Twenty
years, four name changes and a second relocation passed before the Hartford
Wolf Pack emerged as a brand new Providence Bruins rival that had once
inhabited the Civic Center as the Reds. Conversely, it was only a one-year wait
for forlorn fans in Maine before they saw the new makeup of their lost
franchise visit their new AHL representatives, the Portland Pirates. While the
Washington Capitals had a geographically sensible arrangement with the
Baltimore Skipjacks, attendance in Maryland never broke beyond the 3,000 range.
Implicitly seeking a more puck-hungry audience for their prospects, the Caps
found a new base in Portland.
With that relocation, which coincided with
the New Haven Senators’ transfer to Prince Edward Island, the Capitals child
club moved from the Southern Division to the Northern. There would be fourteen
Providence-Portland matchups in the first year of the two cities’ AHL
coexistence. That meant no shortage of opportunity to build an animosity that
could correlate with the umbrage in the stands.
Naturally, there was no reason for the
Portland fans’ resentment to have any bearing on the players. Even so, the
Bruins-Pirates rivalry was not even six minutes old when its first chippy
episode erupted.
The old Mariners hosted their
successors at the Providence Civic Center to commence their inaugural season
series on October 8, 1993. In the sixth minute of the opening frame, Bruins
goalie David Littman strayed from his crease to halt and reverse a routine
dump-in. As he was backhanding the biscuit with intent to sail it along the far
boards, Pirates forward Kerry Clark swooped in from the left side and dealt the
netminder a blindsided blow. Littman crumbled on his stomach, his lid instantly
dislodged and the back of his legs stuck up with limited motion.
The hit happened in front of Bruins
skater Darren Stolk, who promptly dropped his mitts to engage Clark in the
right corner. It would be the first of Clark’s two fights on the night and the
first of five overall in the game. The last two occurred at the 14:31 mark of
the middle frame and coincided with a bona fide line brawl. During that mess,
Mark Major lost his jersey and hopped into the Portland penalty box to continue
his exchange with Brian Curran.
Other combatants in later fights included
first-year P-Bruin Bill Armstrong and team captain Jamie Huscroft. Both would
build their fan-favorite reputations without fail for their willingness to halt
the game and make opponents answer for borderline deeds.
Adding literal insult to injury, the visiting
Pirates spoiled the P-Bruins’ second-ever opening night by claiming a 6-3
decision. Setting a tone for their eventual 1994 Calder Cup championship, they
were 11-4-2 overall by November 14, having won each of their first four
meetings with Providence. Much to the home crowd’s undoubted delight, those
included 3-1 and 3-2 wins in Portland that extended the Bruins’ overall losing
streak to three and five games, respectively.
Things changed, at least temporarily, back
at One La Salle Square on December 10, when the Bruins tied a franchise record
by routing Portland, 9-3. But in a later meeting up at the Cumberland County
Civic Center, the Pirates returned the favor with a 12-2 lashing. With that,
each team was responsible for each other’s most lopsided loss up to that time
in their respective chronicles.
In between, while no other meetings in
1993-94 were quite as fight-filled as the first, there were other episodes of
overflowing pugnacity. Of particular note, Providence netminder John Blue found
himself squaring off with Portland counterpart Olaf Kolzig during a February 19
visit to his former place of employment as a Mariner. For his role in the
brawl, Blue aggregated thirty-one penalty minutes and a game misconduct. For
the up-and-coming and temperamental Kolzig, it was a preview of things to come,
including another goalie fight against longtime friend Byron Dafoe during a 1998
Capitals-Bruins game at Boston’s FleetCenter.
As it happened, Dafoe was a colleague of
Kolzig’s in the Pirates’ inaugural campaign, playing the majority of the
regular season. Kolzig proved to be the hot hand for the playoffs, though, and
backstopped the title run that completed Maine’s emotional recovery from the
loss of the Mariners two short years prior. Doubtlessly adding to the
Portlanders’ satisfaction, the P-Bruins missed the 1994 playoffs and were a
pitiful 3-8-3 head-to-head against the Pirates.
While the extracurricular flavor toned
down in 1994-95, the one-sidedness on the scoreboard continued at the start.
The Bruins met the reigning champs three nights in a row over the first weekend
of November and lost each game by a cumulative score of 11-4. The B’s would go
3-6-3 in their second regular-season series with the Bucs, whom they
subsequently drew for the first round of the playoffs.
