Slava Fetisov, breaking out from the crowd

Oh, the dumb little rituals I hang onto.

The opposite of a completist or an archivist, when it comes to hockey cards, I cling to the nonsensical ping of nostalgia. I don’t need them to be in the best condition and I’m not looking for rare inserts. I’m just looking for that quick fix of players I liked, or teams I followed, occasionally in search of the buzz I’d feel after bringing home a pack of cards from the grocery store.

To that end, I’ve had this pack , one of many I picked up a few months ago, sitting on my desk for a few days, waiting for the appropriate moment to spill its guts and offer up some kind of inspiration. Today, that moment finally arrived where I got to open up its sealed wax edges and investigate who was inside.

And on cue, out came Slava Fetisov, fresh off his first season in the NHL. He’ll do.

Patrice Bergeron’s defining moment

Without about a month to go before the 2023-24 NHL season begins, and a few days before training camp begins properly, the Boston Bruins are hosting captains’ practices over at Warrior Ice Arena.

Notably, the Bruins don’t officially have a captain at the moment. Patrice Bergeron called it a career after Boston’s abbreviated stay in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, bringing an end to an incredible and unique career, leaving a void in Boston and for certain dedicated hockey viewers.

“He’s given everything he possible could to the game,” Brad Marchand told WBZ Boston this summer. “When he’s in it he’s so dedicated and plays with so much pride. Every day he wants to be his best. It’s taken a toll on his body so I’m excited for him and his next chapter. I’m going to miss him, obviously.”

This is something that’ll be a difficult adjustment for the team, for sure. And selfishly, for me. Because beyond everything he brought to the score sheet and to the dressing room, he was, quite simply, my favorite player to watch. And that got me thinking about my favorite moments of his career.

All the magic and flash of Sergei Samsonov

Well. So all that happened. The Bruins’ season collapsed, financial ruin awaits in the years to come, an era is doomed to end in disappointment, on and on and on. It’s fun.

Anyway, after a few weeks away from anything hockey, I’ve been amusing myself again with hockey cards — finding cheap lots of old cards on ebay, reorganizing the ones I have for the 4,000th time, normal behavior for an adult in his forties who’s still upset that the team he likes didn’t do well. But it does help pass the time, and it allows me to dip back into that realm of nostalgia and the era when I didn’t necessarily expect the Bruins to win it all. I just wanted to watch some good, fun hockey.

And one guy who provided that in spades was Sergei Samsonov.

David Pastrnak and the ghosts of the Big Bad Bruins

This is weird. At least it is for someone who used to write about hockey three to five times a week for years. It’s weird to look up and realize I haven’t been documenting my thoughts on what has been an absolutely astounding season for the Boston Bruins.

As of last night, they’re sitting with a record of 64-12-5, with 133 points, both standing as NHL records. Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci signed on for (at least) one more round and are making the most of that chance. Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman take turns hugging and serving as brick walls in net. Everyone who gets folded into this ride — Hampus Lindholm, Pavel Zacha, Dimitri Orlov, Tyler Bertuzzi, Garnet Hathaway, etc. — seems to unleash their inner beasts and make the machine roll meaner and tighter.

But that’s all a sideline to our main attraction this year. David Pastrnak is and has been an absolute marvel all season. I’m not sure I can even describe what it feels like to watch him play might approximate what it might’ve been like to watch a team from 50 years before that captivated New England and the rest of the hockey world.

Bringing scale to Gretzky’s greatness

There is a limited amount of space on a hockey rink.

Your typical NHL rink runs 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. The international rink expands that width to an even 100. And back in the day, some of the older barns in the NHL — Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, Buffalo Memorial Auditorium — could run as small as 185 long or 83 wide. This is all to say that there’s only so much room to make so much happen.

Which is why, in those quiet moments, I like to pull up old games and watch Wayne Gretzky make a mockery of such limitations.

A favorite is to pull up games from the 1987 Canada Cup, where Canada and the U.S.S.R. linked up for a three-game series that gave us some of the best hockey the world has ever seen. It’s soothing, like a chill album on a late night. Just watching the flow and the speed and the skill, with the requisite determination and pride, all on display over about two hours, is both thrilling and meditative. And in the middle of nearly all of it is The Great One, spinning and twirling and finding open ice where there should be none.