When
Providence became Boston’s new base for honing its sharpest hockey prospects,
the Springfield Indians were entering their third season as Hartford’s AHL
affiliate. That made plenty of sense, given that the Whalers had played at the
Springfield Civic Center for portions of their WHA days. It also added another
dimension to a preconceived rivalry based around a dense history between the
Springfield Indians/Kings and the Providence/Rhode Island Reds.
Founded at the league’s inception in
1936, and owned by legendary former Bruins defenseman Eddie Shore for the bulk
of its existence, the first Springfield franchise overlapped with the Reds for
fifty-one years. The two met in five Calder Cup playoff series, with
Springfield winning three, including a four-game sweep of the 1971 championship
round. In their final postseason meeting, two years before the Reds moved to
Binghamton, the fourth-seeded Indians upset the top-dog Providence squad in the
divisional semifinals, four games to two.
A former understudy of Shore’s in
the Indians/Kings front office, Jack Butterfield, oversaw both the loss and
return of the AHL to Providence as league president. He had risen to that
position in 1966 and moved the league’s headquarters to West Springfield, where
it remains today. By his tenth year in office, membership was down to six teams
for the 1976-77 season.
In a Butterfield obituary published
in the Springfield Republican, former
AHL executive Gordon Anziano told reporter Garry Brown, “It came down to this – if we lost
Providence, we would have had only five cities and the league would fold…Jack
saved it by orchestrating a deal that brought new owners to Providence, and the
league was able to keep going.”
Unfortunately for the Ocean State
faithful, those new owners soon took the team away. The good news for the
league was that the same offseason saw three expansion franchises come to life.
One of those, the Maine Mariners, ultimately gave way to another team of the
same name, which then moved down to Providence prior to Butterfield’s
penultimate year as president.
With the two historic cities back in
the fold, all was right with the AHL in New England again, and the P-Bruins met
the Indians for the first time on November 6, 1992. Attendees at the
Springfield Civic Center witnessed a wild 8-6 home victory, but Providence
returned the favor in the next showdown two weeks later. Glen Murray’s overtime
goal finalized a 6-5 home win and gave the Baby B’s a .500 record for the first
time since the season began. That game also saw the first glimpse of genuine
rancor between the Bruins’ and Whalers’ child clubs, as Providence’s Glen
Featherstone alone logged thirty-one penalty minutes, including two game
misconducts on the night.
Another wild back-and-forth sequence
took place over the first modern Providence-Springfield home-and-home series.
Part One in Providence took place on Friday, February 12, and saw the Bruins
match their opening-night record with a six-goal outburst in a single period.
As part of that explosive opening stanza, Jozef Stumpel, Darren Banks, Andrew
McKim and Dominic Lavoie busted the floodgates by each scoring in a span of
ninety-two seconds. The sustenance proved vital by night’s end, as the B’s
escaped with an 8-7 squeaker. But the next night, in their domain, the Indians
set the pace for an 8-4 retort with their own six-goal opening frame.
On their way to first place in the
Northern Division, the Bruins would take ten out of fourteen regular-season
showdowns, three of which required overtime. Six more were decided by a single
goal. Putting that another way, the matchup was closer than the immediate data
said, though Providence appeared to have Springfield’s number based on how
frequently it prevailed in those close games.
But in the playoffs, the fourth-seeded
Indians were doubtlessly boosted by Hartford’s absence from the Stanley Cup
tournament. With reinforcements from the parent club, they tattered rookie
goaltender Mike Bales to eke out 3-2 and 5-4 wins at the Providence Civic
Center, usurping the illusion of home-ice advantage.
As the series shifted to the “other”
Civic Center, Bruins head coach Mike O’Connell swapped out Bales in favor of
late-season acquisition Mike Parson. The new netminder preserved a 2-2 draw
through the fifth minute of overtime, at which point Sergei Zholtok scored to
cut the deficit to 2-1. The next night, he subsisted on a five-goal
first-period outburst from the other end in an eventual 9-0 shutout.
Parson’s support ran dry, however,
when the series became a virtual best of three. His thirty-two saves back home
went for naught in a 4-2 Game 5 setback. In the return to Springfield on April
24, the night the parent club was on its way to falling in a sweep by Buffalo
on the strength of Brad May’s memorable overtime tally, the P-Bruins fell short
in their own bid to extend their season, 3-2.
Just like the Reds eighteen years
before them, the division-leading P-Bruins had lost to fourth-place Springfield
in six games in the first round.
