The Providence Bruins is an ice hockey team in the American Hockey League, and are the primary development team for the NHL's Boston Bruins. They play in Providence, Rhode Island, USA at the Dunkin' Donuts Center.

History

The Providence Bruins began operation for the start of the 1992-1993 AHL season after Providence mayor Buddy Cianci negotiated a deal with the owners of the Maine Mariners franchise, Frank DuRoss and Ed Anderson, to relocate their club.

The Bruins captured their first AHL Calder Cup in the 1999 playoffs, after a regular season in which they dominated the league with 56 regular season wins. Led by rookie head coach Peter Laviolette and paced by Les Cunningham Award winner Randy Robitaille, the Bruins went from only 19 victories the previous season, to dropping the Rochester Americans 4 games to 1 to skate away with the league championship.

In the 2001?2002 season, the Providence Bruins contracted with then-13-year-old musician Ben Schwartz to work as the official organist at all home games. As a result, Schwartz, who provided music for seven years until the conclusion of the 2007-2008 season, holds the distinction of being the youngest organist to ever work for a professional North American sports franchise in history.^[1][2]

This market was previously served by

• Providence Reds (1926?1977)

Team records

Single season

Goals: 41 Tim Sweeney (1992?93)

Assists: 74 Randy Robitaille (1998?99)

Points: 102 Randy Robitaille (1998?99)

Penalty Minutes: 407 Aaron Downey (1997?98)

GAA: 1.84 Tim Thomas (2003?04)

SV%: .941 Tim Thomas (2003?04)

Career

Career Goals: 101 Andy Hilbert

Career Assists: 109 Andy Hilbert

Career Points: 210 Andy Hilbert

Career Penalty Minutes: 1055 Aaron Downey

Career Goaltending Wins: 67 John Grahame

Career Shutouts: 10 Tim Thomas

Career Games: 278 Jay Henderson

Current roster

As of October 11, 2008^{[3] [4]}

Season-by-season results

Regular season

Playoffs

Notable alumni

• Patrice Bergeron
• Hal Gill
• Peter Laviolette
• Glen Murray
• Andrew Raycroft
• Jozef Stumpel
• Sergei Zholtok

External links

• Providence Bruins Official Website
• Current Providence Bruins roster
• The Internet Hockey Database - Providence Bruins
• BBF Unofficial Site - Providence Bruins

References

1. ↑ The Official Site of Ben Schwartz http://www.benschwartz.net/music/organist.html
2. ↑ WLNE-TV and WPRI-TV featured stories about Ben Schwartz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Gi5lvoEjI
3. ↑ AHL Website http://stats.theahl.com/stats/roster.php?step=&sub=&season_id=10&team_id=309
4. ↑ The Hockey News.com http://www.forecaster.ca/hockeynews/hockey/_7irw6govkze9/extras.cgi?sal-east

---

Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article