Boston Bruins

Boston Bruins

Boston Bruins
Conference	Eastern
Division	Northeast
Founded	1924
History	Boston Bruins 1924 - present
Arena	TD Banknorth Garden
City	Boston, Massachusetts
Local Media Affiliates	NESN WBZ (1030 AM)
Team Colors	Black, Gold, and White
Owner	Jeremy Jacobs
General Manager	Peter Chiarelli
Head Coach	Dave Lewis
Captain	Zdeno Chara
Minor League Affiliates	Providence Bruins (AHL) Long Beach Ice Dogs (ECHL)
Stanley Cups	1928-29, 1938-39, 1940-41, 1969-70, 1971-72
Conference Championships	1987-88, 1989-90
Division Championships	1927-28, 1928-29, 1929-30, 1930-31, 1932-33, 1934-35, 1937-38, 1970-71, 1971-72, 1973-74, 1975-76, 1976-77, 1977-78, 1978-79, 1982-83, 1983-84, 1989-90, 1990-91, 1992-93, 2001-02, 2003-04

The Boston Bruins are a professional ice hockey team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They play in the National Hockey League (NHL).

Franchise history

The Pre-World War II years

In 1924, at the convincing of Boston grocery tycoon Charles Adams, the National Hockey League decided to expand to the United States. As a long-time hockey hotbed, Boston was a natural choice for the NHL's first American team. Adams' first act was to hire Art Ross as general manager. Ross would stay with the team for thirty years, including four separate stints as coach.

Adams directed Ross to come up with a nickname that would portray an untamed animal displaying speed, agility, and cunning. Ross came up with "Bruins," after the brown bear. The nickname also went along with the team's colors of brown and yellow, which came from Adams' grocery chain, First National Stores. The team finished dead last in its inaugural season, but rebounded to finish just a point out of the playoffs a year later.

In only their third season, 1926-27, the team's fortune changed. Ross took advantage of the collapse of the Western Hockey League to purchase several western stars, including the team's first great star, a defenseman from Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan named Eddie Shore. The Bruins reached the Stanley Cup Final despite finishing only one game above .500, but lost to the Ottawa Senators. Boston won its first Cup two years later by defeating the New York Rangers behind stars like Shore, Harry Oliver, Dit Clapper, Dutch Gainor and superstar goaltender Tiny Thompson. That season was also the first in the legendary Boston Garden, which Adams had built after guaranteeing his backers $500,000 in gate receipts over the next five years. The season after that, 1929-30, the Bruins posted the best-ever regular season winning percentage in the NHL (an astonishing .875, winning 38 out of 44 games, and a record which still stands), but would lose to the Montreal Canadiens in the Final.

Except for a couple seasons, the Bruins would remain excellent through the 1930s with superb players such as Shore, Thompson, Clapper, Babe Siebert and Cooney Weiland, but failed to capture their second Cup until 1939, the season the team's colors changed from brown and yellow to the current black and gold. That year, in a move then considered insane by hockey pundits, Ross dealt Thompson in favor of then-untried rookie goaltender Frank Brimsek. "Mr. Zero" Brimsek would electrify the league in his rookie season, winning the Vezina and Calder Trophies and becoming the first rookie ever to make the NHL First All-Star Team, and headlined by the "Kraut Line" of hard-nosed center Milt Schmidt, elegant right winger Bobby Bauer, and tenacious left winger Woody Dumart, playmaking wizard Bill Cowley, Shore, Clapper (who reportedly was convinced that as Brimsek was a Slovenian American, he couldn't succeed)^{[citation needed]}, and unexpected hero "Sudden Death" Mel Hill (who scored three overtime goals in one playoff series), the Bruins won the Cup. Shore was dealt to the struggling New York Americans for his final NHL season the next year, but the following season, the Bruins — having led the league with a magnificent regular season that saw them lose only eight games — won their third Stanley Cup with Weiland as their new coach, behind the brilliance of Cowley, the Krauts, and Brimsek. It was their last Stanley Cup for 29 years.

