it, and continues to go back-and-forth in that perennial derby.
But either way, it remains the region’s
largest non-Massachusetts city, and like all of the major Boston teams, the
Bruins are an entity the Bay State needs to share with its northern and
southern neighbors. Case in point, by 1992, the Pawtucket Red Sox had been
catering to Rhode Island sports fans for two decades while acting as Boston’s
affiliate in the baseball equivalent of the AHL. The Sox have also had Double-A
affiliates in Connecticut and Maine over the years.
After the fact, many of those
factors were cited in Jeff Jacobs’ 1994 Courant
report and many more as measures for a successful formula. That formula was
quantified in league-leading nightly attendance averages exceeding 9,000 for
the 1992-93, 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons. With a seating capacity of 11,909 at
the time, the Providence Civic Center was roughly twice the size of its
Cumberland County counterpart. For each of its first three years of hosting the
AHL Bruins, it more than doubled the draw of Portland in every year of the same
endeavor.
At its first opportunity to fill every
seat in the Civic Center, the fan base did just that on October 16, 1992.
Cianci dropped a ceremonial first puck between Providence captain Peter
Laviolette and visiting Hershey Bears counterpart Chris Jensen, then joined the
audience in watching a fervent first impression. Rookie goalie Mike Bales repelled
twenty first-period shots before a six-goal second-period outburst, highlighted
by Chris Winnes’ penalty-shot conversion, decided a 9-3 takedown.
The first home game in Providence Bruins
history was also the brand’s first victory after a winless and pointless
four-game road trip. Regardless of which was the proverbial chicken and which
was the egg, one could easily argue that the team’s first drink of its new home
atmosphere sparked it in the right direction.
Intangibly speaking, one holdover
from the relocation, goaltending prospect John Blue, took note of the upgrade
when quoted by Roger Williams University student-journalist Amy Furash. In
Furash’s account of the inaugural P-Bruins home game, Blue said, “The town and
the market for an AHL team in Maine is a small one. The fans in Providence have
been just great. They’ve shown a lot of support for us at our practices and our
games.”
That’s right, their practices. Rhode Island puckheads had wanted
live, affordable, accessible and quality professional hockey so much for so
long that they did not even wait for bright lights, an opposing team, referees
and public address announcements. They wanted to see what a core group coming
off a wretched 23-47-10 finish in 1991-92 was doing behind the scenes to
improve.
As it happened, the fixes translated to a
46-32-2 record in 1992-93. While minor-league teams generally need to make the
first move by winning games to ensure lasting fanfare, the P-Bruins made their
relationship with their new base more symbiotic than meets the eye. Those who
came to those practices and games witnessed a first-place finish in the AHL’s
North Division. And they saw twenty-one players don both a Spoked-P and a
Spoked-B jersey at least once apiece over the course of the campaign.
(Incidentally, Boston finished first in the NHL’s Adams Division that year.)
To that last point, amidst the brand’s
third year of operation, Anderson added in his Hartford Courant interview with Jeff Jacobs, “In Maine, when guys
would be called up to the Bruins, the fans resented it. It was their team and,
darn it, we lost another one. In Providence, the fans go, ‘Yes, he’s in
Boston.’ They feel part of the process.”
To be fair, it did not hurt that, as
part of the deal, Cianci pushed for the transplanting Mariners to take their
parent club’s name. The night after Cianci died, Dunkin Donuts Center general
manager Larry Lapore, in a television interview with FOX Providence, recalled,
“Buddy being Buddy, he didn’t just want any team, he wanted the affiliation of
the Boston Bruins.” He added that, by adopting the parent club’s nickname,
“You’re gonna sell more hot dogs, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Speaking of hot dogs, in his memoir,
Politics and Pasta, Cianci recalled
sweetening the deal for Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs with a pledge to make the
entrepreneur’s Delaware North the Civic Center’s new concessions vendor. That
initiative would not hurt the intent to emphasize the Providence-Boston
relation.
But to get the team name, he would need to
twist Boston general manager Harry Sinden’s arm. Up to that point, as the
Mariners clearly showed, the line for common threads was drawn at the team
colors and uniform pattern. Beyond that, Sinden would share nothing else with
his AHL chapter, including the nickname. According to Cianci’s autobiographic account,
Sinden had proposed renaming the child club the Providence Jewelers.
The adamant mayor pushed his case to
the point where he would call off the new team’s introductory press conference
unless Sinden relented. Naturally, the GM did, and on May 22, 1992 — one day
before Boston was swept out of the Wales Conference final by the dynastic
Pittsburgh Penguins — B’s fans in the Ocean State already had something to look
forward to on the other side of the summer. A blended host of who’s-who figures
from Providence and the Bruins were on hand to unveil the Providence Bruins.
The presence of the P-Bruins would
bolster more than just Civic Center concessionaires and ticket and souvenir
salespeople. The new team’s raucous reception was, in no small part, one of the
go-ahead signals to raise more shiny new amenities in Downcity. At the start of
the franchise’s sophomore season in 1993, Cianci himself credited the hockey
crowd for validating the office’s faith and teased those additional plans in
his letter to the fan base published in Score Magazine (another franchise-owned
carryover from Maine). The generalized previews of coming attractions included
mentions of new dining establishments, entertainment venues and aesthetic improvements
to the city’s busiest corners.
