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Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup put a cap on tough years

After four losses in the Stanley Cup Final, the Bruins brought Jacobs the Cup in 2011.
Photo by: JIM COURTNEY

The Boston Bruins won the 2011 Stanley Cup a lengthy 36 years after Jeremy Jacobs bought the NHL team in 1975. It took a long time to reach the mountaintop for Jacobs, whose family roots lie in Buffalo, resulting in some rocky times with Boston fans and media during those four decades.

When Jacobs purchased the club, many fans held a grudge against him because the newcomer didn’t call Boston home and they felt he was disconnected from the team, according to his family, colleagues and former employees.

“The perception of him in Massachusetts was not good,” said Charlie Jacobs, Jeremy’s youngest son who runs the operation at TD Garden as CEO of Delaware North’s Boston Holdings. “He was seen as someone who was a distant owner not invested in the community and had no business owning the club. If you are not from here and you’re seen as an outsider, it is very difficult to pierce the veil. What I encouraged him to do, and what he did, was make more and more appearances publicly here. I think people got to know him better.”

Former Sportservice President Michael Thompson joined Delaware North the same year Jacobs bought the Bruins. Thompson remembers the city’s early backlash against the team’s new owner.

“People in Boston weren’t very pleased, initially,” Thompson said. “He was an outsider running an Original Six franchise. But he turned it around and was able to build a new arena and also bring home a Stanley Cup. It’s quite a tale.”

The perception of a disconnect between Jacobs and the Bruins’ front office was totally false, said Harry Sinden, the team’s senior adviser and a top executive during Jacobs’ regime.

“He was in touch with every facet of the hockey business,” Sinden said. “For all those 40-odd years we’ve been together, when I was president and general manager, I seemed to talk to him every single day about hockey. There’s no way he was disconnected, no way at all.”

The misconstrued image bothered Jacobs. “He was sensitive to the fact that people had the perception of the family that they [weren’t fully engaged], which was completely inaccurate,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Part of it may have been Jacobs’ frustration over the Bruins’ inability to win the Stanley Cup under his ownership. The franchise won five Cups before he bought the team, including two in the early 1970s. Under his leadership, the Bruins won 12 division titles but lost four times in the Stanley Cup Final before winning it in 2011.

Sinden compares the string of losses to what the Buffalo Bills experienced in the Super Bowl. The big difference is Boston finally got over the hump. After the Bruins beat the Canucks in Vancouver to clinch the Cup, an emotional Jacobs could be seen skimming the ice to celebrate with his players, overcome with happiness — and a sense of relief.

Jacobs (far right) celebrates with the team after winning the Cup.
Photo by: DELAWARE NORTH
“We had an awful lot of good teams, but the ultimate is to win the prize at the end, especially for an owner,” Sinden said. “He was beside himself with joy that night in Vancouver and the weeks following it.

In the aftermath of winning the Cup, Jacobs made sure as many Bruins fans as possible had a chance to see the silver chalice, as well as Delaware North employees across the country. He took it to Delaware North’s lodging properties, including Yosemite National Park and Sequoia National Park, plus the Fresno call center taking reservations for those destinations. The Cup also made its way to Wellington, Fla., where Jacobs threw a big party at the family estate tied to a nearby equestrian center where the family enjoys spending time riding horses, in some cases competitively.

“When it came down to Stanley Cup rings, there’s always discussion about how deep in the organization you go,” said Wendy Watkins, Delaware North’s former vice president of corporate communications. “He wanted everybody to get rings — security, you name it. When they did the actual ring ceremony in [TD] Garden, the emotion that came across when he stood up and handed [employees] their rings … people with tears in their eyes. It was so meaningful and moving.”

Five years later, though, some feel Jacobs remains largely misunderstood in Boston, according to Rich Krezwick, who ran TD Garden from 1996 through 2005. It didn’t help smooth Jacobs’ image when, the year after the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, the NHL went through a lengthy owners lockout during the 2011-12 season. What should have been a coronation on ice for the Bruins turned into a bitter labor dispute, and Jacobs was thrust into the spotlight as one of the league’s “hard-liners” supporting the lockout. He became the face of the lockout, a villain in the eyes of many NHL fans.

Bottom line, though, Jacobs “doesn’t choose to play a PR game,” Krezwick said. “He runs the team with great passion and does what’s right for the team every day.”

Jacobs now plays the role of elder statesman as one of the longest-tenured NHL team owners, and he’s committed to doing what’s right for the league, said Peter Luukko, executive chairman of Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, parent company of the Florida Panthers.

“Jerry has been one to see the league grow in the proper fashion and doing what’s best for the game, to make it sustainable,” Luukko said. “He has a great sense of history and sometimes that’s important, to make sure you don’t repeat mistakes. I think a lot of other owners pay attention to that.”

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