World War II and the "Original Six" Era

Unfortunately, World War II decimated the Bruins worse than most teams; Brimsek and the "Krauts" all enlisted after the 1940-41 Cup win, and lost the most productive years of their careers at war. Cowley, assisted by elder statesmen Clapper and Busher Jackson, was the team's remaining star. Even though the NHL had by 1943 pared down to the six teams that would in the modern era be — erroneously — called the "Original Six", talent was depleted enough that freak seasons could predominate, as in 1944, when Bruin Herb Cain would set the then-NHL record for points in a season with 82. But the Bruins didn't make the playoffs that season, and Cain would be out of the NHL two years later.

The stars would return for 1945-46, and Clapper led the team all the way back to the Final as player-coach. He retired as a player after the next season, becoming the first player in history to play twenty NHL seasons, but stayed behind the bench for two more years. Unfortunately, Brimsek was not as good as he was pre-War, and after 1946 the Bruins lost in the first playoff round three straight years, resulting in Clapper's resignation. Brimsek was traded to the last-place Chicago Black Hawks in 1949, citing a wish to help his brother with a business he was starting, and an ominous bit of misfortune came with the banning of young star Don Gallinger for life on suspicion of gambling. The only remaining quality young player who stayed with the team for any length was forward Johnny Peirson, who would later be the team's television color commentator in the 1970s.

The 1950s began with Charles Adams' son Weston (who had been team president since 1936), facing financial trouble. He was forced to accept a buyout offer from Walter A. Brown, the owner of the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics and the Garden, in 1951. Although there were some flashes of success (such as making the Stanley Cup Final in 1953, 1957, and 1958, only to lose to the Montreal Canadiens each time), the Bruins mustered only four winning seasons between 1947 and 1967. They missed the playoffs eight straight years between 1960 and 1967, but fan support remained high — the Bruins consistently outdrew the Celtics even though they won eight straight basketball world championships.

During this period, the farm system of the Bruins was not as expansive or well-developed as most of the other five teams. The Bruins sought players not protected by the other teams and in 1958 signed Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the NHL. In like fashion, the team signed Tommy Williams from the 1960 Olympic-gold medal winning American national men's hockey team — at the time the only American player in the NHL — in 1962. Boston fans were desperate to have something to take their minds off a very long Stanley Cup drought. The "Uke Line" — named for the Ukrainian heritage of Johnny Bucyk and Vic Stasiuk (their linemate, Bronco Horvath, was largely Hungarian), came to Boston and enjoyed four productive offensive seasons even as the Bruins were struggling overall.

Expansion and the Big, Bad Bruins

Weston Adams repurchased the Bruins in 1964 after Brown's death and set about rebuilding the team. Adams drafted a defenseman from Parry Sound, Ontario named Bobby Orr, who entered the league in 1966 and would become, in the eyes of many, the greatest player of all time. He was announced that season's winner of the Calder Memorial Trophy for Rookie of the Year and named to the Second NHL All-Star Team. When asked about Orr's NHL debut game, October 19, 1966, against the Detroit Red Wings, then-Bruins coach Harry Sinden recalled:

"Our fans had heard about this kid for a few years now. There was a lot of pressure on him, but he met all the expectations. He was a star from the moment they played the national anthem in the opening game of the season."

^{[citation needed]}

The Bruins then obtained young forwards Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, and Fred Stanfield from Chicago in one of the most one-sided deals in history. Hodge and Stanfield became key elements in the Bruins' powerhouse, and Esposito, who centered a line with Hodge and Wayne Cashman, would blossom into the league's top goal-scorer, becoming the first NHL player to break the 100-point mark and setting many goal- and point-scoring records. Esposito remains one of four players to win the Art Ross Trophy four consecutive seasons (the other three are Jaromir Jagr, Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe). With other stars like forwards Bucyk, John McKenzie, Derek Sanderson and Hodge, steady defenders like Dallas Smith and goaltender Gerry Cheevers, the "Big, Bad Bruins" became one of the league's top teams from the late 1960s through the 1970s, combining a rugged, barroom style of play with one of the greatest offensive juggernauts the NHL had ever seen.

