Bobby Orr's famous goal came on Mother's Day in 1970. How big of a hockey town was Boston in the early 1970s? Not only did the Bruins own Boston, the old Garden was home to three professional hockey teams: the B's (Stanley Cup winners in '70 and '72); their minor-league farm team, the Boston Braves, whose 1971-72 attendance mark of 425,900 set an American Hockey League record that stood for 26 years, and who until the old Garden closed remained a ghostly presence in the Boston phone book under the Garden number; and the old New England Whalers, of the WHA, who won the inaugural Avco Cup in 1973.

So it's a shame to read of the NHL's current lowly state. The demise has been self-inflicted: Ticket prices are exorbitant for a product made boring by the trap-defense and watered down by over-expansion. The days of the Original Six may be past, but 30 teams, including one in Phoenix, two in Florida, and three in California, but none in Quebec City?

Meantime:

Pacifism and hockey can, indeed, be reconciled: Witness the Saskatoon Quakers, who also had a baseball team. (More here and here)

So too, can hockey and Religion of Peace, as the Saskatoon Crescents and Sheiks attest.

For the plutocrat, favorites at the Hockey Sweater Museum include the Victoria Aristocrats and the Vancouver Millionaires.

And for the monarchist: a fine picture of Toronto captain Ted Kennedy greeting the future Queen Elizabeth at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1951.