As part of the sophomore slide in
O’Connell’s corner, the Indians would own the 1993-94 season series, 7-5-2. But
some of the bright spots for the Bruins included the team’s first individual
four-goal effort via Zholtok in a 5-5 tie November 7 and their first ten-goal
performance in a 10-6 New Year’s Eve barnburner at the Springfield Civic
Center.
The new calendar year would soon bring
a new look to the rivalry. On March 25, 1994, Bruins backstop John Blue let
Springfield’s only third-period shot slip by for the deciding goal in a 3-2
home loss. The fourth installment of a seven-game losing skid that began a week
prior at the Springfield Civic Center, it was a testament to the go-nowhere
campaign for Providence.
It was also the last the Bruins
faithful would see of the Indians. The Springfield franchise shuffled east to
Worcester, Massachusetts, and reemerged as the IceCats in the fall of 1994. But
even as Butterfield gave way to Dave Andrews as president, the longest-tenured
AHL city and home of the league’s executive office was not about to have a blip
on its chronicle. A new ownership group gave life to the Springfield Falcons,
who even retained the Whalers affiliation (and added the Winnipeg Jets as a
second parent club).
The disappearance of the Springfield
Indians coincided with that of the navy blue, dark green and grey uniforms that
matched the look of the Whalers. The Falcons brandished an independent,
decidedly nineties look with a road jersey that was a borderline teal blue with
loud gold, silver and black trim. Nonetheless, the Hartford partnership was
still there, allowing the likes of Scott Daniels and Robert Petrovicky to keep
representing the AHL’s time-honored Massachusetts chapter.
The parity in the Providence matchup
remained intact as well, as the Falcons first two games against the Bruins went
to overtime. On October 8 and 26, respectively, the B’s stole 5-4 and 3-2
walkoff wins from what was now affectionately known as “The Nest.” They would
also win their first two home meetings before the Falcons finally solved them
at “The Bear Den,” 3-2, on January 20, 1995.
Under first-year coach Steve Kasper,
the Bruins stamped a 7-3-0 head-to-head advantage and returned to the playoffs
while the Falcons fell short of a seed. But in each of the next two seasons,
Providence’s Bob Francis and Springfield’s Kevin McCarthy would cross each
other’s paths beyond the dense prearranged itinerary.
McCarthy’s guidance in 1995-96
turned the Falcons around to the tune of 101 points and first place in the
Northern Division. Francis’ charges squeezed their way in with seventy-four
points and claimed the fourth seed in their sector. To that effect, the
represented cities had reversed their roles from the 1975 Reds-Indians and 1993
Bruins-Indians cards. Would this best-of-five set be a charming third time for
the newly upset-minded Ocean State entity?
If nothing else, the first
impression set a favorable tone. Second-year Springfield goaltender Manny
Legace had led the league in goals-against average and won the Baz Bastien
Award for supremacy in his position in 1995-96. But in the postseason opener at
the Springfield Civic Center, the P-Bruins proved why regular-season achievements
go out with the resurfacer’s snow every spring. Legace involuntarily ceded the
crease to Scott Langkow upon letting five shots get by in the first forty
minutes. At the other end, Scott Bailey subsisted on the support to cement a
6-3 visiting victory.
McCarthy’s goaltending swap,
however, paid instant dividends the next night. After compressing the wound too
late to salvage Game 1, Langkow outdueled Bailey for a 3-2 squeaker. This sent
the matchup to Providence for the next weekend with the command up for grabs.
On the heels of a five-day rest and
retool, the Bruins made their own change in the crease, as Bailey was summoned
to back up Bill Ranford in Boston’s first-round set with Florida. In his stead,
Rob Tallas showed no ill effects from rust in the young phases of Game 3. By
night’s end, he would halt forty-seven Springfield shots, including thirteen in
overtime
But the circumstances that necessitated
the bonus period were nothing short of toe-curling for the home audience.
Tallas was safeguarding a 4-3 edge in the final quarter of the third period
when Springfield’s Andre Faust slugged home his second goal of the night.
Fellow Falcons winger Kevin Smyth followed up in sudden death to usurp the 5-4
triumph and give his team a commanding 2-1 series lead.
As Bruins buffs tried to put that
frustrating Friday night behind them, they woke up to a Saturday agenda lined up
with nailbiters. Boston was facing elimination in a Miami matinee, while
Providence was looking to avoid bowing out on its own pond in the evening.
