Mike Bongiorno has attended numerous sporting events of various types. These range from the biggest major events including Super Bowls, the World Series, and Final Fours, all the way down to minor league and high school games.
Once in a while he documents his experiences at his favorite events. We are sometimes lucky enough to publish these here at ChampionshipCup.com!
Stanley Cup Final, Game 6, 2011
A quick recap of Monday night, now that the dust is starting to settle.
The firm has a box, not the same one you guys remember, but nonetheless, a box. In the early rounds the tickets weren't in such high demand. But I knew the Stanley Cup Final would be tough. I really thought we were going to win this one, but that we wouldn't sweep, so I was thinking there would be a game 6. Put in my request early, invited an important client, only asked for 2 tickets, and prayed. They allocated me the 2 tickets and I was totally jacked. Needless to say, the client was psyched too. Then of course the series went 2-2 and I thought if we can somehow pull off Game 5 I will actually get to see the B's win the cup at home, which would leave only the Red Sox as a local team that I have yet to see win it all (I feel cheated about 2004 since I attended 9 straight post season games, home and road, but didn't actually make it to St. Louis ….). Anyway, after the Saturday night loss I was devastated. I woke up Sunday morning angry and it took me about 3 minutes to remember why.
Complicating matters was a bunch of insanity associated with soccer for the 9 year old boys of Winchester. Long story short Michael and every other boy his age who plays had to go to a huge tryout on Monday night at a local field from 630 to 8, and I promised him I would be there a long time ago and wasn't going to blow it off for anything, even this. So I sent my client his ticket and told him I would meet him there. The tryout actually did go until 8 pm (it was chaos with 65 kids and 4 evaluators etc) and my friends were all yelling at me, some actually didn't believe I was going I had to show them the ticket. Anyway, as you know, I made it. Jude and Michael jumped in the car, Jude drove, and I sat there trying to decide whether to listen to the game or not on the way in as we pulled out of the parking lot at 8:02. We zipped on and off 93, took the Leverett Connector and went around the side of the Garden. At the last second I realized it would be dumb to go all the way to Causeway Street so I told Jude to head as if we were going to park in the Garden garage. I jumped out of the car about 40 feet from the side door of the building and got on the escalator. The most amazing thing of course was this: It took 10 minutes, literally, to get there, but cooler than that was that it isn't enough to say that there was no traffic. There are plenty of times when I can get in this fast with some luck. It is that there were NO CARS ON THE ROAD. Literally everyone was inside somewhere watching the game. It could have been 3 am and there would have been more cars out. There were almost none on 93, and none whatsoever in the streets of Winchester, Medford, or Boston. Like you had to look around to find another car somewhere nearby. Insane.
Still I thought I would miss some of the game as it takes a few minutes to get up to the box. There was no one on the concourse other than security and ushers and vendors. No one. Everyone was in their seats. Well standing inside at that their seats. I heard thunderous applause, and thought maybe we had just scored a goal. They faintly in the background I could hear Rene starting our National Anthem. I realized he had just finished the Canadian one. I couldn't believe I made it well before the puck dropped. I was out of my mind.
I got to the box and one guy there was a guy I am friendly with but hadn't seen in awhile .. he is a huge huge hockey fan, and he FLEW IN FROM MINNESOTA to go to the game because he just loves hockey that much. During the barrage of early goals we were all like little kids, screaming and running around the box high fiving everyone in existence. It was just awesome. The game flew by, it was like one big blur, even the second period when seemingly nothing happened, and you would think we would be on edge worrying about a cheap goal, it was just one big loud party in there.
After Game 6, I hung out waiting for the train for about 40 minutes. I went to the pro shop and there were no fewer than 4 other Winchester guys in there, doing what I was doing, killing time waiting for the last train, and buying stuff for our kids. They all love the Bruins. Of course none of us could speak because we had no voices left.
Seeing a bunch of Winchester dads buying up stuff was just hilarious. In typical Garden style, even though the last set of trains didn't leave until 1210 am and North Station was packed, they closed the doors to the pro shop at 1140 and starting turning people away. The line was 20 deep and everyone was spending 50-110 bucks. Just classic, some things never change.
The train ride home was like one big party. I almost stayed on it was so much fun. The yelling and screaming on the train ride home was as loud as in the Garden. Can't image what it would have been like if we had closed them out that night.
Get this: as luck would have it, Blades (the Bruins' mascot) was visiting Michael's school yesterday. During the assembly, the school picked one kid from each grade to step up and answer a trivia question. Because Michael was sporting a Blades foam head (he wanted his hair dyed yellow for the day but we didn't have any) and a Stanley Cup finals tee shirt, he got picked. He nailed the question (name a Bruins Assistant Captain) and got a ton of cool souvenirs. How awesome is that?
