Why no hockey on Thanksgiving? Brief history of the Bruins on and around the holiday

With Thanksgiving Day arriving, it’s time to talk about why the NHL doesn’t play on the holiday but instead hosts games before and after.

Nov 23, 2024; Detroit, Michigan, USA; The Boston Bruins celebrate their win over the Detroit Red Wing at Little Caesars Arena. Mandatory Credit: Brian Bradshaw Sevald-Imagn Images
Nov 23, 2024; Detroit, Michigan, USA; The Boston Bruins celebrate their win over the Detroit Red Wing at Little Caesars Arena. Mandatory Credit: Brian Bradshaw Sevald-Imagn Images | Brian Bradshaw Sevald-Imagn Images

Take one look at the NHL schedule, and you’ll notice something: There’s no hockey on Thanksgiving Day, but nearly the entire league plays the day before, which I like to call Thanksgiving Eve, and the day after, which you may know as Black Friday.

Yeah, there’s a lot of hockey to be played on Wednesday and Friday, but there’s nothing going on when most of us are watching football, especially those Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys fans. And one reason behind the lack of games on Thanksgiving has to do with the sheer number of sports fans tuning into the NFL, which may not result in the best TV ratings for the NHL.

Likewise, you don’t see any NBA games going on either, so with the NFL still locked in as the premier pro sports league for the time being, you won’t likely see the NHL played on the final Thursday in November for a while. But hey, maybe things will change in the distant future, so there’s always hope, right?

Instead, what the NHL does is this: The Thanksgiving Showdown. It might sound misleading because as we just talked about, there’s no pro hockey played on Thursday. That said, maybe the Day After Thanksgiving Showdown is a more appropriate term as this game takes place on Black Friday, but not before a plethora of other games. 

No hockey games on Thanksgiving but that just means more hockey…

Since the NFL typically only plays on Thursday, Sunday, Monday, and, occasionally, Saturday, with all things being equal, you won’t often catch games on Wednesday or Friday. This is why the NHL will instead put on a monster slate of games on Thanksgiving Eve and Black Friday, so hockey fans can brace themselves for plenty of entertainment featuring all 32 teams in the league. 

Anyway, the Thanksgiving Showdown is the premier event that typically features the Boston Bruins, who have enjoyed a prime spot each year since the 2011-12 NHL Season. But the Bruins actually started playing on Black Friday in 1990, over two decades before the Thanksgiving Showdown debuted. 

Before that, they did play on Thanksgiving Day, as was the case before 1990. For example, in 1988, they played and beat the Philadelphia Flyers, and a year later, they shut out the Toronto Maple Leafs. Therefore, the Bruins have been traditionally associated with the holiday, with the Thanksgiving Showdown and Black Friday games before it serving as a spiritual successor.

But the Bruins weren’t the only team to play on the holiday, as, using the 1989-90 season, for example, the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets also played. So, since the NHL does have a history going head-to-head with the NFL on Thanksgiving, it’s one of those ‘never say never’ moments that they won’t return to playing the game on the final Thursday of the month. 

Yet even if that’s not the case, no harm, no foul, because the NHL on Thanksgiving Eve and Black Friday is still a lot of fun to watch.