One of the first legendary teams to come into the NHL, the Boston Bruins are a professional ice hockey team based in Boston in the USA. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The team has been in existence since 1924, and is the league's third-oldest team overall and the oldest in the United States. It is also an Original Six franchise, along with the Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs. The Bruins have won six Stanley Cup championships, tied for fourth most of all-time with the Blackhawks and tied second-most of any American NHL team also with the Blackhawks (behind the Red Wings, who have 11). The first facility to host the Bruins was the Boston Arena (today's Matthews Arena) – the world's oldest (built 1909–10) indoor ice hockey facility still in use for the sport at any level of competition and following the Bruins' departure from the Boston Arena, the team played its home games at the Boston Garden for 67 seasons, beginning in 1928 and concluding in 1995, when they moved to the TD Garden. In their first-ever playoff run, the Bruins reached the Stanley Cup Final where they lost to the Ottawa Senators in the first Cup Final to be between exclusively NHL teams. In 1929 the Bruins defeated the New York Rangers to win their first Stanley Cup. But the Boston Bruins has an interesting history as was one of the first US teams to be accepted into the NHL.
With the Montreal Maroons, the team was one of the NHL's first expansion teams, and the first NHL team to be based in the United States. In 1924, at the convincing of Boston grocery magnate Charles Adams, the National Hockey League decided to expand to the United States. Adams' first act was to hire Art Ross, a former star player and innovator, as general manager. Ross was the face of the franchise for the next thirty years, including four separate stints as coach. Ross came up with "Bruins", an Old English word used for brown bears (from the Dutch "bruin" meaning brown) in classic folk tales. The team's bearlike nickname also went along with the team's original uniform colors of brown and yellow, which came from Adams' grocery chain, First National Stores.
Some of the greatest players ever to play in the NHL played on the Boston Bruins like Bobby Orr. His picture being tripped and flies through the air after scoring "The Goal" in overtime to win the 1970 Stanley Cup Finals. The image is widely considered to be one of the most famous in hockey history. The 1970–71 season was, in retrospect, the high-water mark of the 1970s for Boston. While Sinden temporarily retired from hockey to enter business (he was replaced by ex-Bruin and Canadian defenseman Tom Johnson), the Bruins set dozens of offensive scoring records: they had seven of the league's top ten scorers a feat not achieved before or since, set the record for wins in a season, and in a league that had never seen a 100-point scorer before 1969, the Bruins had four that year. All four (Orr, Esposito, Bucyk and Hodge) were named First Team All-Stars.
Currently the Boston Bruins are owned by Jeremy Jacobs (Net Worth: $2.1 billion), who bought them in 1975 for $10 million. After taking over as owner in 1975, the Bruins have been competitive (making the playoffs for 29-straight seasons from 1967–68 to 1995–96, 20 of which were with Jacobs as owner) but have won the Stanley Cup only once, in 2011 and only in his 36th year as owner. Under previous ownerships, the Bruins had won the Stanley Cup five times. Under Jacobs, the Bruins have reached the Stanley Cup Final six times (twice against the Bruins' arch-rival Montreal Canadiens in 1977 and 1978, twice against the Edmonton Oilers in 1988 and 1990, finally winning in 2011 against the Vancouver Canucks, and losing in 2013 to the Chicago Blackhawks).
The Bruins will enter next season as one of the early favorites to win the Stanley Cup and with good reason given what they proved they were capable of doing last season. There will be some growing pains as the team is set to experience some turnover from last season’s squad with forwards Riley Nash, Tim Schaller and backup goaltender Anton Khudobin among the most notable players leaving the team in free agency. In their place will be forwards Chris Wagner, Joakim Nordstrom, mobile defender John Moore and Jaroslav Halak who were all added this offseason.
The last time the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup was in 2011 when they beat the Vancouver Canucks on home ice in seven games. If the Bruins are serious about winning a championship, now is the time to make a run. Unfortunately, teams like the Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs have been making serious plays to improve and claim supremacy over the Atlantic Division. While the Bruins have lagged behind this offseason comparatively, they are still very clearly in a situation where expectations are so high that the 2018-19 season is inherently going to be a Stanley Cup or bust year for them.
The team mascot is Blades the Bruin is an anthropomorphic bear serves as the Bruins' team mascot. In January and February, Blades travels around the greater Boston area to raise money for the Bruins Foundation. For a sizable amount of the team's more recent TV and online ads, a different anthropomorphic ursine character simply known as "The Bear" appears in official Bruins video advertising