True to his word, Cianci would
oversee the opening of the Rhode Island Convention Center in 1994. Perched
between the venue now known as the Dunkin Donuts Center and the hotel now known
as the Omni (nee Westin), the Convention Center hosts a dense variety of events
in its own right and allows for better parking for events next door at The
Dunk. Tourists lodging at the Omni on frigid winter nights can capitalize on
the indoor sky bridges connecting the three buildings and eschew the elements
when they walk from their rooms to their seats at a P-Bruins game, Friars game
or concert.
While the advent of the RICC was
going on, collateral was paying off for the next-door puck enterprise. In the
win column, the 1993-94 Bruins brooked a classic sophomore slide, going
28-39-13, finishing fifth and last in the Northern Division they had ruled the
year prior and missing the Calder Cup playoffs. Nonetheless, in another break
from the win-first-then-we’ll-come stereotype, fans flocked at a nightly
average of 9,203, a negligible drop from the 9,279 median of 1992-93.
And while hockey fans waited patiently for
the team to come back from a long offseason, Rhode Island residents got their
first look at another downtown entertainment staple in the summer of 1994. The
Waterplace Park had just come about as a result of repurposing and, in effect,
merging the city’s three rivers. With it came the summertime spectacle known as
WaterFire, a unique art show in which dozens of cauldrons light up throughout
the rivers on several weekend nights each year.
Besides instate and out-of-state
tourists, the AHL itself took note of the famed Providence renaissance, and
could barely wait to join in on and add to the excitement. When the P-Bruins,
on the heels of the 1993-94 letdown in the standings, came back for another
guaranteed forty-game slate at the Civic Center, a forty-first opening was
added. First-year president Dave Andrews granted Providence the hosting rights
to the first All-Star Game in the league’s modern history. No such contest had
taken place since the 1959-60 season. But now it was taking its second chance
to become a staple on the league’s almanac in a city whose mayor and fan base
were all about pumping home rebounds.
Less than five years later, across
the street from one of the best sidewalks for watching WaterFire and a
15-minute walk or even quicker RIPTA bus ride from the Convention Center, the
Providence Place Mall opened its doors. Now the citizens of New England’s
second-largest city (or third-largest, depending on the latest figures) would
not need to venture out to Warwick or Lincoln, let alone go out of state to
Taunton, Massachusetts or Swansea, Massachusetts, just for a simple, comprehensive
day of shopping.
Providence Place officially opened
on Friday, August 20, 1999, ten weekends after the P-Bruins reaffirmed their
grip on the city by corralling the Calder Cup championship. Naturally, Cianci
was on hand for all of the festivities, including a victory parade, which does
not happen on such occasions in every minor-league city. The state government
got in on the joy as well. Thirty-seven minutes into their Wednesday, June 16 session, the Rhode Island General Assembly received the triumphant team, with
owner Ed Anderson and coach Peter Laviolette each offering brief remarks.
Although, the spring of that year was also
the beginning of the rumblings over the racketeering that would this time land Cianci
in federal prison. On May 27, 1999, the night the Fredericton Canadiens delayed
the P-Bruins’ Eastern Conference championship clincher for one more game, three
members of the tax board were indicted by federal prosecutors, setting off a
three-year legal saga. Cianci’s last day in office was the day of his
sentencing, September 6, 2002.
After doing his time, Cianci
resurfaced in Providence, sans toupee and sans official power, as a political
commentator in 2007. At that point, the Baby B’s had logged fifteen healthy seasons
of operation. With the Dunkin Donuts Center having finally installed a modern
video screen in the middle of the decade, fans arriving early enough saw and
heard his presence again, as he hawked his WPRO-FM talk show and encouraged
fans to “Enjoy the game!”
He would then seek a third tenure as
mayor, running as an Independent in the 2014 race. But by that time, all of the
good developments of the past were clouded by his age and his misdeeds of the
past.
You might say that the pro-Cianci case was
comparable to the faux Norm Coleman statement of support from Al Franken’s first bid to represent Minnesota in the United States Senate. In one of its
2008 ads, the incumbent Coleman’s campaign continuously mentioned that he had
played a key role in landing the Minnesota Wild, the state’s second shot at NHL
hockey seven years after losing the North Stars to Dallas. In a pro-Franken
counterpunch, a man ostensibly leaning toward Coleman offers nothing but “He
brought hockey back” in the face of various critiques.
In the end, Coleman lost to Franken in a
runoff vote, the electoral equivalent of sudden-death overtime. Likewise, six
years later, Cianci lost the multi-horse mayoral race to Jorge Elorza, and
immediately returned to the local airwaves, where he stayed for almost fifteen
more months until his unexpected passing on January 28, 2016.
The next night, while hosting the
Springfield Falcons, the P-Bruins and the 9,542 spectators in attendance (the
fifth-highest crowd of the 2015-16 season) observed a moment of silence. No
controversies, no begrudging and no “Yeah, buts.” Just a page from the Saint
Thomas Aquinas playbook in acknowledging the mayor’s proven passion that
enabled the gathering at hand to begin with nearly a quarter-century prior.
That, and the general Downcity rejuvenation, which the Baby B’s and their buffs
helped to enable when they did not disappoint the mayor and his promises to Bruins
and Maine management.
Regardless of what you think of him in
other areas, Cianci did spearhead the P-Bruins’ existence. Whether he gets the
goal or the assist on that play, the credit is irrevocable. And the late
mayor’s masterpiece has outlasted his mess, as evidenced by the team’s enriched
chronicle of twenty-five years and counting.
Comments