I am a Boston Bruins fan in every way you can possibly imagine. My husband and I have full season tickets and frequently travel to cities where the Bruins are playing and pay top dollar for seats so we can watch our favorite team. We used to go to Montreal every chance we got since 2003 to see them play. Those early days, we were often the only ones in Black and Gold in a sea of Bleu, Blanc et Rouge. They let us know we weren’t welcome but we never really felt that unwelcome even while dodging thrown eggs and vile insults.
That really changed recently with the Max Paccioretty incident where Zdeno Chara hit Paccioretty into a glass stanchion in the Belle Centre and he was badly injured. I was working in DC at the time and watching the game on TV but monitoring my Twitter feed at the same time. When that happened, I noticed that almost all of the “regular” Bruins tweeters were aghast that he was hurt, seemingly so bad, and professing hope that he was okay. May I also say, that I have a search on the hashtag #Bruins on all of my social media aggregators, phone, Kindle and computer. You get a real feel for who the real Bruins tweeters are. Most of the Bruins tweeters write exclusively about the Bruins so they have a lot of followers. I purposefully have an unfocused twitter persona – I tweet about the Bruins and I also tweet about Veterans issues. But most of the people I follow are the ones who are Bruins regulars. They love to bust the other teams and their fans’ balls on a multitude of topics, but to a person, they know when to draw the line. This is supposed to be fun!
During the time after the Chara hit, there were some horrible tweets from people telling Boston fans to “go back to their Irish ghettoes” and shut up. I have to say that one really bothered me because it is really reminiscent of some of the ugly past of our Nation and how my family was treated in the early 1900’s. But then I thought about it more and I realized that those ugly tweets didn’t come from the “usual suspects” in the Habs fans that I follow. The really ugly and despicable tweeters save their most vile work for special times when it makes the most impact.
That brings us to the horrible tweets that were posted about Joel Ward after he scored the winning goal to win Game 7 against the Bruins. I was at the game that night and as usual monitoring my twitter feed on my phone. I was keeping an eye on my home feed so I could see only the people I usually follow, Haggs, Giardi, Bean, Naoko, Ty, Lydia, etc. My #Bruins feed was too cluttered to have any real information. So when the game was over, I didn’t see any of the foul tweets, because nobody that was worth a damn to me tweeted anything but “ooooof” or “crap” or something like that.
It was only when I was driving home that I heard about the uproar and looked at the other feed. It looked to me that one or two people tweeted something vile and a bunch of idiots kept retweeting it and claiming outrage. Sorry folks if you retweet it, you just said it, oh ya and you said it even louder, Dummy!
So I wish good luck to the Washington Capitals and Joel Ward in the playoffs. I love hockey because of the grace and elegance of the skaters, the skill and strength required and the pureness of the sport. I also love the ability it has to change on a dime and to be unpredictable.
Thanks to the Boston Bruins for filling the last year with utter joy and fun. I guess it is selfish to want to have that continue for us for another year and the whole idea of league parity is to spread the love around. I am greatly optimistic that as long as a gentleman named Cam Neely is an integral part of the Bruins Professional Hockey Club, that we will always have opportunities for the same kind of joy every year. I am greatly thankful that I am a Season Ticket holder and for the fact that the team treats us like we are the only ones. Thanks to the Bruins players for leaving it all on the ice. I appreciate each one. From Marty Turco to Marc Savard. We’ll be back next year.
