Projo Bruins Blog

Charles Pierce of The Boston Globe has an excellent story on hockey's popularity in Boston and elsewhere in New England. He makes the case that hockey is more deeply rooted here than the other, more successful, professional sports.

''Now, after a decade in which the Patriots, the Celtics, even the Red Sox have won championships, the Bruins have a chance to step up and do the same, but to do so knowing that there remains a reservoir of support here that exists in few other places in the country. In Boston, there are Red Sox fans, but baseball doesn't permeate the city. Little League diamonds go vacant all summer, and the high school and college seasons are necessarily truncated by the weather. The Patriots and Celtics have experienced great waves of popularity, but there is no deeper culture of football and basketball present here, the best efforts of Boston College notwithstanding. In the other three major sports in Boston, there is a spectator culture of interest at the top, and very little beneath that. For all the ribbing hockey takes on sports-talk radio, for all the easy dismissals of it as a kind of charming local anachronism, like the swan boats or Jack Williams, people seem surprised to notice, again, that hockey, even after the Bruins all but vanished for nearly 40 years, still holds a place in this city and this region that football, basketball -- yes, even baseball, which is more than just the Red Sox -- can only envy.''

Read the article here.

 Tags  Boston Bruins

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