1970 Bruins Set Big, Bad Standard For Future Generations

When the 2011 Boston Bruins held a reunion via video conference last month during an airing of the game that resulted in them winning the Stanley Cup in Vancouver nine years ago, it became a raucous affair.

There was drinking, trash talk about opponents and barbs tossed at teammates. It was evident the players still love each other, still feel the bond they created with that dramatic seven-game series win and it was a peek into what it must have been like to be behind the scenes with that team during its triumphant run.

Since that night, a lot of attention has turned toward the team that paved the way for future Bruins teams to be known as the “Big, Bad Bruins.” On Sunday we’ll celebrate 50 years since Bobby Orr scored the overtime goal that earned the Bruins the 1970 Stanley Cup and provided hockey history with a picture that’s become a symbol for the modern era of the NHL.

But that team was about more than one photo and two Cup championships (they also won in 1972). They were about resonating with the public off the ice, capturing the imagination of a city and a region, and proving that a team could win and have a lot of fun doing it. That’s a philosophy that carried all the way to 2011, and continued with the 2019 and 2020 Bruins.

In “The 1970 Bruins: Big, Bad and Bobby” a new documentary premiering on the NHL Network Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, Harry Sinden, that team’s coach, called his players “pop idols.” Then on a conference call this week, Sinden explained what made that team special off the ice and dominant on it.

Sinden wasn’t afraid to put the players through a “brutal” practice on Monday after he knew his team had spent the weekend enjoying each other’s company and the Boston nightlife.

“John McKenzie was the character… he’d lie on his back towards the end of practice and put his hands and feet in the air and start acting like a toddler having a tantrum to say he’s had enough,” Sinden said. “It was kind of a ritual for the team to know what was coming the following week.”

“We did have a host of characters, but they were able to separate that from the business at hand. They were receptive.”

They were receptive enough to win 40 games and earn 99 points in the regular season, then beat the New York Rangers in six games, the Chicago Blackhawks in four games and the St. Louis Blues in four games to end Boston’s Cup drought at 29 years.

As rambunctious as they away from the rink, in uniform they were more so, whether it was McKenzie or Derek Sanderson – a “disrupter on the ice” as author of “Kooks and Degenerates on Ice” Thomas J. Whalen called him – standing up for teammates, or any member going to battle when they though another was being taken advantage of.

In the NHL Network documentary, goalie Gerry Cheevers explained how the team played with “fear of letting your teammates down.” Sanderson recalled a conversation Orr had with the group about how no one on the team would ever fight alone.

They won games, they won the championship and won the hearts of millions. Ratings were through the roof, new rinks were going up all over New England and everyone wanted to be

“We didn’t hide away,” Orr said during a conference call. “We were right there in the public and we had a lot of characters. We had a lot of fun, we played hard. Fans knew when they came to the game, they were going to get an honest effort from everybody.”

Fast forward to the current Bruins, the core of which continues to try to repeat the accomplishments of the 2011 team, and came close last June, the recipe is the same. Whether it’s Brad Marchand, Torey Krug, Tuukka Rask or Jake DeBrusk, there are certainly plenty of characters around the dressing room and out on the town. Albeit, they live in a social media world and in an era where a cigarette and a beer aren’t considered nutrition for athletes. But relative to the times, there are some “kooks” (if not “degenerates”) wearing the Bruins sweater these days. And they live by the same mantra of never letting their teammates fight alone.

There were championships and tough guys in Bruins history before the 1969-70 team, but that year “Big, Bad Bruins” became a way of life that continues today.