Sitting on a bus in Winnipeg on the first day of December, Rick Middleton was contemplating the Canadian east coast and hockey fandom.
The former Boston Bruins winger will appear at the Pictou County Wellness Centre alongside other Bruins alumni on Dec. 13, where they will face former Montreal Canadiens players in an exhibition match.
“I’ve been doing this for about 10 years and, as we’ve learned, there are a ton of Bruins fans all over the Maritimes,” Middleton said during a telephone interview.
Yes there are a lot of Bruins fans here, but it’s safe to say that Boston is the third-favourite team in Atlantic Canada, behind the Leafs and Canadiens. Those two are neck-and-neck, and their highly unofficial rankings will vary every few years depending on what’s happening with the respective franchises.
Most of the time, we get our hockey allegiances from our parents. With me it was my mom, who had the fortune of seeing the Maple Leafs winning Cups back in the 1960s. Man, are those words ever difficult to type out on a computer monitor. Or even think about for very long.
There is a smattering of Edmonton Oilers fans still kicking around – most of them guys now in their late 30s and early 40s who understandably boarded that train back when Gretzky and the boys were winning Stanley Cups – and you do get a sense there are a lot of youthful Pittsburgh Penguins fans in this region of the country, especially in Nova Scotia.
Sidney Crosby, it is safe to say, has had a lot to do with that.
Rick Middleton can remember the time the Bruins alumni pulled into a small town on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
“Everyone remembers different eras, different games, the different experiences they’ve had. We got off the bus in Newfoundland and a woman started crying – she never believed she’d meet the Boston Bruins.”
Utter, unbreakable devotion to a team – why we care about them so much – is almost impossible to explain.
Our hockey teams: we don’t know why we love them, but we do.
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Other Sports Thoughts:
• One more thing about the Bruins vs. Habs game: I’ve only heard one person complain about the $30 ticket price, but this was from a guy who’d spent most of a round of golf trolling through the woods over at Abercrombie GC, looking for free golf balls because he’s tight with his money. So tight, he squeaks.
• As noted in a recent issue of The News, longtime sportswriter Hugh Townsend – a New Glasgow native, should he need an introduction, and he doesn’t – just published his second book, ‘Remembering Pictou County.’
I’m no literary critic but what an interesting read it is, full of nuggets about this county’s sports past. Not just the old old-timers, but people we’ve known for years and who are still involved in local sports, in one form or another.
Townsend had 200 copies printed and they should sell out easily if they haven't already. He probably could have printed 200 more and sold those, too.
Kevin Adshade is sportswriter with The News. His column appears each Saturday.
