Bruins Trivia
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This Bruins trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers the whole century of the Boston Bruins, from the grocery-store colors of 1924 and the first NHL game ever played in the United States to the record-shattering 65-win team of 2022-23. Along the way it stops at Eddie Shore and the Ace Bailey affair, the Kraut Line, Willie O'Ree's barrier-breaking debut, Bobby Orr's flight through the air, Phil Esposito's 76 goals, the Bourque number swap and the 2011 Cup in Vancouver. There is plenty of Garden lore too: the undersized ice, the 1988 blackout, Gerry Cheevers' stitched mask, the too-many-men penalty of 1979, the shoe incident at Madison Square Garden and the mascot named by a nine-year-old. Roughly a third of the questions are warm-ups any fan will get; the rest climb toward the kind of detail only a lifelong Black-and-Gold obsessive would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Founded in 1924, the Bruins hold which distinction among today's NHL franchises?
Oldest American team
Oldest American team. The Bruins won the first NHL game played on American soil, 2-1 on December 1, 1924, then lost 24 of their remaining 29 games and finished last.
Q 02Which Boston businessman founded the Bruins in 1924 and later had an NHL division named after him?
Charles Adams
Charles Adams also helped pay for Boston Garden, and his son and grandson ran the club after him. The Adams Division, the Bruins' home from 1974 to 1993, carried the family name.
Q 03The Bruins' original brown-and-yellow uniform colors were borrowed from what?
First National Stores grocery chain
First National Stores grocery chain. The club's founder was so fond of brown that a 1924 Boston Globe story noted his 50 stores, four racehorses, Guernsey cows and even his hens all came in the same shade.
Q 04Which former player served as the Bruins' first general manager, a post he held 30 years?
Art Ross
Art Ross ran the Bruins until 1954 and reshaped the game's hardware as well: the NHL adopted his designs for both the puck and the goal net, and its scoring trophy has carried his name since the late 1940s.
Q 05In Game 7 of a 2013 playoff series, the Bruins wiped out a 4-1 third-period deficit to stun which team in overtime?
Toronto Maple Leafs
Toronto Maple Leafs. Boston scored twice in the final 82 seconds with its goalie pulled, then won 5-4 in overtime, the first Game 7 win by a team that trailed by three goals in the third period.
Q 06The Bruins' 25-season 'Original Six' era ended in 1967 with what?
Expansion to twelve teams
Expansion to twelve teams. The 'Original Six' label is a misnomer, since the league began in 1917 without four of them, and the Bruins did not arrive until its eighth season.
Q 07The Bruins won their first Stanley Cup in 1929, in the first final between two American teams, by beating whom?
New York Rangers
New York Rangers. The defending champions lost both games of a best-of-three as Boston won all five of its playoff games, only four years after finishing last in its first season.
Q 08Bruin Gregory Campbell finished a 2013 playoff penalty kill after a slap shot left him with what injury?
A broken leg
A broken leg. The shot snapped his right fibula, yet he got back up and stayed out for more than a minute of a Pittsburgh power play, helping kill the penalty in a game Boston won in double overtime.
Q 09Which bruising Bruins defenceman won four Hart Trophies in the 1930s and ended Ace Bailey's career with one check?
Eddie Shore
Eddie Shore nearly lost an ear in a clash with a new teammate, found a doctor willing to sew it back on, and refused anesthetic while it was done. He and Bailey shook hands before a benefit game in 1934.
Q 10How did the rival Canadiens salute the war-bound Kraut Line in 1942?
Carried them off
Carried them off the ice. Boston had just won 8-1, yet Montreal's players hoisted the three linemates onto their shoulders as the Boston Garden crowd roared, a send-off before the trio joined the air force.
Q 11What NHL first did the Kraut Line achieve in 1939-40?
Finished first, second and third in league scoring
Finished first, second and third in league scoring. The three were boyhood friends from the German community of Kitchener, Ontario, hence the name; Montreal's Punch Line and Detroit's Production Line later matched the sweep.
Q 12Which Kraut Line centre later coached the Bruins and, as GM, built the 1970 and 1972 champions?
Milt Schmidt
Milt Schmidt came back from wartime air force service to win the 1951 Hart Trophy as league MVP. No one has won more Stanley Cups with Boston: two as a player and two as general manager.
Q 13Which rookie goaltender, 'Mr. Zero', won both the Calder and Vezina for the 1938-39 champion Bruins?
Q 21What did Ray Bourque do as Phil Esposito's number was retired in 1987?
Peeled off his No. 7 jersey to reveal a No. 77
Peeled off his No. 7 jersey to reveal a No. 77. The switch had been kept from Esposito, who was handed the old sweater on the spot, and Bourque wore 77 for the rest of his career.