As it happened, several Southern New
England puckheads (this author included) tuned in to UPN-38 and watched the
surprising Panthers finish their five-game repression of Steve Kasper’s pupils,
4-3, then took off to the Civic Center hoping to rinse out the Boston vinegar.
A week-old familiar pattern repeated
itself, however. The Bruins sculpted a 3-0 lead in the first period via Clayton
Beddoes, Tod Hartje and Martin Simard. The Falcons filled that pothole in the
second, and a scoreless closing frame meant a second overtime in as many
nights.
If anyone who bled black and gold
was seeing ominous shades of 1993 at that point, it did not take long for fate
to prove them right. The Falcons capped their second straight comeback to
clinch the series, 3-1. For the second time in the four years of the Providence
franchise’s existence, both Bruins teams were dumped from the first round of
the playoffs on the same day. And in both cases, it was a Springfield team with
ties to the hated Hartford Whalers pulling the plug on Providence.
After dropping the first
regular-season meeting of 1996-97 in a wild 10-7 barnburner, then tying the
second, the P-Bruins went on to go 7-2-3 against Springfield in their fifth
season. But a postseason rematch appeared unlikely when Worcester and Portland
raised a 2-0 upper hand in their respective New England Division semifinals.
Naturally, though, Francis and
McCarthy pushed their pupils to the rare feat of turning a 2-0 deficit into a
3-2 victory. Providence and Springfield finished those rallies on the last
Saturday and Sunday of April, respectively, then turned the pages back to one another
in advance of a best-of-seven series opener at “The Nest” for Friday, May 2.
By that point, Legace was back in
the award-winning form he had lost in his previous playoff draw with the
Bruins. And for once in this rivalry, home ice was working to the recipients’
advantage. Legace was lights-out on back-to-back evenings, once again
outdueling Bailey en route to 4-1 and 2-0 victories. Francis’ strike force,
which had scored no fewer than three goals in each of its five first-round
outings against the IceCats, had hit a classic, proverbial brick wall.
They chipped a little off of it back
home in the climactic phases of Game 3, which took place on Tuesday, May 6, the
same day the Whalers consummated the fait accompli of their relocation by announcing
they would relaunch as the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997-98. With their last bow
as Hartford’s partner amplified, the Falcons carried a 2-1 lead deep into the
third period. But a late sugar rush saw leaned-on veterans Brett Harkins and
Todd Elik turn that difference into a 3-2 Providence advantage.
That would ultimately be the only
multi-goal period on Legace’s tab for the entire series, and it was still not
to enough to avert a Springfield stranglehold. Kevin Brown converted a late
power play for the equalizer. Chris Longo tallied for the visitors in the ensuing
extra session. The Falcons now had three overtime wins in as many all-time
playoff visits to Providence, where they would have a chance to finish a sweep
three nights later.
Confronting that specter, Francis
opted for the latest of many goalie swaps in the crossover chronicles of these
two cities in nineties playoff action. Much like O’Connell’s Bales-to-Parson
move, Francis benched Bailey for that year’s late-season acquisition, Derek Herlofsky.
The former backstop of the Boston University team that won the 1995 national
championship at the Providence Civic Center, Herlofsky had made an impression
in the homestretch to help seal a playoff bid. But he went into a new
season-saving situation cold, having remained on the pine since being
shellacked in Game 1 of the Worcester series.
Precisely three weeks after his previous
start, he seized his chance for redemption and, for at least one night,
extended the run he helped to enable. The Falcons’ killer instinct translated
to nineteen shots in the first twenty minutes of Game 4. But Herlofsky kept the
game competitive with eighteen saves while Legace preserved a 1-0 edge through
the first intermission.
Herlofsky held his ground the rest
of the way while his skating mates got Legace to blink for a second-period
equalizer and third-period go-ahead goal. Barry Richter’s tally would stand as
his third game-clincher of the spring, and the 2-1 final constituted the 1997
Bruins’ fourth win in as many elimination games.
But when the teams turned around to
return to Springfield the next night, home ice continued to hold sway. Legace
bested Herlofsky in their rematch, 3-1, and the Falcons extended their city’s
playoff hex on Providence. Carrying over from the Kings-Reds Calder Cup Final
card, it now stood at five straight series wins for Springfield.
Concomitant with the Whalers’ exit,
several other changes affected the rivalry in the 1997 offseason. The
flash-in-the-pan Herlofsky did not return to Providence, nor would the
going-places Legace stay in Springfield for long. Francis moved on to an
assistant job in Boston. His counterpart McCarthy likewise ended his tenure
with the Falcons at the two-year mark, as the newfangled Hurricanes made the
Beast of New Haven their new AHL partner. The Coyotes were the sole parent club
for the Falcons now.
