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Sports of The Times; At Boston Garden, There's Much More Gold Than Green
WHEN the New Jersey Devils were in Boston last weekend, a visitor told a taxi driver, "Take me to the Garden."
"The Garden's closed," the driver said. "Closed."
"No, there's a hockey game there. It's still open."
The taxi driver isn't alone. Perhaps because the Celtics inspired most of the tributes to Boston Garden, many people mistakenly think the Boston Garden closed after the Celtics' last game in the National Basketball Association playoffs about 10 days ago.
But the Boston Garden opened for hockey in 1928, nearly 20 years before the Celtics first dribbled there in 1946, and it will be open for hockey in these Stanley Cup playoffs until the Bruins leave after their last home game, possibly tonight against the Devils.
For all the fuss about all the green-and-white Celtic championship banners in the rafters, there are more gold-and-black Bruin banners up there, 28 to 16.
While all the retired Celtic numbers are jammed into three green-and-white banners, the seven retired Bruin numbers are displayed separately on high.
As if Boston Garden were a dying dowager wearing her old jewelry, Bruin gold (not Celtic emeralds) is everywhere: worn gold wooden seats, smudged gold cement steps, scratched gold metal facades. And the dowager might as well be listening to the radio. Her old square scoreboard above center ice is so old it doesn't even have a video screen.
Then again, it has never needed video. The memories were always clear enough, memories of Eddie Shore and Bobby Orr, Milt Schmidt and Phil Esposito, Dit Clapper and Ray Borque, Johnny Bucyk and Cam Neely.
On Mother's Day there 25 years ago, after only 40 seconds of overtime, Orr scored a Stanley Cup-winning goal while literally soaring sideways through the air for a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Blues.
But for all the cheers and boos, one enduring Boston Garden sound will always be the droning New England accent of the public-address announcer, Frank Fallon, intoning, "New Yaaaaak penalty, Paaaaak."
He meant Brad Park, who would be traded with Jean Ratelle to the Bruins in 1975 for Phil Esposito, Carol Vadnais and Joe Zanussi.
When the Bruins retired Espo's No. 7 at a 1987 ceremony, Ray Borque took off his No. 7 sweater and handed it to Espo while wearing his new No. 77 sweater that some day will be retired in the new Fleet Center, where the Bruins and Celtics will play next season.
The Bruins' rivalry with the Rangers flared in the 20's after the opening of the third Madison Square Garden and its younger sister, the first and only Boston Garden. In 1928 the Rangers were the National Hockey League's first United States franchise to win the Stanley Cup.
In 1929 the Bruins were the second, sweeping the Rangers in a two-of-three final. In 1939 the Bruins eliminated the Rangers in a six-game semifinal featuring four overtime games, three won by a left wing known forever after as Mel (Sudden Death) Hill.
The best Bruin of that era was Eddie Shore, the demonic defenseman whose stick skulled Toronto's Ace Bailey in 1935, ending his career.
The two Gardens had the same architect, the same design. The balconies were set steeply, its inhabitants peering down within easy throwing distance, as the Devils discovered last Monday night when trash littered the ice during Martin Brodeur's second consecutive shutout, as Terry Sawchuk once discovered almost to his demise.
Then a premier goalie, Sawchuk deserted the Bruins halfway through the 1956-57 schedule, then rejoined the Detroit Red Wings in a trade before the following season. When he returned to Boston and skated out for the warm-up, a pool ball was flung from the balcony. Fortunately, it didn't crack Sawchuk's skull, only the ice.
"True story," recalled Nate Greenberg of the Bruin front office. "But nobody got the color or the number of the ball."
Nobody knew what happened, at least not right away, when the lights went out during the fourth game of the 1988 Stanley Cup final against the Edmonton Oilers with the score 3-3. It turned out that a transformer had blown. The game wasn't completed. The series returned to Edmonton where the Oilers completed a four-game sweep that really took five games.
"The lights went dim for a couple of seconds, then black," Mark Messier, then with the Oilers, recalled. "You couldn't see anything."
When the lights went out that night, Boston realized that its Garden was dying, that a new arena was desperately needed. And soon, if not tonight, the coffin will be closed on this dear dowager who always wore more Bruin gold than Celtic emeralds.
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