In 1970, a 29-year Stanley Cup drought came to an end in Boston, as the Bruins smashed the St. Louis Blues in four games in the Final. Orr scored the game-winning goal in overtime to clinch the Cup. The same season was Orr's epiphany — the third of eight consecutive years he won the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the top defenseman in the NHL — and he won the Art Ross Trophy, the Conn Smythe Trophy, and the Hart Memorial Trophy, the only player to win those four awards all in the same season. The famous image of Orr being tripped up by Blue Noel Picard and flying through the air after scoring "The Goal", his arms raised in victory, remains perhaps the best-known photograph in professional hockey to this day. Sanderson, who fed Orr the puck that day, commented, "Bobby was the one guy who could finish a play like that."^{[citation needed]}

1971 was, in retrospect, the high watermark of the Seventies for Boston. While Sinden temporarily retired from hockey to enter business (he was replaced by ex-Bruin and Canadien defenceman Tom Johnson) the Bruins' dominance was nothing less than cataclysmic, shattering dozens of offensive scoring records. They had seven of the league's top ten scorers — a feat not achieved before or since — set the record for wins in a season, and in a league that had never seen a 100-point scorer before 1969 (Esposito had 126), the Bruins had four that year. All four (Orr, Esposito, Bucyk and Hodge) were named First Team All-Stars, a feat matched in the expansion era only by the 1976-77 Canadiens. Boston looked poised to repeat as Cup champions, but ran into a roadblock in the playoffs. Up 5-1 at one point in game two of the quarterfinals against the Canadiens (and rookie goaltender Ken Dryden), the Bruins squandered the lead to lose 7-5. The Bruins never recovered and lost the series in seven games.

While the Bruins were not quite as dominant the next season (although only three points behind the 1971 pace), Esposito and Orr were once again one-two in the scoring standings (followed by Bucyk in ninth place) and they returned to glory in the playoffs, defeating a strong challenge from the New York Rangers in six games in the Cup Final behind Orr's wizardry. The 1972 Cup win is Boston's most recent to date. Rangers blueliner Brad Park, who came runner-up to Orr's five-year (then) monopoly, said, "Bobby Orr was — didn't make — the difference."

Boston continued to dominate through the 1970s (despite losing Cheevers, McKenzie, Sanderson, and other stars to the renegade World Hockey Association), only to come up short in the playoffs. Although they had three 100-point scorers on the team (Esposito, Orr, and Hodge), they lost the 1974 Final to the rough Philadelphia Flyers.

The flamboyant Don Cherry stepped behind the bench as the new coach in 1974-75. The Bruins stocked themselves with enforcers and grinders, and remained a threat under Cherry's reign, the so-called "Lunch Pail A.C.," behind players such as slick Gregg Sheppard, rugged Terry O'Reilly and Stan Jonathan, and high-scoring Peter McNab.

Orr, however, did not. He left the Bruins for the Hawks in 1976, and retired after many knee operations in 1979. The Bruins excelled without him, picking up Brad Park from the Rangers (along with Jean Ratelle and Joe Zanussi) in a blockbuster trade for Esposito and Carol Vadnais as they made the semifinals again, losing to the Flyers.

Cheevers returned from the WHA in 1976, and the Bruins got past the Flyers in the semifinals, but lost to the Canadiens in the Final for the Cup. The story would repeat itself in 1978 as the Bruins made the Final once more, but lost to a Canadiens team that had recorded the best regular season in modern history, after which Johnny Bucyk retired, holding virtually every Bruins' career longevity and scoring mark to that time.

The 1979 semifinal series against the Habs proved to be Cherry's undoing. In the deciding seventh game, the Bruins, up by a goal, were called for having too many men on the ice in the late stages of the third period. Montreal tied the game on the ensuing power play and won in overtime. Never popular with Harry Sinden, by then the Bruins' general manager, Cherry left the team in the off-season for the Colorado Rockies.

In an infamous incident at Madison Square Garden, on December 26, 1979, a New York Rangers fan stole Stan Jonathan's stick, hitting him with it during a post-game scrum. When other fans got involved, Terry O'Reilly charged into the stands followed by his teammates. The game's TV commentator remarked that 'they're going to pull that guy apart'. O'Reilly, a future team captain, received an eight-game suspension for the brawl. [6]

The Eighties and Nineties

Coupled with front-office dislike of Cherry's outspoken ways, 1979 saw new head coach Fred Creighton, a newly-retired Cheevers the following year, and the coming of Ray Bourque. The defenseman — one of the true greats in NHL history — was an icon for the team for over two decades.

