Hub expects championships

Playoff-bound B’s, C’s up against it

This is the first spring in four years in which both the Bruins and Celtics are headed for the playoffs, and that’s great news, of course. It’s great for Garden employees, great for the proprietors of the bars and restaurants in and around North Station, and, naturally, great for B’s and C’s fans.

Yet you won’t find a lot of “Championship Fever Grips Hub” banners around town. Maybe it’s just me, but fans of both teams seem to be going into the tourneys with “measured expectations,” which is a polite way of saying we won’t be seeing any rolling rallies around here until at least November. (Or next February, if it turns out the Flu Crew Red Sox wake up one morning and find they can’t scratch up enough healthy bodies to field a starting nine.)

This isn’t to say there isn’t excitement around here. There is. Just last Wednesday, in what playby-play man Sean Grande called “the biggest regulargame since the Celtics moved into the new Garden,” the place was rockin’ and rollin’ for the Green’s Eastern Conference showdown against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. And then the game started, and LeBron so dominated the Celtics that they were still dazed and confused during the next night’s game against the Atlanta Hawks.

As for the Bruins, there’s no denying they’ve played a ton of inspired hockey under “interim” coach Bruce Cassidy, who guided them to an 18-8-1 record after replacing Claude Julien. There will always be a seat in the penalty box in Hockey Hell for Bruins management for the lame stunt of announcing the Julien sacking while the Super Bowl champion Patriots were dancing through the Back Bay, but let’s not quibble: Cassidy coached the B’s into the Stanley Cup playoffs. #respect

The Bruins open up tomorrow against the Ottawa Senators, against whom they were 0-3-1 this season. That’s not really the issue, though, since the Stanley Cup tourney is an entirely different beast than the regular season. But that stupid spearing penalty by Brad Marchand isn’t exactly a great way to get ready for the postseason (he was suspended for the final two regular-season games), and not having the injured Torey Krug available is extremely worrisome.

I’ll spare you the which-Tuukka-Rask-is- going-to-show-up- for the- playoffs talk, if only because the guessing here is that it’s been one of the dominant themes of your own hockey discussions. You know the drill: If it’s Tuukka Time, the Bruins can get past the Sens in the first round, and after that, well, again, this is the Stanley Cup playoffs. Pick a year, any year, and you can pick out the upsets.

But win the Cup? That’s where this whole ongoing Decade of Dominance thing plays into things. Our four pro sports teams have won so many championships this century — Good Lord, 10 at last count — that we don’t hand out participation ribbons around here any more.

Roll back the clock and you’ll see that during this golden era the Patriots have lost two Super Bowls and four conference championship games. Heck, they posted a 16-0 regularseason record in 2007 and nobody likes to talk about it, for obvious reasons. The Celtics lost to the Lakers in the 2010 NBA Finals and to the Miami Heat in the thrilling 2012 Eastern Conference finals, otherwise known as The Last Stand for the New Big Three. (The Celtics also lost to the Nets in the Eastern Conference finals in 2002.) The Bruins made it to the Stanley Cup finals in 2013 before going down in six games against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Red Sox were upended by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2008 American League Championship Series.

With all the championships Boston fans have celebrated, there simply isn’t enough room on the refrigerator door to show off these fine efforts. For some perspective, consider this: On Oct. 20, 1999, after the Red Sox had been wiped out by the Yankees in five games in the ALCS, the late Mayor Thomas Menino staged a rainy rally at City Hall Plaza in honor of our local ballclub. Yay.

That doesn’t happen any more. And so the Bruins and Celtics aren’t just battling their playoff foes; they’re battling a stretch of sports history that we’ll all be talking about for the rest of our lives.

Deep down, everyone knows it. And maybe that’s not a bad thing: If either the Bruins or Celtics go crazy in the playoffs, the town’ll go crazy.

And it’s been more than two months since this town went crazy.

Man, we’re due.