Insiders' Guide to the Boston Garden

Tonight, Harvard sends you and about 1400 of your fellow denizens on a long trek. You board the Red Line to go see another Crimson hockey game at historic Boston Garden.

The T ferries you via Green Line trolley (if you can get one going north of Government Center) or via the Orange Line (without the nice view) to North Station. Beyond that, you are on your own.

Once you dodge the traffic on Causeway Street and the numerous commuters in the train station, it's time to start thinking about finding your seat.

You burst through the turnstiles, only to be confronted with a labyrinth of gray ramps and blank beige walls, with no indication of where any of them lead. After losing your sense of direction, you may stumble across an usher in a gold blazer. Upon inspection of your ticket, he tells you--if you're lucky--"Keep going up."

More ramps follow, and then you stumble upon the food concourse, and the aroma of hot dogs and spilled beer assaulting your senses. Another Garden usher in a gold jacket talks with a security guard in a blue uniform. Both dismiss you with a terse set of directions.

Breaking through the circus-like passageways of the Garden, you get into the arena itself. Immediately you ask yourself, "Is the ice surface really smaller here than at Bright?" Then you imagine a Gene Hackman-like hockey coach measuring the ice surface much like he did the basketball court in the movie Hoosiers.

Once you find your seat you can check out the scenery, especially the many banners hanging from the rafters. You can see how clean the Celtics' 1986 championship banner is. You look at the Bruins' retired numbers and wonder whether both Espo and Ray Bourque deserve to have their number "7" retired.

Who the Hell is...?

You look at the Celtics' retired numbers and imagine a "33" in one of the boxes. You wonder who "Loscy" is. You also speculate on when Red Auerbach will run out of numbers to give to his players.

Then you reflect on the great moments which happened here. Havlicek Steals The Ball. Bobby Hull's 600th goal. The Flyers' 29th game in a row without a loss, a new NHL record. Michael Jordan's 61 points. B.C.'s "goal at 10:01." The triple-overtime thriller against Phoenix.

And then the game begins. You struggle to get comfortable in the hard plastic seat and watch the action at the same time.

The game is the same--put the five-and-three-quarters-oz. frozen disc of vulcanized rubber into a four-by-six-ft. goal, while defending a 60-ft. attacking zone. It's just another hockey game in historic Boston Garden. But it all feels different, somehow....