The Bruins made the playoffs every year through the 1980s behind stars such as Park, Bourque, and Rick Middleton — and had the league's best record in 1983 behind a Vezina Trophy-winning season from ex-Flyer goaltender Pete Peeters — but usually did not get very far in the playoffs.

By the late 1980s, Boston forced back. Bourque, the indomitable Cam Neely, Keith Crowder and Bob Sweeney would lead the Bruins to another Finals appearance in 1988 against the Edmonton Oilers. The Bruins lost in a four-game sweep, but created a memorable moment in the would-be fourth game when in the second period with the game tied 3-3, a blown fuse put the lights out at the Boston Garden. The rest of the game was cancelled and the series shifted to Edmonton. The Oilers completed the sweep, 6-3, back at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, in what was originally scheduled in game five.

Boston returned to the Stanley Cup Final in 1990 (with Neely, Bourque, Craig Janney, Bobby Carpenter and rookie Don Sweeney, and former Oiler goalie Andy Moog and Rejean Lemelin splitting goaltending duties), but would again lose to the Oilers, this time in five games.

In 1988, 1990-92, and 1994, they defeated their Original Six arch-nemesis in the playoffs, the Montreal Canadiens, getting some revenge for a rivalry which had up to then been lopsided in the Canadiens' favor in playoff action. In 1991 and 1992, they suffered two consecutive Conference Final losses to the eventual Cup champion, the Mario Lemieux-led Pittsburgh Penguins.

The 1993 season and beyond would not be kind to the Bruins. Despite picking up more talent like Adam Oates, Rick Tocchet, and Jozef Stumpel, they have not since gotten past the second round of the playoffs. The 1993 season ended on a sour note for several reasons. Despite finishing with the second-best regular season record after Pittsburgh, Boston was swept in the first-round in a shocking upset by the Buffalo Sabres. During the postseason awards ceremony, Bruin players finished as runner-up on many of the honors (Bourque for the Norris, Oates for the Art Ross and Lady Byng Trophy, Joe Juneau [who had broken the NHL record for assists in a season by a left-winger, a mark he still holds] for the Calder Trophy, Dave Poulin for the Frank J. Selke Trophy, Moog for the William M. Jennings Trophy, and Brian Sutter for the Jack Adams Award), although Bourque made the NHL All-Star First Team and Juneau the NHL All-Rookie Team.

In 1997, Boston missed the playoffs for the first time in thirty years, having set the North American major professional record for most consecutive seasons in the playoffs.

The late 1990s also saw the Bruins move from the storied Boston Garden, to their new home, the FleetCenter, now known as the TD Banknorth Garden.

Their bitterest archrivals have historically been the Montreal Canadiens, who the Bruins have played a record 30 times in the playoffs, but Montreal's lack of success in recent years has helped to mute the century-old rivalry.

The 21st century

Despite a fifteen-point improvement from the previous season, the Bruins missed the playoffs in 2000-01. Leading scorer Jason Allison led the Bruins.

The following season, 2001-02, saw the Bruins with a thirteen-point improvement, winning their first Northeast Division title since 1993 under a core built around Joe Thornton, Sergei Samsonov, Brian Rolston, Bill Guerin, and the newly acquired Glen Murray. Their regular season success didn't translate to the postseason, though, as they bowed out in six games to the underdog eighth-place Canadiens in the first round.

The 2002-03 season found the Bruins platooning their goaltending staff between Steve Shields and John Grahame for most of the season. A mid-season trade, however, brought in veteran Jeff Hackett. The Bruins managed to finish seventh in the East, but lost to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion New Jersey Devils in five games.

In 2003-04, the Bruins began the season with ex-Toronto Maple Leaf goalie Felix Potvin between the pipes. Later in the season, the Bruins put rookie Andrew Raycroft into the starting role. Raycroft eventually won the Calder Award that season. The Bruins went on to win another division title and appeared destined to get out of the first round for the first time in five years with a 3-1 series lead on the rival Canadiens. The Canadiens rallied back, however, to win three straight games, upsetting the Bruins.

