The final portion of the opening video for
the 2013-14 season encapsulated the essence of the Providence Bruins’ existence
the best. Before every home game that season, following a highlight montage set
to a Fall Out Boy hit and before public-address announcer Dave Zibelli’s
distinctive lineup introduction, the masses at the Dunkin Donuts Center saw a
riveting back-and-forth sequence on the center-ice jumbotron.
It began with still shots of winger Brad
Marchand in his uniform from circa 2008 to 2010 — short-lived garb that looked
like a cup of banana yogurt with its broad, bright yellow trim — and the
superimposed wording read by a voiceover: “Before they were fan favorites.” Cue
the reel of Marchand’s partial breakaway and shorthanded goal over sprawling
Vancouver Canucks goalie Robert Luongo in the turning-point third game of the
2011 Stanley Cup Final.
Dissolve to still shots of defenseman
Torey Krug from the previous season in his gold alternate jersey with the thick
black shoulder caps and golden Spoked-P on the front, this time accompanied
with the clause, “Before they were rookie sensations.” Cut to a clip from the
previous spring of Krug teeing up from the center point at New York’s Madison
Square Garden to beat Henrik Lundqvist for one of his four goals in Boston’s
five-game second-round upset of the Rangers, all within weeks of his call-up
from Providence’s 2013 playoff run.
Dissolve to still shots of goalie Tuukka
Rask from the same era and in the same uniform as those of Marchand, along with
the spoken caption, “Before they were stars.” Fade in to the replay one of
Rask’s robberies of the high-scoring and heavily favored Pittsburgh Penguins in
the NHL’s 2013 Eastern Conference final, which Boston swept in four games with
merely two goals against along the way.
Dissolve back to the continued
script, as read by the dramatic movie-trailer type of voice. “Before they were
Boston Bruins…” says the voice and the lettering laced across the iconic
Spoked-B emblem.
“…they were Providence Bruins,” the
voice continues as the text and logo change accordingly.
Then the team tagline of the year:
“Providence Bruins hockey: It all starts here.”
A lot started here, and not just the fast
track to fulfillment in the National Hockey League for Boston’s brightest
professional prospects. The P-Bruins started a comprehensive revival of the
Rhode Island capital with their 1992 debut. Not long after the club took root
at what was then called the Providence Civic Center, a host of must-see
establishments followed in the effort to redress what had been a deadbeat
Downcity district. Since then, the franchise has followed a pattern where life
imitates epic poetry and novellas with themes of second chances, renewals and
launching pads to greatness and great expectations.
Long before the advent of the
P-Bruins, Providence had a prior history as a staple city in the American
Hockey League, the NHL’s primary development circuit. Ocean State pride
radiated through the Providence/Rhode Island Reds for fifty-one seasons. After
a subsequent fifteen-year gap with no professional team, the market got a little
help from its top geographic brethren in Boston. The Bruins moved the Maine
Mariners from Portland to a place with more promise and less distance from
home.
For a quarter-century since then,
the Providence and Boston Bruins have forged and repeatedly renewed the longest
continuing AHL-NHL affiliation. Some other franchises have placed their
prospects in five, six or even seven different Triple-A bases during that span.
The Calgary Flames have had eight, each in a different state or province.
Only the Nashville Predators, who came
along as an expansion team in 1998, have kept the same minor-league base
(Milwaukee) since Boston started its P-Bruins partnership.
Per the terms of their lasting
affiliation, Providence is where Boston’s training-camp cuts go to prepare for
their second chance at a glamorous gig in the game they love. Conversely, those
enduring the same fate with the National Football League’s New England Patriots
tend to scramble for something to fall back on in another field, and for enough
free time to, with any luck, sustain their game shape long enough for a
gridiron reboot next year.
Grateful locals have ensured this
partnership by consistently combining for healthy annual attendance figures.
They put a human element into the numbers by flaunting their state pride and team
zeal, showing up to The Dunk in any combination of Reds, P-Bruins, Boston
sports and miscellaneous Rhode Island apparel.
Fans of the youngest age groups seek
autographs, high-fives and the best kind of bear hug imaginable from the
mascot, Sam Boni. A few of those who emulate their hockey heroes might even
skate in a short game prior to warmups or during one of the intermissions.