Q 22In March 2000, after 21 Boston seasons, Ray Bourque was traded to which team, where he won a Cup?
Colorado Avalanche
Colorado Avalanche. He won the Cup in the last game of his career, a Game 7 in 2001, and captain Joe Sakic broke with custom by handing him the trophy first; days later he showed it to thousands at a rally in Boston.
Q 23Which Bruins captain and former first overall pick was traded to San Jose in 2005, then named league MVP that season?
Frank Brimsek
Frank Brimsek replaced Tiny Thompson, the long-established star Boston had just sold to Detroit, and won over a stunned home crowd with six shutouts almost at once, which is how he became 'Mr. Zero'.
Q 14Which Bruins winger became the NHL's first Black player in a January 1958 game at the Montreal Forum?
Willie O'Ree
Willie O'Ree played with a secret: a puck had left him almost blind in his right eye two years earlier, and he told no one because the league barred players who could not see out of both eyes.
Q 15Bobby Orr's famous overtime goal in 1970 completed a four-game sweep of which team?
St. Louis Blues
The St. Louis Blues were swept for Boston's first Cup in 29 years; the same two teams met again in the 2019 Final with the opposite result.
Q 16Who set up Bobby Orr's Cup-winning goal in 1970 with a give-and-go pass from behind the net?
Derek Sanderson
Derek Sanderson fed Orr from behind the net; the two remained close for life, and Orr later paid for his friend's rehab.
Q 17Bobby Orr remains the only defenceman ever to do what?
Win the NHL scoring title
Win the NHL scoring title. He did it twice with his end-to-end rushes, but one knee operation followed another, and his ruined knees ended his career at just 30.
Q 18The bronze Bobby Orr statue outside TD Garden, unveiled in 2010, depicts him doing what?
Airborne just after scoring in 1970
Airborne just after scoring in 1970. Opposing defenceman Noel Picard tripped him as the Cup-winning shot went in, and Orr has said he saw it cross the line and jumped, so he took off flat out.
Q 19In 1967 the Bruins got Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield from which team?
Chicago Black Hawks
The Chicago Black Hawks took Pit Martin, Gilles Marotte and Jack Norris in the May 1967 deal; the following spring the Bruins made the playoffs for the first of 29 straight seasons.
Q 20Bumper stickers read 'Jesus saves', adding that Phil Esposito does what?
Scores on the rebound
Scores on the rebound. The stickers answered critics who called him a garbage collector for parking himself in front of the net; his 76 goals in 1970-71 stood as the NHL record until Wayne Gretzky passed it in 1982.
Joe Thornton
Joe Thornton went west for three players that November and ended the season with the Hart Trophy, while Boston missed the playoffs and fired the general manager who traded him.
Q 24Which right winger, the archetypal NHL power forward, came from Vancouver for Barry Pederson in 1986?
Cam Neely
Cam Neely arrived on his 21st birthday. After thigh and knee injuries limited him to 22 games over two seasons, he came back in 1993-94 to score 50 goals in just 44 games, and he became club president in 2010.
Q 25Which team beat the Bruins in both the 1988 and 1990 Stanley Cup Finals?
Edmonton Oilers
The Edmonton Oilers swept Boston in 1988 behind playoff MVP Wayne Gretzky, then won again in five games in 1990 even though they had traded him away in between.
Q 26What suspended Game 4 of the 1988 Final at Boston Garden with the score tied 3-3?
A power failure
A power failure hit late in the second period of a game already halted several times by fog in the steamy old building. The crowd was sent home, the game was never finished, and the visitors completed their sweep at home two days later.
Q 27Old Boston Garden gave the bruising Bruins a home edge because its rink was what?
Shorter and narrower than standard
Shorter and narrower than standard. At 191 by 83 feet it gave up nine feet of length and two of width, so visitors had less room to skate and, as one put it, had to change their game plan for the bumping and grinding.
Q 28Which athlete's name did the Bruins' arena reject after a 2005 eBay naming auction?
Derek Jeter
Derek Jeter Center. A Yankees fan won the day as a joke, but the arena ruled his choice 'obscene and vulgar'; his Red Sox-fan college roommate then raised the bid to $8,600, for the 86-year curse, and honoured the Jimmy Fund instead.
Q 29The Bruins' main crest nods to which nickname for Boston?
The Hub
The Hub goes back to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote that Boston's State House was the hub of the solar system. The spoked wheel crest arrived in 1948 for the club's 25th anniversary and is its longest-running emblem.
Q 30The Bruins' gold third jersey of 1995 to 2006 was nicknamed for its gentle-looking logo's likeness to which character?
Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh. The sad-eyed bear earned the gold sweater the name Pooh Bear jersey; it was dropped after 2006, yet the club revived the look in white as a 2022 throwback.