[Tinordi]

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...-boston-bruins

At the TD Garden in late December, we were treated to a Very Special Holiday Episode of hockey. The principal players were the Boston Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres, but a weird giddiness filled the whole place. Christmas was coming in a few days, and before the pregame introductions, fans watched a montage of goals, body checks, and random punch-ups, all coordinated to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's bubblegum-metal version of "Carol of the Bells." (Nothing says Christmas like slugging a Maple Leaf.) Virtual snowflakes fell from the rafters, mottling every corner of the arena with light. The folks caught on the big screens during stoppages in play smiled a little wider and danced a little more enthusiastically, if not particularly more artfully. Rene Rancourt, who sings pregame national anthems, and altogether looks like the father of the guy Clive Owen played in Croupier, sang some holiday favorites between the second and third periods. The team ran a Christmas-themed installment of its video series, The Bear and the Gang, in which various Bruins were shown engaged in assorted festive silliness while a large man in a bear suit drifted in and out of frame. Carl Soderberg was trying to wrap a plastic goose. And, at one point, the man in the bear suit was sitting on a couch. On his lap, looking quizzical but unquestionably game, was Jarome Iginla, all 17 NHL seasons and 500-odd NHL goals of him. He and the guy in the bear suit got a very big cheer.

It had been a strange week for Iginla. The Bruins had just returned from an extended tour of western Canada during which Iginla found one of his fingers turned into a parenthesis, an injury so grotesque that it became an Internet Instant Classic. Earlier on that same trip, he had returned to Calgary, where he played for more than a decade. The Flames showed a tribute video that resulted in a two-minute-plus standing ovation they could hear in Banff and, at the end of the game, when Iginla was awarded the night's third star, he skated back out for another thunderous greeting, only to find his way off the ice barred by his teammates from Boston. The rapturous applause went on and on and on. It was such a hockey thing for the Bruins to do.