Boston Bruins Bruins To Retire #16 in Honor of Rick Middleton

[Dennis Bonvie]

Park was a superb player and a quintessential Bruin, he did it all. As Fred Cusick said "Brad Park could stickhandle in a phone booth." It is a sin that at least the Rangers didn't have the class to put his name on the banner or jersey. If the Bruins didn't have him when Orr left there would've been big trouble with the fans on Causeway IMO. Sinden would always get his man (when he wanted to).
I also feel the same about retiring #16 Derek Sanderson, almost. Sanderson was to the Bruins in a lot of ways what Brad Marchand is to them now, except he was a center. I don't see why two players can't have their names on a retired number. As someone above mentioned if we keep retiring numbers at this pace there Bruins won't have a player left wearing a number under the number 40.

Again, Park spent less than half of his career with the Rangers.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

my first instinct was to say no to this retirement. so I went to get some numbers to back up my position. damn, his numbers were a lot better than I remember

the thing that worked against middleton is that I never felt he was the best player on the team. he was always like number 3 or number 4.... but it wasn't really his fault we had ray bourque around. barry Pederson was so damn good for those few years he was healthy. of course I worshipped at the idol of terry oreilly… and then shortly after middleton was falling off along came cam neely who was a whole other world of great

I remember an argument I used to make with how rick middleton on the oilers would make everyone forget jarri kurri... and how rick middleton was so much better defensively than mike bossey…

maybe in those days I always thought my bruins were perfect without any flaws... exaggerated them a lot... but even with my home field bias he really was very good.

I went looking for reasons to argue against his deserving this honor and I found none. instead I got reminded we need to honor these greats from our past because even a long time fan like myself might forget just how good he was without this sort of reminder.

One thing many people forget is that Middleton played for Canada in two different Canada Cup series.