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ermghoti t1_jas4hgk wrote

Reply to comment by NiceShotMan in [Sportsnet] History has been made! After beating the Buffalo Sabres tonight, the Boston Bruins have become the fastest team in NHL history to reach 100 points in a single season (61 GP). by BCLetsRide69

Cyclical. Boston also went through decades of consistent and uniform irrelevancy to comic incompetence in all four major sports. Patriots were a punchline excluding 2-3 seasons from 1960 to 2001. Bruins and Sox had indifferent management cashing in on a captive audience while putting nothing into the team for most of that time. Celtics rode the original Big Three into a retirement crater, that spilled into the tragic deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. The city was cursed for almost a full two decades

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NiceShotMan t1_jasddpt wrote

I’ll grant you the Sox, they had the curse of the bambino.

Two decades is nothing compared with anyone else though. Look at Chicago or New York: the Bulls and Hawks dropped off after their dynasties were over. Rangers haven’t won anything in like a century aside from 1994, and Knicks haven’t won since the 70s. Yankees haven’t won since 2009 despite being the richest team in baseball.

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ermghoti t1_jatcmx4 wrote

Sure, other cities have had/do have it worse. Still. Bruins had a drought from 1972 to 2011. Patriots from 1960-2001. Celtics from 1986 to 2008. The Red Sox... you know. For most of those years those teams were pretty non-competitive, the only drama was whether the Patriots would go ohfer the season. In recent years, the success of Boston teams has been disproportionately the Patriots' absurd and irreproducible success, aside from that there are six wins from 1987 to present.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jav8z63 wrote

Just because they didn’t win championships during those drought years doesn’t mean they weren’t good teams. The Red Sox had winning seasons in 44 of their last 55 seasons. Their problem was being in the same division as the Yankees or running into all-time great teams when they made the World Series. But they have had a legitimate shot at the World Series almost every year for half a century.

The Bruins have made Stanley Cup runs every few years since 1970. They just couldn’t get over the hump.

The Celtics have been great since the 1950’s. Losing Len Bias and Reggie Lewis took them 10 years to get over.

And even the Patriots competed for championships once a decade from the 1960’s to 2000 before dominating the NFL for 20 years. The late 70’s Pats we’re excellent but they got sabotaged by their coach leaving without notice. The 85 Pats lost a Super Bowl to the greatest team in NFL history. The 96 Pats lost to peak Brett Favre while their coach was setting up his next job.

New England fans have been lucky. I think the real reason is because they’re passionate but will call out ownership when things aren’t good.

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ermghoti t1_javpdg0 wrote

None of that's wrong, but it lacks context. People insert emotion into patterns. When it's believed your baseball team is cursed, and your basketball team appears to have been snuffed out by the hand of an angry god, near championship runs are viewed as proof that that they can never prevail, not that they are the cusp of ultimate success. I'm speaking as a transplant from around 1990, having family in the area all my life. The sports fans were always waiting to see how the failure was going to happen.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jaw7yxd wrote

If you moved here in 1990 then the Pats fans didn’t expect anything. That was possibly the nadir of the franchise. The Celtics fans were coming off the Bird years and were used to excellence. The Bruins were good. But they had lost to Gretzky’s Oilers in the Cup Finals 2 out of the previous 3 years.

But, yes, despite winning the East 3 out of the previous 5 years, Red Sox fans had the “what’ll go wrong this year” mindset. That ended in 2004 for most of us and 2007 for all but the most pessimistic fan.

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ermghoti t1_jawoqrw wrote

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Also, so many of those near misses were seen as attributable to misfortune (ill timed injuries, unexpected deaths, Patriots being robbed in the 1976 Divisional round, etc), or grotesque incompetence (e.g. Parcells seemingly no-showing in 1996, Grady Little). The sports city viewed itself as long-suffering.

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Roberto-Del-Camino t1_jax0ikj wrote

You nailed it. All of that changed in 2004 when the Six won the World Series. Even though the Pats had just won 2 Super Bowls and we’re on their way to a third, the cloud didn’t really lift until the Red Sox reversed the curse.

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