As I’ve discovered recently, I’m becoming a Bruins fan. I’ve found their fanbase to be incredibly warm and welcoming to me. (Is it a residual effect from the trade involving Peverley, Stuart and Wheeler? Be honest!) I look forward to watching more of them in action next season. Thank you, NHL Center Ice, which I will order once DirecTV makes it available.
Anyway, recently our guest writer Vicky traveled to Boston for some fun and to see her alma mater, Boston University. Go Terriers! I made a request of her: bring me back some Bruins swag! Oh, did she deliver.
Note that I purchased the Stanley Cup DVD myself today at Best Buy, where a flummoxed employee tried to help me find it and we discovered the Best Buy website listing for the DVD doesn’t have any cover art. Okay then. (Not that I mind the choice of art, not at all, especially the inclusion of Man of the Day honoree Patrice Bergeron.) But everything else is from Vicky: the History Returns to Boston shirt, the Sports Illustrated issue I couldn’t find for love or money down here, the champions button and the fun little squishy puck that I need to hang somewhere where my cat can’t get to it.
It’s all so lovely and I like looking at it. Thanks so much, Vicky. I owe you one!
PS: Vicky told me she is writing more about the drama involving the Islanders’ arena. Stay tuned.
Adventures in Pucking 
I saw you were a Blackhawks fan too… do you just become a fan of all the Stanley Cup winners?
You know there’s a word for that in sports fandom, right?
By: we-ditched-lebda on July 21, 2011
at 1:35 am
Fascinating! I’d love to hear it. Actually I wouldn’t. You might also notice that I’m looking with interest at teams that haven’t won a Cup since before I was born or not for a very long time indeed. In fact, I’m becoming more interested in those teams, partly because most Blackhawks fans I’ve encountered have not been so wonderful at all.
By: Adventures in Pucking on July 21, 2011
at 1:56 am
I’m just saying. If you’re going to be a Blackhawks fan and then turn around to immediately become a Bruins fan the next year, people are going to call you a bandwagoner.
Why search for a team? Pick a team and stick with it. You were a Blackhawks fan when they were Champs but suddenly now you’re not because they lost? Uncool.
By: we-ditched-lebda on July 21, 2011
at 2:02 am
Actually I wasn’t a hockey fan until January 26, 2011, so I can’t possibly have been a fan of the Blackhawks at that time, as I was a Thrashers fan until that became impossible really…and I am in a peculiar precarious position in which my team has disappeared, so I am still searching for a team to enjoy and I have 29 options! I did do a post about it back when the blog first started detailing the choices I was attempting to make and in that post I pretty much decided the Bruins would be my primary. Since then I’ve been learning more about that team specifically.
I think you may have us mixed up or something. Krista is the Blackhawks fan. I, Emma (posting under the AiP username right now though), am the budding Bruins fan–if the prior paragraph didn’t make that clear. I can see where there could be confusion; the bylines are rather small on posts here. Perhaps we’ll try to make this clearer in future, I was thinking of adding logos with posts.
So I hope we’ve perhaps cleared this up a bit!
By: Adventures in Pucking on July 22, 2011
at 2:08 am
(sorry I’m so late coming back this, IRL got crazy)
I know you were a Thrashers fan and also know when you got into hockey. I only said you were a Blackhawks fan back when they were champs because I also lurk your tumblr and distinctly remember all of the Blackhawks post there. Specifically, as recently as May, your tumblr was overwhelmingly Blackhawks themed.
I don’t personally know much about bandwgoning (the Leafs would have to finally win something in order to be bandwagoned), but being fans of the reigning Stanley Cup champs and then immediately jumping ship to the NEXT Stanley Cup winner is basically the definition. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in bandwagoning, it’s how you’re getting to know the sport.
By: we-ditched-lebda on July 30, 2011
at 9:12 pm
Hi tumblr lurker! C’mon, don’t be shy, identify!
But okay, I went to the archive and went to May 2011 to see if your claim held water. I’m mostly just gazing at the photos; the text posts span all sorts of topics. There are SOME photos, most often of Patrick Kane, which may indicate discussion happening between Krista and me. However, there are quite a few more photos of other folks, including Alexander Ovechkin, Bobby Ryan, Ondrej Pavelec, Tuukka Rask, Kris Letang, Michal Neuvirth, Ryan Kesler, Jordan Staal, Henrik Lundqvist, Alexander Burmistrov and even non-hockey things like Jimmy Fallon! This is pretty much par for the course, which apparently you should know since you lurk over there. I eventually grew tired of searching my archive because it makes Firefox lag like CRAZY, so I stopped, but I don’t know about the whole “overwhelmingly” Blackhawks-themed claim.
Perhaps there was a slightly higher amount of Blackhawks talk at the end of *April* during their playoff run. This is also because I got my friend Mitch into hockey by asking him to watch the Chicago/Vancouver games, knowing he loves Chicago and would maybe like this too. I did also enjoy finding common ground with Blackhawks fans by discussing Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien. But again, I really don’t know about overwhelming.
I just think it’s really interesting how you come at me and then tell me bandwagoning (which by the way I honestly do not think I’m engaging in, seeing as the Bruins are going to be my new My Team, through good or bad) is bad, call me uncool, make it negative, but then flip the script and tell me it’s good and okay and the way to learn the sport. To borrow a page from your book, pick one.
Actually, I learned the sport by obsessively attaching to one team, my home team, even enduring their terrible February, the fact that they had only one playoff run ever (that I didn’t witness firsthand) and the slings and arrows of critics *before* the relocation talk grew to such a fever pitch, so trust me, I learned how to be faithful to a team even when it’s not winning everything. Thanks for playing, but this game’s over. I don’t feel the need to prove myself to you anymore after this.
By: emmaharger on July 30, 2011
at 10:26 pm