I Guess That's Why They Call Them The Blues

I had no particular dog in the hunt for this year's Stanley Cup finals, which will feature the Boston Bruins versus the St. Louis Blues. Not until I read about the Blues, which have a tale that befits their name. Even though I can't name one player on their team (or the Bruins, for that matter--does Cam Neely still play?) I'm fully behind them.

The Blues were part of the first expansion of the NHL. For years the NHL had only six teams, which are still known as the "original six"--Boston, New York Rangers, Detroit, Toronto, Chicago, and Montreal. Then the league added six more teams, but to keep things interesting, they put them all in the same division, so an expansion team had to be in the finals. They did this for three years, and the Blues went to the finals all three years, and promptly were swept four games to none by their opponent all three times. The last game they were in for the finals was when Bobby Orr beat them in overtime in Game 4, which resulted in the most famous photo ever taken in the annals of hockey, seen above, as Orr takes a swan dive after netting the game and series winner.

The Blues haven't been back to the finals since, although they certainly have not been a bad team. There was much ballyhoo about the Red Wings reaching the playoffs twenty-five straight years a few seasons ago (they are now on the outside looking in), but the Blues did it before them, from 1990 to 2004. Incredibly, they did this without going to a final, let alone winning the Stanley Cup (the Chicago Black Hawks did even better, going 28 straight seasons without a Cup, but at least they won a little later on). They are an invisible franchise, not bad enough to warrant attention, but not good enough, either.

The Bruins, on the other hand, ares not exactly a dynasty. They ended a long drought in the 2011 finals, but have only won three Cups since the end of World War II. However, if they were to win, that would mean three championships for Boston in the last eight months, following the Red Sox and Patriots (thank god the Celtics are out of it in the NBA). Boston fans, once lovable losers, are now insufferable, and Bostonians who don't know what icing is, jumping on the bandwagon, will be intolerable if this should happen.

I'm going to try to watch these finals, rooting hard for the Blues, and perhaps I'll learn some of their names.

A note that only copy editors will appreciate: I am going with a certain trend I'm seeing on the 'Net and capitalizing all words in a title. For years I've followed AP style, which says that all verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs are initial capped, and all other types of words, mainly prepositions, should be capped only if they are four letters or longer. By capping all words, it takes a lot of the thinking out of it. It may be another example of dumbing everything down, but I think it looks a little snazzier.