The 2004-05 NHL season was wiped out by a lockout, and the Bruins had a lot of space within the new salary cap implemented for 2005-06. Bruins management eschewed younger free agents in favor of older veterans such as Alexei Zhamnov and Brian Leetch. The newcomers were oft-injured, and by the end of November, the Bruins team traded their captain and franchise player, Joe Thornton trade (who would go on to win the Art Ross and Hart Trophies). In exchange, the Bruins received Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau from the San Jose Sharks.

After losing ten of eleven games before the trade (while the Sharks won Thornton's first seven games in San Jose), the Bruins came back with a 3-0 victory over the league-leading Ottawa Senators, as rookie goaltender Hannu Toivonen earned his first career NHL shutout victory. When Toivonen went down (for the rest of the season) with an injury in January, journeyman goalie Tim Thomas started sixteen straight games and brought the Bruins back into the playoff hunt. Two points out of eighth place at the Winter Olympic break, the Bruins fired general manager Mike O'Connell in March and the Bruins missed the playoffs for the first time in five years. They finished thirteenth in the Eastern Conference and earned the fifth pick in the NHL Draft Lottery, which they used to draft U.S. college player Phil Kessel, who dropped out of college early to sign with the team on August 17, 2006.

Peter Chiarelli was hired as the new GM of the team. Head coach Mike Sullivan was fired and Dave Lewis, former coach of the Detroit Red Wings, was hired to replace him while Marc Habscheid and Doug Houda were named associate coaches. The Bruins then made headlines on the first day of free-agent signing when they inked Zdeno Chara, one of the most coveted defensemen in the NHL and a former NHL All-Star, from the Senators, and Marc Savard, who finished just three points short of a 100-point season in '05-'06 with the Atlanta Thrashers, to long-term deals. Bergeron was re-signed by the Bruins on August 22, 2006 to a multi-year contract, keeping the developing player on the team for some years to come.

Recently, amidst an extremely disappointing season that resulted in the team finishing in last place in the division, the Bruins traded Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau to the Calgary Flames for Andrew Ference and forward Chuck Kobasew.

One of the most potentially important acquisitions the Bruins made for their future, in the 2007 off-season, was the signing, on May 5, 2007, of Finnish professional goaltender Tuukka Rask, said to be one of the most capable goaltending prospects in all of professional hockey worldwide at the time. Rask had previously been the property of the Toronto Maple Leafs, but his NHL rights were acquired by the Bruins as a result of the deal that sent Andrew Raycroft to the Maple Leafs on June 24, 2006.

"Unofficial" Theme songs

When Boston television station WSBK began showing Bruins games on television in 1967, the television station's managers wanted to come up with a suitable piece of music to air for the introduction of each Bruins game. Because the Boston Ballet's annual Christmas performance of The Nutcracker had become closely identified with Boston, The Ventures' instrumental rock version of the Nutcracker's overture, known as "Nutty", was selected as the opening piece of music for Bruins telecasts. The song "Nutty" has been identified with the Bruins ever since, even though NESN, who now airs almost all of the Bruins' regular season and playoff games, has used a piece of original instrumental rock music for Bruins telecasts, that it also uses with all its Boston Red Sox televised games, for the 21st century. The song "Nutty" is still sometimes played at the TD Banknorth Garden during Bruins games, especially during the intermission times between periods-so it has not been forgotten-most prominently by Bruins fans who remember hearing it on the WSBK television broadcasts of games, when Bobby Orr was playing for the team some thirty-five years previously. "Nutty" has also been covered by popular Boston irish rock band, Dropkick Murphys. Dropkick Murphys have also written a song about the Bruins, called "Time To Go", and have performed at Bruins games several times.

On ice, the song Paree has been played as an organ instrumental for decades, typically as the players enter the arena just before the start of each period. It was introduced by John Kiley, the organist for the Bruins, the Boston Red Sox and the Boston Celtics from the 1950s through the 1980s, and is still played during Bruins' games.