Others have their moment on the pond in one of up to three school choirs tasked
with singing a patriotic song before the opening draw.
Spectators of a double-digit age pay
studious attention while releasing their own inner children through organic
cheering and booing in accordance with the situation. The electricity generated
by human vocal cords is amplified when Zibelli is on duty as the PA announcer,
a post where he never fails to elongate the second letter in the home team’s
dateline and nickname. One would almost think he is compensating for every “R”
the local accent has omitted throughout the day.
Those who are embedded in or sitting
within earshot of Section 109 ignore the silliness of the regulars’
opening-faceoff chant of “Hockey! Hockey! Hockey!” and instead feed off the
extra energy in that vicinity throughout the game. It is merely a part of the
culture here.
The result is one of the AHL’s most
unequivocally top-notch home crowds. One that, with only partial and
short-lived exceptions, has not let go in its first quarter-century of access
to its team.
As a millennial Rhode Islander, this
author is a part of the oldest generation that is too young to remember a time
when the Providence Bruins did not exist. Trying to comprehend how this city
and state ever coped without this franchise, let alone went without any pro
hockey at all, is like almost any living member of Western society wondering
how their ancestors got by with no indoor plumbing, motorized transportation,
kitchen appliances or telecommunications.
Beyond belief, there was such an
era, but it ended shortly after this author’s memory bank opened. Although, it
was really the start of the rebirth motif this franchise has penned for its
first twenty-five years of operation.
Twenty-five years hardly sounds
ancient for a professional sports franchise. After all, there are five
surviving NHL brands from the expansion class of 1967 who each celebrated their
fiftieth anniversary concomitant with the P-Bruins’ twenty-fifth. Then, of
course, there are the Original Six, including the parent and namesake Boston
Bruins, who date back to 1924 as America’s oldest NHL franchise.
Yet in the American Hockey League,
only two existing teams have lasted longer than the P-Bruins. The Hershey Bears
became a league member in 1938, the Rochester Americans in 1956. The rest of
those who emerged between that time and the inaugural season of Rhode Island’s
current team have come and gone. A whopping ten AHL cities — Albany, New York;
Baltimore, Maryland; Binghamton, New York; Glens Falls, New York; Hamilton,
Ontario; Lowell, Massachusetts; New Haven, Connecticut; Springfield,
Massachusetts; St. John’s, Newfoundland; and Worcester, Massachusetts — have
each had two or more franchises move away since the P-Bruins came into being.
In a league now comprised of thirty teams
(fourteen more than in 1992-93), seventy-eight different dateline-nickname
combinations have overlapped their membership with that of the Providence
Bruins. Three new ones — the Bellville Senators, Binghamton Devils and Laval
Rocket — will emerge in the 2017-18 season.
To withstand that onslaught of
overhaul, to stay in place amidst a storm whose force and longevity is giving
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot a run for its money, is a credit to the market and the
people who comprise it.
All level-headed Ocean Staters concede
that Boston will always be the head of New England’s geographic family, and are
grateful for their role in keeping some common ground throughout the region.
They have sustained that attitude from the advertising campaign bumper sticker
of the modern hockey team’s infancy — “Something’s Bruin in Providence” — to
the Twitter hashtag #pbruinspride of today.
They started in the days when Jozef
Stumpel earned a coveted call from the Providence Civic Center to the Boston
Garden. They have done the same for David Pastrnak in his push to go from the
Dunkin Donuts Center to the TD Garden.
Eventually, players like that never
return. They disappear from in-person view into the deifying cameras of the New
England Sports Network, and their previous live rooters can only watch them in
person again by splurging and making the slightly longer car, bus or train
ride. But their names still show up in the stands at The Dunk on the backs of
game-worn jerseys with a Spoked-P on the front and on authentic sweaters with a
Spoked-B (or, alternately, a prowling bear) on the front.
Legacies count, and as they relate
to their NHL parent club, the Providence Bruins preserve another legacy and
unofficial custom in their home state. Big developments in New England have a
way of starting in Rhode Island, then gaining traction and attention in the Boston
area, and sometimes elsewhere in the country too.
