I am really excited about Jimmy coming home 
Dorchester cheers Jimmy Hayes' homecoming to Bruins
Dorchester cheers Jimmy Hayes' homecoming to Bruins
Jimmy Hayes still has his first Chicago Blackhawks sweater hanging on the wall at the Eire Pub, not far from the bronze plaques honoring visits back in the day from a couple of fellas named Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
The plaques will remain, because this Dorchester landmark, while quite proud of its neighborhoody, blue-collar pulse, is also proud to be the place where two U.S. presidents headline a cast of pols and potentates who have popped in for a beer and banter.
But the Jimmy Hayes sweater is coming down.
“Yeah, as soon as the Bruins call me and tell me Jimmy’s new number,†says the guy sitting at a table near the door, nursing a bottled water. “The only thing I know is that it won’t be No. 13, ’cause that’s Kevin’s number on the Rangers. And those two, they go their separate ways about these things.â€
The guy doing the talking is Kevin Hayes — that is, the old man. And this Kevin — Kevin Andrew Hayes, as opposed to Kevin Patrick Hayes — is one strange cat. He’s such a sports nut that he can rattle off the names of a hundred 1960s and ’70s high school basketball players from the Boston area — such as King Gaskins and Ronnie Perry of Catholic Memorial, and, from the other side of the river, Cambridge’s Tommy Chatten and Somerville’s Billy Endicott — yet two of his five kids end up playing in the National Hockey League.
There’s Kevin, 23, who just finished his rookie season with the Rangers. And there’s Jimmy, 25, who broke in with the Blackhawks and then logged a couple of seasons with the Florida Panthers before receiving the stunning news the other day that he’d been acquired by his hometown Bruins.
“The crazy thing about this is that I’ve never put on a pair of skates in my ife,†says the old man, who is closing in on his 60th birthday.
