Why I’m a fan of the Bruins: It all started with some street hockey

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Growing up in Dorchester, pick-up sports were everything to us kids. Yeah, we played organized sports too, but the unorganized stuff was the real fun.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a neighborhood that was filled with kids around my age. If you went outside after school and started dribbling a basketball, a kid would appear, ready for a game of HORSE.

It was like the Siren’s Song for Dot Rats.

We played everything: Wiffle Ball. Basketball. Pickle/Run the Bases. Off the Steps. Dodgeball. And yes, street hockey.

Street hockey was always one of the harder games to play, mainly due to needing bodies. You can play 1-on-1 basketball, or catch if you’re in a baseball mood. But 1-on-1 hockey got old after a while.

You could play posts, I guess. Or play a shootout, but that would end when the goalie would inevitably get mad and say it was his/her turn to shoot.

Maybe it was the fact that in required a big group, but actual street hockey games became mini neighborhood events. 3-on-3, same goalie for each team, so you’d have to clear the puck.

I grew up a few houses up from Jimmy and Kevin Hayes. We’d all play the same games as kids; as you can guess, they were always better than us.

I was a “tears of rage” type kid when I was little, meaning I’d get so frustrated or mad that tears were inevitable.

I remember playing a game once where Jimmy was doing something to make me mad (probably being better than me; I never handled losing well).

I snapped, threw my stick and out came the tears. Tears brought out parents, who canceled the game. Jimmy went home, calling me “Cryin’ Ryan” on the way, and that’s the story of how a current Boston Bruin once made me cry.

Life is weird, man.

Tears and scraps were soon forgotten, however, as kids forgot transgressions in ways adults simply can’t. We played for hours upon hours. Cousins, neighbors, classmates, even the occasional “older kid” who couldn’t resist joining in.

Nothing stopped us but the porch light flashing, the occasional skinned knee and the frequent shouts of “CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!!”

Some of the best memories of my childhood come from those games.

I remember losing my mind with excitement when my brother received a 1996 All-Star Game Franklin goalie mask as a birthday gift. I remember the scrrrrrrrtch of those hard plastic Mylec goalie pads with the straps that dug into your legs.

Our net is probably my favorite memory. My father once made us an entire regulation-size hockey net with white PVC pipe and that orange plastic netting they use as as cheap fencing at construction sites.

The net was light, making it easy to bring in and out of the garage. If you scored on a clean enough shot, you could shoot the puck clear through the netting and down the street, feeling like a superhero in the process. I imagine that’s how Shea Weber felt when he shot one through the netting...

Broken sticks. Orange balls lost down the drain, or lost to the scary neighbor’s yard.

I was hooked.

With that love of street hockey, you’d think ice would follow. However, I never played ice hockey as a kid. I don’t remember ever asking to play; I was a basketball kid, and the seasons overlapped.

In fact, I played ice hockey for the first time a few years ago, when I finally signed up for an adult “Learn to Play” clinic; it was awesome, and if you’ve ever considered it, try it.

Even on asphalt, my love for hockey translated to a love for the Bruins. I’d watch games with my father and brother, even though we’d miss seasons at a time when NESN was taken off the basic cable package.

I remember watching games on UPN38, or “Channel 6,” as we called it. My first Bruins memory is one that I’m not even sure actually happened: I remember a Bruin (I think it was Cam Neely) coming out of the penalty box to get a shorthanded breakaway, and scoring on a nifty move that beat a Montreal goalie.

The Bruins became just one of the teams everyone watched. I started following the team more closely as I got older, and I still vividly remember the front page of the Boston Globe sports section the morning after the Bruins eliminated Carolina in 1999 for their first series win in the now-TD Garden (“VICTORY FLEET,” it read).

The Joe Thornton Bruins were the ones that really solidified my love for the team. I was 14 in 2002, and spent my early teen years getting my heart broken by those Montreal teams.

However, I loved the characters from those years. Thornton. Sergei Samsonov. Glen Murray. Byron Dafoe. Kyle McLaren. Even a teenage kid named Patrice Bergeron.

By the time I got to college in 2006, I fell in with some friends who loved the game too. Cheap tickets and a close-to-the-Garden campus meant we went to a dozen games a year. Those years coincided with the Bruins’ return to relevance, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s interesting, because you could argue that I didn’t really “become” a Bruins fan; it kind of just happened.

And that’s the way it is in Boston. At some point, someone will give your kid a Bruins hat or sweatshirt or, if you’re a lucky kid in the 90s, a Starter jacket.

Or a kid will hear the excited voice of Fred Cusick, Jack Edwards or Dave Goucher and tune in to see what the fuss is about.

When you grow up in Boston, being a Bruins fan is often a matter of “when,” not “if.”

For me, the fan journey has been an interesting one: from playing hours of street hockey with a future NHLer to seeing that same NHLer in the locker room with a press pass from this blog.

Like I said, life is weird. Hockey is weird. Hockey fandom is weird.

But it’s a good weird.

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