Boston Bruins
There’s a type of sports fan that requires no convincing. They know. Maybe they grew up watching Orr and Esposito. Maybe they came to it later, as a young kid watching Bergeron and Chara patrolling the big ice together. But either way, the black and gold runs through their veins and the Garden is hallowed ground and nobody needs to discuss it. Further.
Buying that person a gift should be simple. It is decidedly not. Between pervasive cliches and official merchandise lines recycling the same ten products year after year, most stuff available feels made for the gift shop at LaGuardia rather than for someone who actually cares about the team.
We compiled this list for the Bruins fan who deserves better than an OEM logo mug. These people live and die by their teams and everything they do. They have opinions on the 2011 cup run. They remember what happened in 2019 Game 7 and they either want to talk about it or they absolutely do not want to talk about it under any circumstances. You know who you are. We compiled this list with you in mind for every single one of these choices.
What we wanted were products we loved. Gifts that don’t feel like they were thrown together at the last minute but had some actual thought behind them. Something that showed craft or wit or just general quality instead of the team logo paste onto whatever stock material is cheapest at the time. Seriously, a Bruins fan already has a jersey. If we’re giving them something extra it should represent some knowledge about who they are as a person and what they like, rather than which team they happen to care about most.
We kept this list short for a reason. A well-edited list from people who actually care about this stuff means more than an oversized list with everything but half the page blank. Bruins fans more than anyone know that having a tight group that all pulls together is better than a ragtag mess going through the motions. Every single product here had to pass one simple question. Would we buy this for someone we know that loves Boston Bruins hockey? If the answer wasn’t a definite yes then it didn’t make the list.