The Big Bad Bruins are back!

The Bruins and the Flyers are facing each other in the playoffs for the first time since 1978!

If you lived in New England in the 1970s, you know the Bruins' archrivals were the Canadiens and the Flyers. Montreal were the skaters and Boston and Philly were the fighters. Bruins and Canadiens fans were known for their knowledge of the game and Flyers fans were not. They used to boo the Canadian national anthem in Philadelphia. Boston radio sportscaster, Johnny Most, used to say, "They hate us because they have to live there and we don't."

Most also once said on the air, "Mrs. Abdul-Jabbah, Ya son is a cowahd!" If you don't know who Johnny Most was, you still might know his famous holler during the 1965 Celtics championship game, "Havlicek stole the ball!"

But I digress.

The point is that the Bruins met the Flyers in the playoffs four times from 1974 to 1978 and split the series match-ups 2-2.

I was at game one of the Stanley Cup semi-finals in 1978 with my friend Doug. We were high school sophomores and had to get the "T" from Riverside to North Station. My mother gave us season ticket seats that strangely no one at her work place wanted. We sat in the loges, two rows of balcony seats that hung out over the ice. (This is where Red Auerbach used to sit during Celtics games.) Less than a minute into the game, all the Bruins and Flyers players' gloves were on the ice and they were going at it. I remember my friend screaming, "This is EXCELLENT!" Yes, it was playoff hockey in the Boston Garden. This was the Boston team most likely to go all the way in 1978.

The only downside was that game one went into overtime and we ran the risk of missing the last train back to Riverside if we missed it. We hadn't left the building when the Bruins scored a goal in the first few minutes of overtime to win it. I remember Doug jumping up and down in the "tunnel" as we heard it on the transistor radio I was carrying as we also heard the crowd erupt inside. The Bruins won the series 4-3 and went on to lose in the Stanley Cup finals.

This year, the first game of the Bruins-Flyers series was won by the Bruins once again in the first few minutes of overtime. It was deja vu all over again. I was watching the game and got up for a second and missed it. That's what makes hockey "the fastest game on ice." If you blink for a micro-second, you can miss the outcome of the game.

The real irony though is that if you asked Boston fans a few weeks ago which team had the best chance of next winning a world championship, they would have been divided between the other three teams. Right now, it's the Bruins who look the best.

Below: Bruins players attack a harrassing fan in Philadelphia in the 1970s.