My Memories of June 9, 2001: Game 7 and U2 in Boston

Bono, The Edge and Ray Bourque in the Fleet Center.

The 2022 Stanley Cup celebration was the first I was able to watch in real time. Well, the first Avalanche win, anyway. 

I never usually missed watching the Cup be handed out when I was growing up. It seemed important even when it’s a team I despised. I watched both Red Wings’ wins, as well as the Stars. As I got older, I cared less and less. I don't remember watching the Lightning either year and I hated Vegas so much last year that I didn’t watch that joke of a win.

In 1996, I was a day short of my 11th birthday when Game 4 started. When Uwe Krupp finally scored the game winner in the third overtime, I was a full year older. But I was also asleep… that’s late for a kid. Hell, it’s late for me now.

By the time the 2000-01 season came around I was ALL IN on the Avalanche. I loved the team before, but that season was special and you knew something was coming all year. Before the wonderful days of ESPN+, I was limited to 15-20 regular season games a year on national networks. By the time the playoffs rolled around, my parents let me stay up to watch games on ESPN2 that usually ended way beyond when I was normally in bed.

That was also the year that U2 released the album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,” a return to their roots after “Pop,” their most recent departure from the traditional sound that made them globally famous. When tickets went on sale, a friend and I bought the them months in advance of the Boston-based shows scheduled for the following June. 

With Boston being a major hotspot for U2 fans with its history of the Irish in the city, we would have been happy to get tickets to any of the four scheduled shows. But we targeted the Saturday night date as the main desire. We wanted to make a day of it and not have to worry about going to school that day or the day after. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday would be fine, but we wanted Saturday. And we got them! 

I was so pumped to finally see my favorite band play live… on June 9, 2001!

Fast forward a few months and my beloved Avs load up at the deadline with Rob Blake being added to a blueline that already featured Adam Foote and Ray Bourque (in addition to Greg de Vries, Jon Klemm and the young talent Martin Skoula). Then they dominated the Canucks, survived the Kings and barely edged the Blues in five to reach the Final.

Then the schedule was released… Game 7 was June 9.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. I asked my parents what would happen if the series went that far and they told me I was going to the concert because they paid for the ticket. Well, I guess that settles that.

I was able to exhale a bit after Game 1, though. A 5-0 blowout? Please, this team wasn’t going to lose or even need seven games to win!

Then we lost Game 2… but only by one goal!

Then we won Game 3 in New Jersey and it was back on the right track to a proper five- or six-game series win!

Until we lost Game 4 (Patrick Roy’s turnover behind the net) and then Game 5 back in Denver (a forgettable 4-1 defeat) to put the Devils on the cusp of the Cup headed home to that dump in the swamp. 

I now needed a Game 7! I was openly rooting to miss the most important sporting event of my life to that point (and still to this day actually)!

Game 6 was stressful for about a period. Then Foote blasted a slapshot from inside the blueline that turned Martin Brodeur’s blocker over and gave the Avs the 1-0 lead it would ultimately only need. Ville Nieminen, Chris Drury and Alex Tanguay followed in the 4-0 win that sent the series back a mile high.

What pissed me off about that series, though, was there were a pair of two-day breaks between games. Games 1 and 2 were May 26 and 29, respectively. Games 5 and 6 were June 4 and 7, respectively. I get the travel day cross country for the latter of the two breaks, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what caused there to be a delay between the first two games at Pepsi Center.

(If you can remember what concert or event caused the delay in Denver, I would love to hear it and remember what screwed me over.)

Had one of those two breaks not happened, then Game 7 would likely have been Friday night… June 8. And your favorite New Hampshire-based Avalanche fan/writer wouldn’t have been so emotionally scared for so long. 

I have watched Game 7 countless times in the years that followed. My parents recorded it on the VCR. I had three different friends record it as well. In case any of the tapes were compromised I would have had a backup and a backup’s backup and so on.

In the time before smartphones, I was lost that night. Could I truly enjoy the opening performance of Elevation or the arena-rocking sounds of Where the Streets Have No Name!? Yes… but only for a few minutes at a time. We were in the upper bowl of the Fleet Center (now TD Garden) and I spent good chunks of the concert trying to look up into the ninth floor’s suite level to see the game on the TVs up there, but with no success. 

The saving grace was that this concert was in Boston. And it was taking place in the home arena of the Bruins. And Bruins fans had a rooting interest in the Avalanche/Devils game that night. So when people would see me walking the concourse in my Avs hat and t-shirt, I would get a fist bump and a high five from those rooting for our No. 2 defenseman playing in his final NHL game 2,000 miles away. 

During the show, I remember a guy two rows ahead of us was getting cell phone calls updating him and he would yell up occasionally, so I had a semi-understanding of what was happening period to period.

But as the game unknowingly ticked away and the concert built to a crescendo, I was waiting on pins and needles for the news of a result from Denver.

Did the guy with the phone tell me? No.

Was I able to get word from the patrons on the ninth floor?? Nope.  

As the house lights went down on the encore’s opening song, Bullet the Blue Sky, the voice of Bono rang throughout the Fleet Center in the darkness, “Things are looking good for Ray Bourque…”

As the opening notes on Adam Clayton’s bass played With or Without You, the spotlight hit The Edge wearing a Ray Bourque Bruins jersey.

Pardon my language for the next part, but I truly think only a certain four-letter word can sum up the emotions of the next few moments. The place went fucking insane. People were cheering and hugging and high fiving and smiling and some cried (me). That song will forever be tied to that moment and how Ray Bourque would no longer be without what he was looking for. 

There will never be a louder celebration in an NHL arena for another NHL team winning a Stanley Cup. I missed watching the game at home, but I was a part of that moment and I always think about it in a special way.

Only when I got home later that night and spoke to my dad who had waited up for me did I find out that Joe Sakic (my guy) was involved in the most iconic assist in league history that we all still talk about a generation later. Legendary.

So I missed the game in real time, but have seen it so many times in the years since that I never feel that way. I have a different memory of it than most people do and I like my story a lot more now than the nervous 16-year old waiting to hear the final score at a U2 concert half an America away.

It’s also the reason I woke my then four-year old up to watch the end of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final. His memory of that is as important to me as mine. He won’t remember it years from now, but he will always have the story that his dad woke him up.

June 9, 2001 was so cool on so many levels and I night I will never forget.