Tim Sweeney’s hat trick highlighted a
head-turner in Game 1, as Providence prevailed in a back-and-forth 6-5 decision
at the Cumberland County Civic Center. Barry Trotz’s pupils regrouped the next
night and restored their contender’s outlook with a 4-1 retort, but the sense
of home-ice advantage had already been usurped. With that, after a four-night
gap and a change of scenery, six skaters turned in a multi-point effort for the
Bruins in a 7-3 romp in Game 3.
Home-ice advantage subsequently went the
way of the Zamboni snow, and it was not going to refreeze in the latter third
of April. The Pirates and P-Bruins traded 5-4 road wins before Portland
silenced the Civic Center masses, 6-1, when Providence had its chance to clinch
in Game 6 at its mansion. The first round, and ultimately the entire 1995
Calder Cup playoffs, would feature only one Game 7, and it was the latest
sparkplug for a fast-burgeoning Southern-Northern New England feud.
Game 7 in Portland was one night after the
Pirates had looted the Bruins in Providence. Ostensibly, the short turnaround
the intervening travel would afford the lower-seeded squad little, if any,
opportunity to slow down or reverse the unfavorable momentum. And for the first
forty minutes of the deciding contest, the Bucs fed off their own audience well
enough. None other than Dafoe, whose rights would soon transfer from Washington
to Los Angeles and who would then become a Boston Bruin in two years, kept the
Spoked-Ps off the board through the second intermission.
But Steve Kasper’s club found one more
wave of carbonation at the eleventh hour and in the twenty-first stanza of the
series. They unleashed that wave to the tune of six goals, including Mikko
Maleka’s eventual decider. With a 6-3 final on the night, the P-Bruins had won
their first playoff series in franchise history and cut off Portland’s title
defense in the process.
Other future black-and-gold allies of note
were in action for the Mainers in that series. Jason Allison, who in 1997 came
to Boston as part of a blockbuster deal, led the Pirates with eight assists and
eleven points in their series with Providence. After the March 1997 trade, he
would lead the Boston Bruins in scoring in three of his four full seasons with
the team. For his final year in 2000-01, he succeeded Ray Bourque as team
captain.
Another noteworthy Pirate, Kent Hulst, was
a mainstay in Portland for each of the team’s first seven years of operation. He
trailed only Andrew Brunette, who played for both the B’s and the Bucs in the
first year of the feud, for the team lead in playoff production when the
Pirates lost Game 7 of the 1996 Calder Cup Final to Rochester.
In the middle of the 2000-01 season, Hulst
transferred to the other side of the Providence rivalry, logging twenty-three
regular-season and ten playoff appearances. He would retire afterward, claiming
that year’s Fred T. Hunt Memorial Award for perseverance. That same offseason,
Peter Ferraro’s rights transferred from Boston to Washington, making him a
Pirate upon reassignment to the AHL. The man who had led Providence in scoring
each of the previous two seasons proceeded to lead Portland with twenty-one
goals and fifty-eight points in 2001-02. In one notable showdown with his
former allies on January 25, Ferraro had a hand in three goals as part of a 4-2
Pirates home victory.
Year Three of the Bucs and the B’s kicked
off much like Year One. The Pirates avenged their fan base’s heartache at the
hands of Providence by spoiling the Bruins’ home opener with a three-goal
margin of victory, 5-2. But for the first time, Providence would win the season
series, claiming a 7-3-2 head-to-head record. Hopes for a playoff rematch were
quickly dashed, though, when the Springfield Falcons dispatched the Bruins in
four games in the first round. The Birds likewise prevented a 1997
Providence-Portland postseason affair when they surmounted a 2-0 deficit in
their best-of-five set with the Pirates, thus amplifying the Bruins-Falcons
feud for the time being.
As with Springfield, a protracted hiatus
from playoff matchups did not diminish the value of frequent fall and winter
meetings between the AHL’s Rhode Island and Maine chapters. But the franchises
finally did renew their springtime spat in 2004, doing so in a best-of-three
qualifying round after splitting their regular-season series, 4-4-2.
As the fourth seed in the Atlantic
Division, the Bruins hosted the fourth-seeded Pirates for this miniseries. The
venue and the coaching matchup was a New England hockey historian’s delight.
Portland coach Tim Army, reassigned from his assistant job with the parent
Capitals, was an East Providence native and the senior captain of the legendary
1985 Providence College team. Those Friars had won the inaugural Hockey East
tournament final at the Providence Civic Center by upsetting Boston College,
2-1, in double-overtime.