Roger Williams, the founder of the
colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, was the first man of
historical significance to be “sent down” from Massachusetts. Between himself
and Anne Hutchinson, the colony refined what its Massachusetts Bay counterpart
had ostensibly been founded for, but did not quite fulfill at first. In the
seventeenth century, Williams, Hutchison and their followers made Rhode Island
the first of Britain’s American colonies to genuinely and rigidly commitment to
religious freedom.
A century later, precisely eighteen months
and one week before the Boston Tea Party, another group of bold colonials from
Warwick stormed another British ship in Narragansett Bay and carried out the Gaspee revolt. Exactly two months before
Continental Congress President John Hancock — one of three household names from
Massachusetts Bay, along with cousins John and Samuel Adams — went to
Philadelphia and oversaw the approval of the Declaration of Independence, Rhode
Island was the first colony to revoke its allegiance to King George III. It was
also the first to abolish slavery.
And while Lowell, Massachusetts, was
expressly established in the nineteenth century as an epicenter for the
Industrial Revolution, Moses Brown and Samuel Slater got the New England
textile business rolling in Pawtucket in the 1790s.
Naturally, most social studies and
history textbooks rarely, if ever, mention the events of the Gaspee on June 9, 1772 or the May 4,
1776 renunciation the way they do the occurrence at Boston Harbor on December
16, 1773 and the July 4, 1776 declaration. The same can be said for the
attention Lowell gets over Pawtucket for their respective manufacturing
impacts.
Likewise, two-plus centuries later, a slew
of noteworthy television and radio journalists have gone to Boston, and even
gone national later on, after catering to consumers in the Providence area. But
their time at WJAR, WLNE or WPRI tends to be a footnote on their resume
compared to their service to the Hub affiliates.
And it is the same way in sports. The
Providence Bruins and Pawtucket Red Sox do not get the routine score mentions
and highlight packages on national networks the way their Boston partners do.
Sometimes even Ocean State media outlets offer more attention to the big teams
in the next state.
None of that really matters. Credit
or no credit, Rhode Islanders know their role in these developments and enjoy
their lot amongst themselves. They cherish the past and support the present in
anticipation of a festive future.
For a quarter-century and counting,
the P-Bruins and their fan base have epitomized that practice. Preceded by the
run of the Providence Reds from 1926 to 1977, they replenished professional
hockey’s presence in the state and made an unofficial pact with the puckheads
who had starved in the fifteen-year interim.
As one of the founding pillars of
Providence’s great late-century renaissance, the team has been rewarded for,
and thus easily sustained, its promise to stick around. All the while, the
P-Bruins regularly honor their predecessors by donning throwback Reds jerseys,
but mainly bear the black and gold of their Boston brethren, for the crowd
hovering around 8,000 rooters that typically fills their domain.
Rhode Island has its own AHL team grooming
the next crop of talent for New England’s own NHL team, and the appreciation
for that could not be clearer. Beginning in 1992, the city, the state and the
fan base scored on the rebound in quintessential fashion. And as the Baby B’s
close the book on their silver anniversary and prepare for their next
quarter-century in 2017, the magnitude of that goal only strengthens. It does
so with every miniscule and major milestone the Providence Bruins brand
collects, and with every seemingly unrelated exciting development elsewhere in
the city.
For that reason, the logo that smiles up
from center ice works perfectly for Rhode Island’s capital, even though it
borrows a concept tied to the Massachusetts capital. Some fans from both Bruins
cities scratch their heads over the way the P-Bruins simply replaced the parent
club’s B with a P in their eight-spoked crest. Boston uses the distinctive
spokes in reference to the city being nicknamed “the Hub of the universe.” By
that logic, some say the Spoked-P is a tad too Boston-centric, and that a bear
would be better as the primary emblem of the AHL edition.
But in reality, the logo, whose only major
change came in 2012 when the black P and gold spokes traded colors, suits Providence
and the story of the Providence Bruins in its own right. You might say the P
represents the arena, namely the Providence Civic Center, where the team took
root in 1992 as the first major new entity in a city desperate for attractions.
In turn, while Boston’s spokes symbolize the city’s cultural influences on New
England (and, sure, maybe even the universe), Providence’s spokes represent the
P-Bruins and the way they served as a catalyst for the capital’s road to
renaissance.