The 1997-98 P-Bruins brooked their
worst season, then quickly became competitive for the better part of the
ensuing decade. The same could not be said of Springfield, which lost in the
first round for three consecutive years, then missed eleven out of twelve
postseasons beginning in 2001. As such, the appeal of the rivalry would be long
restricted to history, geographic proximity and inevitable frequency in the
AHL’s perpetually division-heavy regular-season schedule.
That does not mean the aughts were
devoid of fascinating Falcons-Bruins storylines. Two nights before the new
decade began, Springfield fans took ample glee in their club’s 14-2 rout of the
defending Calder Cup champions. The plucking of Providence in The Nest came
thirteen months after Peter Laviolette’s capstone club had inflicted a drubbing
of the same score on Syracuse.
A pair of players from one side of the
matchup would later take to the other side as a bench boss. The late Marc
Potvin, who played for the B’s from 1994 to 1996 and briefly served as a
captain, coached Springfield in 2000-01 and 2001-02. The legendary Rob Murray,
who captained the Falcons for their first five seasons and came back for two more
stints, hung up his skates after spending 2002-03 in Springfield and
immediately turned his focus to serving as Scott Gordon’s assistant in
Providence. He stayed in that capacity for five years, then spent the next
three as the Baby B’s head coach.
In all, Murray participated in the
rivalry in one capacity or another for all or part of fifteen seasons. He built
his AHL Hall of Fame credentials largely through his 501 regular-season games
played in Springfield. He added forty playoff appearances, including nine
against the Bruins, and would then accrue 640 regular-season and sixty-four
playoff contests as a Providence coach.
But Murray had been released after
back-to-back playoff no-shows in 2010 and 2011. Likewise, Legace’s return to
the Falcons on the other side of a lengthy NHL career was confined to portions
of the 2011-12 campaign, Springfield’s second as the Columbus Blue Jackets’
partner. After a fourteen-year absence, Legace returned to haunt the Dunkin
Donuts Center with thirty-four saves in a November 18 win, then made five more
starts against the Baby B’s, but that was it. Neither team made the playoffs
that year.
By 2012-13, brand new blood finally
restored simultaneous intrigue to the matchup. In fact, it took it to another
level, as the Bruins and Falcons finished first and second, respectively, in
the Eastern Conference playoff bracket. Niklas Svedberg and Curtis McElhinney,
two of the conference’s three goalies at the 2013 All-Star Classic, were
backboning their respective clubs on a promising path. And with Providence’s
first-round rally past Hershey and Springfield’s four-game repression of
Manchester, each party was one hurdle away from the first-ever third-round Bruins-Falcons
series.
It was not to be. The bubble burst
in a hurry when the Syracuse Crunch swept the Falcons. Providence nearly swept
its own set with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, only to endure the
mortifying distinction of blowing a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series.
With their respective holdovers
raring for redemption, the Falcons held the edge in the 2013-14 season series,
winning seven of the ten meetings. With two of Springfield’s wins and one of
its losses coming in a shootout, the Birds claimed a 15-8 point differential in
the matchup. That figured critically into the conference playoff seeding, as
the Northeast Division-leading Falcons took second place with 100 points. With
ninety-one, the Bruins finished seventh, which meant starting the playoffs
against one another.
Going into the two cities’ 2014
postseason encounter, Springfield’s Kings, Indians and Falcons had bested the
Reds and the Bruins five consecutive times. The Falcons franchise had won a
mere five series in its existence, with two victories coming at Providence’s
expense and one apiece against three other New England cities.
But a good seventeen years had
passed since the modern franchise’s last met in the playoffs. Slews of uniform
and logo tweaks, to say nothing of Springfield’s revolving door of parent
clubs, indicatively reflected the overhaul among those who had any say in the
series. No Falcon demons were in the heads of the 2014 Providence Bruins.
Scheduling oddities had the
lower-seeded P-Bruins hosting Game 1 at The Dunk on Wednesday, April 23, after
which Games 2 and 3 would take place over a weekend at the MassMutual Center. The
Falcons fans offered their team a spirited good-luck reception and sendoff
before a respectable midweek, first-round crowd of 4,106 came to urge on the
Bruins. Defenseman David Warsofsky delighted the home masses by drawing first
blood and setting up Ryan Spooner for a 2-2 equalizer. But Springfield
dominated the middle frame in between, then scored in the third minute of
overtime via Andrew Joudrey. For historians keeping score, that result made a
4-1 all-time playoff record for the Falcons at the Providence Civic/Dunkin
Donuts Center, with all four wins coming in sudden death.