The unfortunate Eagles goalie who
surrendered that deciding goal: Scott Gordon, who after three years as an assistant
for the Baby B’s was now in his first season as their head coach.
New level, new roles for Army and Gordon.
But it would be the same basic fortune for the two of them at the renamed
Dunkin Donuts Center. The Pirates routed their hosts, 7-1 and 6-2, to sweep the
short series and enter the sixteen-team bracket.
Two years later, with Army now coaching at
his alma mater and the Pirates partnering with Anaheim, Portland enlisted
former Hartford Whalers captain Kevin Dineen as their new skipper. Under Dineen,
they roared to first place and fell six points shy of matching the 1998-99
P-Bruins’ single-season league record. None other than Gordon’s gang took
fourth place in the division, putting them on Portland’s docket for the
best-of-seven opening round.
A four-goal first-period helped the
Pirates pace themselves to a 6-0 rout in Game 1. The next two tilts were more
competitive, each ending in a one-goal margin, but Portland prevailed in both,
thus nudging the fourteen-year-old Providence franchise to the brink of its
first-ever four-game sweep out of the playoffs.
Nathan Robinson spearheaded a valiant
effort to keep the brooms locked away. The Providence winger had a hand in all
five of his team’s Game 4 goals, culminating in an overtime tally. Two nights
later in Portland, the Bruins shook off Aaron Rome’s icebreaker, scored three
unanswered tallies and then recovered when the Pirates filled 3-1 and 4-3
potholes. Though the hosts doubled up the visitors in the third-period shooting
gallery, 12-6, goaltender Derek Gustafson kept the 4-4 knot and his team’s
season intact. He halted five more bids in overtime, then drew a goaltender
interference penalty on Simon Ferguson. With Ferguson in the bin, Eric Healey,
who had tallied the previous go-ahead goal on a penalty shot, beat Jani Hurme
for the decider.
But just like the previous full-length
Providence-Portland playoff series, a one-night turnaround back to the other
site did nothing to sustain momentum for the most recent winner. Back home, the
Bruins allowed an even-strength, power-play and shorthanded goal all go
unanswered in the middle frame. That outburst would be the decider in a 5-2
final that gave the Pirates the six-game series victory.
For the better part of the mid-to-late
aughts, a pattern in the Providence-Portland playoff narrative mirrored that of
the old Bruins-IceCats postseason history. The difference for the Rhode Island
faithful, most naturally, was the invariable lack of success for their club in
the former.
When the franchises met for their third
postseason series in five years, the seeding had reversed. In Gordon’s fifth
year at the helm, the P-Bruins took the AHL’s 2007-08 regular-season title.
They swept the Manchester Monarchs out of the first round in four straight
squeakers, then awaited the winner of the Hartford-Portland series. The Wolf
Pack had finished second in the Atlantic Division, seven points behind
Providence and twelve ahead of Portland. But after they took Game 1 of the
division semifinals, any hopes of a rematch with Providence after the previous
spring’s first-round choke were dashed. The surprising Pirates won four straight
one-goal decisions to take the series, 4-1, and meet the Baby B’s for Round
Two.
Touted goaltending prospect Tuukka Rask
was in his first year of North American competition with the Bruins. In the
Manchester series, he had laid one goose egg and kept the opposition to a
two-goal limit in the other three games.
That stinginess continued in the first two
games of the Portland series while Rask’s skating mates ravaged Dineen’s tandem
of Mike McKenna and Gerald Coleman. Rask managed twenty-eight saves on as many
shots while four different goal-getters accounted for his support in his Game 1
shutout. The next day, Martins Karsums piloted Providence with a hat trick
while Petteri Nokelainen added a pair as part of a 7-1 romp.
But when they went back home the next
weekend, the Pirates perked up. They forced an eventual Game 5 at their place
and tied the series going into it with back-to-back overtime strikes. With the
chance to take a commanding lead back to The Dunk, high-end Ducks prospect
Bobby Ryan had a hand in the two deciding goals that gave Portland a 3-2 Game 5
victory.
Three nights later, Rask had his worst
statistical outing of the spring at the worst possible time. The Bruins had led
Game 6 by 2-0 and 3-2 margins before Jason King converted a visiting power play
with 3:13 left in the middle frame. With only seventy-three seconds gone in the
third period, Platt beat Rask for his team’s first lead of the night.