Like the voice said, it all started here.
*****
Fans entered the twenty-fifth season of
the Providence Bruins knowing their team would have officially gone the longest
in its history without an appearance in the penultimate round of the Calder Cup
playoffs. The franchise reached that stage for the first time in its seventh
year, namely the championship year. Going into 2016-17, its had last made the
Eastern Conference final in 2009, meaning the arrival of the 2017 playoffs
would round out the formality of stretching its drought to eight years.
Under first-year coach Kevin Dean,
who had paid his dues through an unprecedented five-year tenure as the
assistant skipper, they would end that hiatus. However, in their fifth
conference final since defending the championship in 2000, they fell short of
another Calder Cup Final passport for the fifth time. Nonetheless, the regular
season and the first two playoff rounds leading up to their five-game loss to
the Syracuse Crunch made a refreshing return to prior periods in P-Bruins
history. The winning stages of the playoff run capped a milestone-laden
campaign.
The silver anniversary packed one
storyline of symmetry when captain Tommy Cross, in his fifth full season with
the team, became the Spoked-P’s new all-time games-played leader. Twenty years
prior, that record had belonged to Peter Laviolette, the club’s inaugural
captain who last skated competitively in 1996-97. With 252 regular-season
outings, Laviolette remained on top of the all-time leaderboard until Zdenek
Kutlak surpassed him on April 7, 2004. Kutlak added four more appearances to
the record, then was eclipsed by Jay Henderson less than a year later.
Zach Hamill, Andrew Bodnarcuk and
Jeremy Reich all subsequently passed Laviolette, but never reached Henderson’s
final mark of 278 appearances. The record thus stood for twelve years until
Cross suited up against the Springfield Thunderbirds on Saturday, March 18,
2017. As it happened, the team claimed a 4-2 home victory, the second in a
stretch that saw the Bruins close the calendar month with six triumphs in seven
tries.
Three weeks later, Chris Breen
secured another franchise milestone, along with a 2-1 home win over Bridgeport,
by converting Austin Czarnik’s setup with 4:05 remaining in regulation. That
goal brought the Spoked-P brand’s all-time regular-season count to 6,000
strikes.
The subsequent Sunday, prior to one of the
two games he did not appear in that season, Cross accepted the team’s community
service and MVP awards before a season-high audience of 11,155. He was also
Providence’s nominee for the AHL’s man of the year.
Eight days after the team awards ceremony,
he was summoned to Boston for his first-ever Stanley Cup playoff appearance. He
saw action in one game as part of Bruce Cassidy and the big-league Bruins’
six-game first-round loss to Ottawa, then returned six days later in time to
reaffirm his value to the child club.
In Cross’ brief absence, the
fourth-place P-Bruins managed to take Game 1 of their best-of-five series with
the regular-season champion Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. The day of Cross’
reassignment happened to be that of Game 2 at The Dunk, after which the series
would shift back to Pennsylvania for Games 3 and, if necessary, 4 and 5.
Though generally a stay-at-home
defenseman, Cross was coming off a career-best thirty-five regular-season
points. And when the desperation heightened for Providence, he reheated his
acetylene twig. Old friend David Warsofsky (who was also an old foe to Cross in
the Boston College-Boston University rivalry) tallied twice to raise a 2-0
upper hand for the Penguins. Warsofsky and NHL veteran Tom Kostopolous then
collaborated to set up Tom Sestito, a villain for the Bruins faithful dating
back to his concussive hit on Boston’s Nathan Horton while playing for
Philadelphia in 2012, and take a 3-0 advantage.
But before the game was ten minutes
old, journeyman forward Chris Porter got the hosts on the board. He would
follow Warsofsky’s act with a second unanswered strike, after which Cross
connected to draw a 3-3 knot with 1:46 to spare before intermission. Cross went
on to add a pair of assists on back-to-back second-period goals, the second of
which gave Providence its first lead of the night. Though that would soon
evaporate, and though the Pens ultimately took the seesaw decision in overtime,
6-5, Cross had reasserted his veteran presence.
When the series shifted to hostile
territory, the minute-muncher helped the blue line confine WBS to five goals in
three games. He added a primary assist on the last installment of a four-goal
outburst en route to a series-saving 4-2 win in Game 4 and retained an even
rating at even strength in the clinching Game 5.