Both "Nutty" and "Paree" are also often played live at the Dunkin' Donuts Center during the games of Boston's American Hockey League affiliate, the Providence Bruins, by organist Ben Schwartz. ^[1]

Season-by-season record

This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Bruins. For the full season-by-season history, see Boston Bruins seasons

Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, OTL = Overtime Losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, PIM = Penalties in minutes

Records as of April 9, 2007. ^[2]

Season	GP	W	L	T	OTL	Pts	GF	GA	PIM	Finish	Playoffs
2001-02	82	43	24	6	9	101	236	201	1454	1st, Northeast	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 2-4 (Canadiens)
2002-03	82	36	31	11	4	87	245	237	1370	3rd, Northeast	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 1-4 (Devils)
2003-04	82	41	19	15	7	104	209	188	1208	1st, Northeast	Lost in Conference Quarterfinals, 3-4 (Canadiens)
2004-05	Season cancelled due to 2004-05 NHL Lockout
2005-061	82	29	37	—	16	74	230	266	1162	5th, Northeast	Did not qualify
2006-07	82	35	41	—	6	76	219	289	1256	5th, Northeast	Did not qualify
Totals	5500	2628	2075	791	56	6103	17902	16444	76234	—	—

¹ As of the 2005-06 NHL season, all games will have a winner; the OTL column includes SOL (Shootout losses).

Current roster

As of May 16, 2007 ^{[3] [4] [5]}

Goaltenders
#		Player	Catches	Acquired	Place of Birth
30		Tim Thomas	L	2002	Flint, Michigan
31		Joey MacDonald	L	2007	Pictou, Nova Scotia

Defencemen
#		Player	Shoots	Acquired	Place of Birth
6		Dennis Wideman	R	2007	Kitchener, Ontario
21		Andrew Ference	L	2007	Edmonton, Alberta
25		Jason York	R	2006	Nepean, Ontario
33		Zdeno Chara - C	L	2006	Trencin, Czechoslovakia
38		Bobby Allen	L	2006	Braintree, Massachusetts
41		Andrew Alberts	L	2001	Minneapolis, Minnesota
44		Aaron Ward	R	2007	Windsor, Ontario

Forwards
#		Player	Position	Shoots	Acquired	Place of Birth
10		Brandon Bochenski	RW	R	2007	Blaine, Minnesota
11		P.J. Axelsson	LW	L	1995	Kungälv, Sweden
12		Chuck Kobasew	RW	R	2007	Osoyoos, British Columbia
13		Stanislav Chistov	RW	R	2006	Chelyabinsk, U.S.S.R.
16		Marco Sturm	LW	L	2005	Dingolfing, West Germany
17		Petr Tenkrat	RW	R	2006	Kladno, Czechoslovakia
18		Mark Mowers	RW	R	2006	Decatur, Georgia
22		Shean Donovan	RW	R	2006	Timmins, Ontario
27		Glen Murray - A	RW	R	2001	Halifax, Nova Scotia
37		Patrice Bergeron - A	C	R	2003	L'Ancienne-Lorette, Quebec
53		Jeremy Reich	C	L	2005	Craik, Saskatchewan
81		Phil Kessel	C	R	2006	Madison, Wisconsin
91		Marc Savard	C	L	2006	Ottawa, Ontario

Notable players

Team captains

Honored Members

Hall of Famers

Players

Builders

• Charles Adams, President, 1924-47, inducted 1960
• Weston Adams, Sr., Director; President, 1936-51, inducted 1972
• Walter Brown, President, 1951-64, inducted 1962
• Frank Patrick, Head coach, 1934-36, inducted 1958
• Art Ross, Head coach; General Manager, 1924-54, inducted 1945
• Harry Sinden, Head coach; General Manager; President; Senior Advisor, 1966-present, inducted 1983

Retired numbers

• 2 Eddie Shore, D, 1926-40, number retired January 1, 1947
• 3 Lionel Hitchman, D, 1925-34, number retired February 22, 1934, first professional hockey player to have number retired
• 4 Bobby Orr, D, 1966-76, number retired January 9, 1979
• 5 Aubrey "Dit" Clapper, D, 1927-47, number retired February 12, 1947
• 7 Phil Esposito, C, 1967-75, number retired December 3, 1987
• 8 Cam Neely, RW, 1986-96, number retired January 12, 2004
• 9 Johnny Bucyk, LW, 1955-78, number retired March 13, 1980
• 15 Milt Schmidt, LW, 1936-55, number retired March 13, 1980
• 24 Terry O'Reilly, RW, 1972-85, number retired October 24, 2002
• 77 Ray Bourque, D, 1979-2000, number retired October 4, 2001
• 99 Wayne Gretzky, number retired league-wide February 6, 2000

First-round draft picks