When King doubled the difference to 5-3 at
the 6:52 mark, the Finnish fortress was done for the night. Gordon swapped out
Rask in favor of Jordan Sigalet, whose firefighting shift only stopped the
damage where it was. T.J. Trevelyan’s power-play goal got the Bruins back to
within one, but Pirates goalie Jean-Sebastien Aubin otherwise shut the door,
giving his team another string of four straight one-goal victories and a second
upset in as many rounds.
The head-to-head playoff series score of
the twenty-first century: Portland 3, Providence 0. Those three losses were the
chief blights on Gordon’s five-year reign as head coach, which ended that
summer when he accepted an offer to serve the same position for the New York
Islanders. Had the B’s found a way to solve the Pirates in 2006, they would
have won a playoff round in each of five consecutive years spanning 2005 to
2009.
But incidentally, the reason they had a
multi-round run in 2009 was because Gordon’s successor, Rob Murray, guided them
to a retort in a rematch with Portland. But before they got to that point, the
rivalry took on a few other intriguing changes.
The 2008 offseason brought a stunning
development to the Western New York hockey scene, as the Rochester Americans
and Buffalo Sabres ended a seemingly perfect partnership. The Sabres turned to
Portland for their new AHL base, which meant the P-Bruins and Pirates were now
the child clubs of two time-honored Adams/Northeast Division rivals.
In the first meeting of the new
arrangement at the Cumberland County Civic Center, Rask outdueled his
Scandinavian border rival, Sweden/Portland’s Jhonas Enroth, for a 4-1 victory.
Five weeks later, and after another road matchup, Bruins fans at The Dunk got
their first look at the red-and-black Portland uniforms with the short-lived
“Buffaslug” logo of the Sabres on the shoulder. In that first glimpse, the
first fight involved two unlikely sluggers in Providence’s Vladimir Sobotka and
Portland’s Nathan Gerbe, an undersized Buffalo draftee who had starred at
Boston College the previous three years.
Pirate Tyler Bouck and Bruin Adam McQuaid
dropped the mitts for one another in both the second and third period. In
between, Sobotka’s goal and Gerbe’s assist pushed each man to within one
criterion of the Gordie Howe Hat Trick amidst a back-and-forth third-period
flurry after the first forty-two minutes had gone scoreless. Deleting two
deficits, the Bruins forced overtime and a subsequent shootout. Providence rookie
goaltender Kevin Regan stoned all five Pirates (including Gerbe, his old
nemesis from his New Hampshire days) while Peter Schaefer beat Enroth to give
the hosts the extra point.
The B’s would take two more shootout
decisions, but split the 10 victories in the 2008-09 season series. With the
point that comes with a shootout loss, the aspiring Sabres technically won the
series, 5-2-3. Despite that, Providence finished six points ahead of Portland
for second in the Atlantic Division, giving it home ice to start the playoff
rematch in the opening round.
Rask was conspicuously absent when
Portland edged Providence, 6-5, in the penultimate game of each team’s regular
season. But leading scorer Martin St. Pierre and a soon-to-be Boston surprise
named Brad Marchand had charged up three points apiece. All three would figure
crucially in the series that started the next week.
After Enroth outdueled him in Game 1, 3-0
(with a late empty-net goal), Rask would restrict the Pirates to a single goal
in each of the next four matches. Marchand accompanied Gerbe to the penalty box
for unsportsmanlike conduct in the first period of Game 2, then assisted on
Sobotka’s icebreaker in an eventual 2-1 win.
He likewise assisted on the first goal of
Game 3, and scored the winner in a 5-1 runaway. Sobotka and St. Pierre tallied
one of their own and both logged a playmaker hat trick, including shared credit
for the assists on Marchand’s clincher. Prolific point patroller Johnny
Boychuk, who would win that year’s Eddie Shore Award as the AHL’s top
defenseman, set up St. Pierre’s shorthanded goal for a 3-1 upper hand and
slugged home the last two doses of insurance.
Those four individuals accounted for all
of the offense in Game 3. After Boychuk and St. Pierre set up Marchand for a
1-1 equalizer in Game 4, Providence tapped into a little more depth. Kirk
MacDonald beat Enroth in the ever-critical final minute of the middle frame.
Rask preserved the resultant 2-1 lead with a perfect eleven-save performance in
the third period.
The pattern repeated itself at The Dunk
the next night. The desperate Pirates took a 1-0 lead into the first
intermission, but the Bruins tallied twice in the second, after which they
relied on Rask to finish a 2-1 victory. Precisely fifty weeks to the day of an
unfavorable handshake line with Portland at home, the P-Bruins rinsed out the
vinegar for themselves and their fans.