Over the subsequent seven-game upset
of Hershey, Cross retained a plus-five rating and chipped in three points. But
in the conference final, he personified the P-Bruins as a whole when the Crunch
proved too overwhelming. Results aside, this matchup was a first of its kind
and a long time coming for AHL history fanatics.
Syracuse and Providence have several
common traits as sports markets. Both are considered classic AHL cities,
Syracuse having previously hosted the Stars at the league’s outset, followed by
the Warriors, Eagles and Firebirds. Both areas are tried and true Triple-A
baseball markets, with the Syracuse Chiefs enjoying International League
membership every year since 1961 and opposing the Pawtucket Red Sox as a
divisional rival since the latter’s elevation in 1973. When the original Big
East basketball conference launched in 1979, charter members included the
Providence College Friars and the Syracuse University Orangemen (now simply the
Orange). Both schools stuck under that banner until Syracuse bolted for the
Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013.
And in 1994, the Syracuse Crunch came
from Hamilton, Ontario, and the locals hoped that they would finally get a
lasting AHL franchise. Twenty-three years later, the Crunch franchise has
indeed lasted longer than each of its predecessors in the market. In 2016, when
the Portland Pirates moved to Springfield to replace the Falcons, the Crunch
nudged up to fourth place, one spot behind the P-Bruins, as the
fourth-longest-living AHL tenant.
Yet it took until the 2017 Eastern
Conference Final for the two cities’ modern teams to cross paths in a Calder
Cup bracket. In their first twenty-two years of operation, the Crunch’s only
run to the championship had ended in defeat at the hands of Grand Rapids in
2013. In many of the years before that, they were not even in the same
conference as Providence. Although, after Syracuse shifted east, its 2013
playoff run was one P-Bruins closeout of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton away from a
conference final date with the Divine City.
That matchup would wait four more
years, and when it arrived, an unusual twist had the fourth-seeded team from
the Atlantic Division holding home ice over the first-place tenants of the
North Division. Providence had notched ninety-two regular-season points,
Syracuse ninety. But while coming from what was, at least on paper, a more competitive
circuit might ostensibly have made the Bruins more battle-tested, the fact that
their two division series went the distance may have drained their tanks.
Regardless, the Crunch roared out to
a 6-3 triumph in Game 1, usurping the notion of home-ice advantage. Jordan
Szwarz’s two-goal effort in a 2-1 overtime victory pulled the P-Bruins even,
but it would be the last home hurrah of the team’s first quarter-century.
Back in Western New York, where it had
gone a spotless 6-0 in the first two rounds, Syracuse continued its steamroll.
The oft-stingy Zane McIntyre gave way to Malcolm Subban at the 4:48 mark of
Game 3’s middle frame with a 3-0 deficit at hand. The Bruins offense continued
to extract little from anyone beyond Szwarz and rookie linemate Danton Heinen
in the eventual 5-4 loss and the 7-2 beatdown that followed it.
After two vain firefighting shifts,
Subban got the nod for Game 5, but still blinked one time too many against
veteran Mike McKenna. A twelve-year pro who had backstopped the 2008 Portland
Pirates to their upset of Scott Gordon’s last Providence team, McKenna dashed
the dreams of Rhode Island puckheads once more. He repelled twenty-seven out of
twenty-eight shots faced to push the door while an empty-net conversion at the
other end shut it for a 3-1 Syracuse win that closed the series on the Crunch’s
first try.
With that, the Bruins settled for
another unofficial shared bronze medal with the AHL’s Western Conference
runner-up. But they had at least extended their season to Memorial Day weekend
for the first time since 2009. And they had done it on the heels of exercising
a generational demon from Wilkes-Barre Scranton and outlasting two other
divisional rivals who had bested their regular-season transcript. The
first-round victory alone prevented the franchise from setting a new record for
what would have been its longest drought between playoff series wins at five
years.
As a testament to how densely
competitive the Atlantic was in 2016-17, the P-Bruins placed fourth despite
finishing twenty games above .500 at 43-23-10. Besides securing the team its
fifth consecutive playoff berth, that performance undoubtedly helped in getting
its average nightly attendance above 8,000 for the fifth straight year as well.
