The COVID-19 pandemic forced, well, everything at a standstill. Every public assembly remains delayed with the social distance guidelines in place for the foreseeable future.
The Bruins’ quest for another Stanley Cup remains on hold until the league resumes its day to day business operations — both on and off the ice.
With that in mind, we here at Bruins Daily wanted to start a tournament of sorts in lieu of the current delay. Thus, here we are creating the Greatest Bruin of All-Time tournament.
We’ve assembled a March Madness-like 64-player tournament — dividing the brackets of defensemen, centers, wingers and goaltenders — featuring several of your favorite former and current Bruins. We’ll post the fan-vote matchups on Twitter (@BruinsDaily) beginning on Tuesday with the first round of the defensemen bracket.
Now that you know the details, it’s time to reveal the full Greatest Bruin of All Time bracket.
Defensemen (First round matchups begin Tuesday)
1. Bobby Orr
2. Ray Bourque
3. Zdeno Chara
4. Eddie Shore
5. Brad Park
6. Lionel Hitchman
7. Don Sweeney
8. Art Ross
9. Ted Greene
10. Torey Krug
11. Mike Milbury
12. Mike O’Connell
13. Fernie Flaman
14. Dennis Seidenberg
15. Johnny Boychuk
16. Andrew Ference
Wingers (First round matchups begin Wednesday)
1. Johnny Bucyk
2. Cam Neely
3. Brad Marchand
4. Rick Middleton
5. Ken Hodge
6. Dit Clapper
7. David Pastrnak
8. Wayne Cashman
9. Terry O’Reilly
10. Don Marcotte
11. Woody Dumart
12. Johnny McKenzie
13. Milan Lucic
14. Ed Westfall
15. Sergei Samsonov
16. Keith Crowder
Goalies (First round matchups begin Thursday)
1. Gerry Cheevers
2. Tiny Thompson
3. Tim Thomas
4. Tuukka Rask
5. Frank Brimsek
6. Eddie Johnston
7. Reggie Lemelin
8. Giles Gilbert
9. Byron Dafoe
10. Andy Moog
11. Jim Henry
12. Jaroslav Halak
13. Pete Peeters
14. Andrew Raycroft
15. Anton Khudobin
16. Doug Keans
Centers (First round matchups begin Friday)
1. Phil Esposito
2. Patrice Bergeron
3. Milt Schmidt
4. Jean Ratelle
5. Joe Thornton
6. David Krejci
7. Bill Cowley
8. Adam Oates
9. Peter McNab
10. Derek Sanderson
11. Barry Pederson
12. Marc Savard
13. Fred Stanfield
14. Cooney Weiland
15. Ken Linseman
16. Charlie Coyle
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