As it happened, one year and two nights
later, on April 26, 2010, Rask and a handful of others would upgrade the same
scenario to its NHL equivalent. Now a staple in The Show, Rask seized Boston’s
starting job for its playoff run and proceeded to outduel Ryan Miller and the
Sabres. Two other Boston rookies, Boychuk and McQuaid, were in action for the
4-3 squeaker that clinched the Eastern Conference quarterfinal in Game 6 at the
TD Garden. Gerbe, a noted Portland graduate, had supplied one of the Sabres’
goals in the losing effort. Another holdover, Tim Kennedy, had scored an assist
for Buffalo.
The Pirates-Sabres partnership lasted
through 2011, after which order was restored between Rochester and Buffalo. In
the meantime, extra interest in the Portland-Providence rivalry faded when the
Bruins brooked three straight playoff no-shows.
Though the franchises would never again
cross postseason paths, the 2012-13 regular season did yield a compelling two-team
race to the top of the Atlantic Division standings. The first installment of
the season series came in Maine in mid-November, at which time the NHL lockout
was in one of its iciest stretches. Now the feeder club of the Phoenix Coyotes,
the Pirates flaunted the likes of two-way blueliner Oliver Ekman-Larsson. But
in that first meeting, Providence silenced Ekman-Larsson while goaltender
Niklas Svedberg repelled thirty-six of thirty-seven shots and Chris Bourque fed
Ryan Spooner for the game-winning power-play goal.
Two empty-net tallies inflated the 5-2
final in the Bruins’ next victorious visit to Portland. They lost their third
encounter, yet another road outing, by a 2-1 margin, but rebounded two nights
later by winning the backend of a home-and-home set. Former Pirate Trent
Whitfield, now the veteran Bruins captain, supplied the lone third-period goal
en route to the 3-2 final.
A 3-2 shootout loss and 6-1 rout in
mid-January gave way to 5-2 and 6-3 losses in February. By that point, the
Bruins had a 4-3-1 head-to-head record, the Pirates 4-4-0. That extra point for
the one regulation tie was proving crucial at the time. When Portland claimed a
6-3 home win on February 26, it pulled even in the standings with sixty-six
points overall to end the month.
But to cap the first weekend of March, the
Bruins set the tone for their breakaway down the stretch. Even after leaned-on
veteran defenseman Garnet Exelby was ejected for boarding at 8:21 of the first
period, Providence warded off the Pirates strike force long enough to pillage
the Portland net. Christian Hanson’s unassisted shorthanded goal doubled an
early lead to 2-0 late in the first period, and would prove the clincher. By
day’s end, Craig Cunningham had a hat trick, Justin Florek two tallies and the
team a 7-1 triumph.
With that, Providence had opened up a
five-point difference at the top of the division. The Pirates still had a game
in hand, but it would hardly matter. The Bruins took the last installment of
the ten-game season series, 3-2, while going an otherworldly 19-3-1 in March
and April. The final result was an eighteen-point gap ahead of the second-place
Pirates and the team’s first regular-season title since 2008.
The anticlimactic finish to that race was
made all the more anticlimactic by the AHL’s new playoff format. With three
divisions per conference rather than two, and thus a less division-oriented
focus on the bracket, the chances of a Bruins-Pirates series were reduced.
Portland fans were doubtlessly craving a repeat of the 2008 twist that saw
their team dethrone the Kilpatrick Trophy holders in the second round. But that
dream died at the hands of the Syracuse Crunch, holders of the third seed in
the Eastern Conference who swept the Pirates in the first round.
After its last regular-season division
title in 2011, Portland never won another series and never held home ice for
one. And in 2016, when the Coyotes pulled their new affiliate from Springfield
to Tucson, the Pirates agreed to fill the Falcons’ void and resurface as the
Springfield Thunderbirds.
Like Worcester, Portland now looks forward
to a new minor-league hockey chapter in ECHL form. In turn, the city is rightly
subject to speculation of an eventual Bruins Double-A partnership. If such a
thing ever happens, it would make for a pattern not unlike what New England has
seen in baseball.
There was a time when the Pawtucket Red
Sox enjoyed a regional rivalry with the Maine Guides. Today, the Portland Sea
Dogs are the PawSox of tomorrow, just as Pawtucket is the place for the BoSox of
tomorrow.
Could Maine and Rhode Island reconcile as
hockey fan bases in the same fashion someday? Whether they do or don’t, it will
never diminish the treasure trove of Pirates-Bruins rivalry memories.
Comments