The Bruins just wanted something to eat and somewhere to sit down and unwind a little bit after their Game 6 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. To make matters worse, the club had just found out a plane malfunction would keep them in Toronto for the night.
But on a Sunday night in hostile territory, it isn’t necessarily easy to just a grab a bite somewhere, especially if you’re an NHL team looking for a legitimate meal.
The B’s eventually found a restaurant in Mississauga, Ont., that was about to close up shop. The restaurant workers agreed to stay open late to feed the hungry Bruins, and that decision is one that paid off in a big way for four hockey fans. The Toronto Globe and Mail reports that the four restaurant workers (including one Bruins fan) were given tickets to Monday night’s Game 7 in Boston.
“I had literally closed the till for my bartender and we were closing in five minutes and I get this phone call,” Lauren Grenier, the manager of the Canyon Creek Chophouse, told the Globe and Mail. “And they’re like, hey, there’s about 50 of us coming down to your restaurant, it’s the Boston Bruins. And I’m like, sure it is. I didn’t believe them because we’re always playing pranks on each other here at work late at night.”
Of course, it wasn’t a joke. Not long after, a traveling party of 50 — the majority of which were hungry professional hockey players — showed up at the restaurant.
“And then it was just chaos,” Grenier told the paper. “We just started hammering out the food for them. It was just so awkward. We had all the music off, but we had the TV on, I think with the Detroit game. And they were all sitting there and it was so quiet because they had lost.
“But they ate so much food — steaks, chicken, pasta and salad. Some of them were a little picky and wanted personal things off the menus. We tried to do whatever we could for them.”
As a token of their appreciation, Grenier and three others — including the group’s lone Bruins fan, server Darren Boast — were given tickets to Game 7.
