Okay, so I’ve been on a bit of a crossword puzzle kick lately. And, because I’m also a huge hockey fan, I thought, “Why not combine the two?” I went searching for a specific one: the 2011 Stanley Cup winners crossword. You know, the year the Bruins finally brought the Cup back to Boston. I really wanted to test my memory of that amazing playoff run.
I started by hitting up the usual crossword puzzle sites. I typed in “2011 Stanley Cup Winners crossword” and… well, let’s just say the results were all over the place. Lots of general hockey crosswords, some about past champions, but nothing specific to that magical 2011 Bruins team.
I dug a little deeper. I tried different search terms, like “Bruins 2011 crossword” or “Stanley Cup champions puzzle 2011”. Still, I was mostly getting generic stuff. It was getting pretty frustrating, to be honest!
I figured, “Alright, maybe it’s not online. Time to go old school.” I remembered some of those old sports yearbooks and commemorative magazines. I actually had to search online to remember how to find information like this.
I looked for “2011 Stanley Cup Champions Commemorative book”. This seemed to be a good track and gave me a lot of options for books, magazines, and even DVDs.
The Solution
I looked and looked for the perfect crossword puzzle and couldn’t find anything specific.
Then it hit me. I’ll just make my own! Why not? I mean, I’ve got the internet, I know the players, and I remember the key moments. So, I grabbed a piece of paper, and that’s where I started!
- First, I needed the across clues. I wrote down some memorable things.
- I decided to focus on the key players. Tim Thomas, obviously, for his insane goaltending. Zdeno Chara, the captain, had to be in there. Marchand, Bergeron, Krejci, Lucic… all the big names made the list.
- Then, I started thinking about the actual clues. I didn’t want them to be too easy, but not impossible either. For example, for Tim Thomas, I could have gone with “2011 Conn Smythe winner” or something a little more cryptic, like “The brick wall in net.”
- I wrote down the down clues.
- The hardest part, honestly, was fitting all the names together! It’s like a puzzle in itself, trying to get the letters to intersect properly. I had to redo it a few times, moving names around, shortening some, lengthening others. It was a bit of a headache, but also kinda fun.
In the end, I had a pretty decent crossword puzzle. It wasn’t perfect, of course. And I’m sure a professional puzzle maker would laugh at it. But hey, I made it myself, and it brought back some great memories of that 2011 Stanley Cup win. I’m going to complete my crossword at night when I’m watching T.V.