Two nights later, as Svedberg and
his skating mates tried to get the better of Falcons netminder Mike McKenna,
the Bruins finally decided that two could play at this age-old game with their
springtime Springfield nemesis. Svedberg managed the better part of a light
workload in Game 2, stopping twenty-three of twenty-four stabs. At the other
end, the Bruins took their shot tally to the mid-thirties once again, and
unlike the preceding tilt, two McKenna mistakes would suffice. Matt Fraser
converted Nick Johnson’s setup for a 2-1 win and 1-1 draw. (Two weeks later,
Fraser would add a Stanley Cup overtime goal to his transcript, wrapping home
the only tally in Game 4 of Boston’s second-round series versus Montreal.)
The Bruins turned up the
quantitative heat on McKenna in the pivotal Game 3, thrusting forty-four
biscuits his way. But he kept up the two-per-night goal limit, which Matt
Lindblad maxed out by sandwiching three unanswered Springfield strikes. With the
3-2 final, a new generation of Falcons was making like its ancestors by going
to One La Salle Square with a chance to clinch a playoff round in Game 4.
Though stuck with another weeknight
opening, Providence drew another decent audience to its elimination game. In
addition, head coach Bruce Cassidy made like O’Connell in 1993 and Francis in
1997 by shaking up the goaltending card. And once again, that move paid off, as
rookie Malcolm Subban never let Springfield take a lead or even draw a knot.
The best the Falcons could do was convert a power play when they trailed by
2-0, 3-1 and 6-2 margins.
At the other end, Craig Cunningham and
Fraser struck in the eighth and ninth minute of the first period, respectively,
to set the pace for a 6-3 rout before 3,861 rabid rooters. The best-of-five was
going to a Game 5, the first rubber match in any of the nine all-time AHL
playoff sets pitting Providence against Springfield.
Despite a four-day gap leading up to the
Saturday showdown in Springfield, the carbonation that kicked McKenna out of
his crease at 4:45 of Game 4’s third period was not gone. Cassidy was compelled
to put Svedberg back in the cage when the Falcons took a quick 2-1 lead before
the ten-minute mark of Game 5. The relatively cold Svedberg let the deficit
double after only sixty-five seconds of action, as Ryan Craig singlehandedly turned
a 1-1 knot into a 3-1 lead for the hosts.
But that was when the Bruins unleashed
their new wave. Seth Griffith pumped in his own pair of unanswered tallies at
11:55 and 13:33. At that point, McKenna was off in favor of Anton Forsberg once
more, having let three out of six Providence shots slip through.
Svedberg was perfect in the ensuing battle
of the backups. Forsberg would take the brunt of the barrage, and impressed
with fourteen second-period saves, followed by seven in the third. But
Alexander Khokhlachev capped the wild opening frame with 3:46 to spare, giving
Providence its first lead of the night. Lindblad beat Forsberg for a dose of
insurance in the middle frame, and Spooner’s empty netter capped another 6-3
romp.
New millennium, new narrative after all.
With the 3-2 series triumph, the Bruins had given Providence its first playoff
victory over Springfield since 1968. To flip the script further, especially on
their inaugural season, the P-Bruins had upset a regular-season
division-winning team.
That would also be their only playoff win
over the Falcons. Springfield missed the 2015 and 2016 postseason, after which
the parent Arizona Coyotes took advantage of the AHL’s spread to the West and
transformed the Falcons into the Tucson Roadrunners. But once again, the home
of the league’s headquarters would not go without a team of its own. The
Portland Pirates moved southward and rebranded as the Springfield Thunderbirds
to start the 2016-17 campaign.
With that, the Providence-Springfield
matchup gained a new dimension by virtue of featuring the two franchises who
ditched Maine for a more historic AHL New England market.
In the first Bruins-Thunderbirds matchup,
a crowd of 5,238 assembled at the 6,800-seat MassMutual Center to watch
Providence prevail, 5-4, in a back-and-forth shootout decision. The next two
meetings, which constituted a home-and-home set on the first weekend of
December, were both determined in overtime, with the home team winning each.
The P-Bruins would win eight out of twelve showdowns with their new Springfield
adversaries, though half of those matchups (plus one other if you discount
empty netters) were decided by a single goal.
As the adage goes, the more things change,
the more they stay the same.
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