Bruins Now the Hot Ticket? Good Luck With That

It was the perfect game to break the bad news. The Bruins looked like a minor league team that had fallen out of contention, lost its stars to the big leagues, and had decided to coast for the rest of the season. Not a minute of solid play.

When Dennis Wideman wasn't busy chipping the puck from the corner into a four-square box of Phoenix power play attackers, he was standing completely still on the ice. His linemate Zdeno Chara, usually a six-foot-eleven hulk of defensive prowess, played like a petulant bully, throwing punches when he should have been making stick checks. Marc Savard looked like a stoned Kewpie doll. Andrew Ference couldn't keep the puck onside, even during a power play. The team lost, 2-1, to the Phoenix Coyotes.

That's right. The Phoenix Coyotes. A team in 14th place in the Western Conference. A team on the brink of financial collapse. A team whose coach, Wayne Gretzy, might be the only man on the roster that any hockey fan would recognize on the street.

And this was the game where we learned that the 12-game package, which we bought this year, will be no more. The Bruins will only be offering season and single-game tickets next year, joining the ranks of other New England sports teams whose tickets are out of the reach of the average fan: the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics—you know, the teams that have won championships since 1972.

According to Bruins representatives, the change comes due to a supply problem. Too many fans, or, just as likely, StubHub scalpers prospectors, have been snatching up the season tickets, eager to see the Bruins in postseason action this year, the first in recent memory when they have been good. Six months of good hockey, and the front-runners have priced out the fans. Good luck with that.

The Bruins we saw last night were a team on the brink of collapse, a team that has no business on the ice. A pathetic waste of cash. And between the guileless Bruins ticket representatives, who were touting the increased ticket prices and package cut-backs as a sign of success—mid-recession, mind you—and the usual phalanx of homophobic and racist slurs that await anybody leaving a Bruins game, we decided enough is enough. There's not enough respect in the building—from the team, from the front office, from the fans—to keep our loyalty. (For this week, anyway.)

A single act of courtesy is all we wanted, and we'll admit that we finally got one. A man pissing on the northbound Orange Line platform in North Station managed to keep his urine within a single plastic bottle, which he thoughtfully threw in the trash. Good looking out there.