With 8,263 spectators at The Dunk per night, Providence trailed only the
second-year San Diego Gulls, the defending Calder Cup champion Cleveland
Monsters and the dynastic Hershey Bears in that category.
For the on-ice achievement, first-year
coach Kevin Dean was subsequently promoted to an assistant position on Bruce
Cassidy’s Boston staff. Meanwhile, the captain Cross has been re-upped for a
sixth full season in the organization. Barring a big break in Boston or
early-season trade, Cross could become the first player to sport the Spoked-P
in 300 career regular-season games early on in the franchise’s twenty-sixth
season. Any future action he sees in Providence will be under the tutelage of
Jay Leach, who between his days as a player and assistant coach has represented
the P-Bruins for 280 regular-season and fifty-three playoff games.
As it is, the 2017-18 season is already
assured a couple of milestones. The weekend of October 21 and 22 will mark the
first-ever Providence-Belleville and Providence-Laval AHL matchups. The B’s
will return the visit to the two new cities on December 30, 2017 (to the
Belleville Senators) and March 7, 2018 (the Laval Rocket, Montreal’s new
affiliate). In between, on December 10, 2017, the P-Bruins will become the
seventh brand in league history to log 2,000 regular-season games. Barring any
unforeseen postponements and rescheduling, that milestone will hit on a home
date with the Utica Comets, whose co-owner Frank DuRoss was part of the
P-Bruins original ownership group.
Whenever they notch the fifteenth win of
their twenty-sixth campaign, the P-Bruins will have hit the millennium mark
with their thousandth all-time regular-season victory. Only an unprecedented
nosedive worse than 1997-98 can possibly push that milestone back for another
year.
Having secured another year in the
organization, the aforementioned Cross has a chance to become the thirty-eighth
player to tally one hundred points in a Providence Bruins uniform. He is either
two goals, two assists or one of each away from that plateau. Center Austin
Czarnik is fourteen points shy of doing the same, and only a permanent
elevation to Boston will bar either man from getting into that club.
Translation: It will be a win for the Bruins faithful and the Providence
advocates either way.
Besides the yet-to-be-seen makeup and
caliber of the 2017-18 team, the pondering over what landmark moments are next
for the Providence Bruins revolves around campaigns to come afterward. One of
these years, the two-time host of the AHL All-Star Classic will have to get a
turn hosting an AHL Outdoor Classic, for which the Baby B’s have already once
had the pleasure of serving as the visitor.
With the PawSox pushing for a state-of-the-art ballpark and surrounding recreation complex in their
hometown’s Slater Mill district, that could theoretically be an option by the
2020s. Among existing open-air facilities, Brown Stadium jumps out as a logical
spot. The historic Ivy League gridiron is flanked by a substantial 20,000-seat
bowl (the largest capacity of any sports venue in Rhode Island), would have
naturally better sightlines than any ballpark and is located within Providence.
As of this writing, that is a mere dream,
but it is one with every means to reach fruition based on this community and
franchise’s track record. The P-Bruins have crossed the 8,000 plateau in
average attendance for each of the last five years, finished among the top five
in that category in seven of the last eight and have never fallen out of the
top ten in their history.
When the Baby B’s quarter-century
milestone approached, the Providence Journal’s authoritative hockey scribe Mark Divver, at the closing of the
twenty-fourth season, put it best: “They should not be taken for granted.”
Odds are no one will need to worry
in that regard for the foreseeable future. Being in a bona fide four-season
state, Rhode Islanders will continue to need their Downcity pro hockey to
pierce the coldness and darkness of winter the same way they need warm,
light-laden holiday festivals to coincide with the annual December Solstice.
Being in a definitive New England state, they will continue to pride themselves
on being the primary source of fanfare for the aspiring Boston Bruins.
More seasoned locals like Divver
learned from when they squandered their first AHL team. The symbiotic cycle of
support and relatively consistent chronicles of on-ice success, always a tall
order in the minors, are all the proof you need.
Every year, the fans score on the
market’s second chance, and thus secure more starts for more players and
editions of the team right here. Now for the start of the second
quarter-century of Rhode Island’s Renaissance hockey team.
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