Rhode Island has never had a year like 1999 for scripted or spontaneous stories

No one said a plastic surgeon servicing Southern California celebrities could not go home to Rhode Island. The respectable run that premise spawned proved the idea anything but far-fetched.

But the truth was, when NBC picked up Providence and premiered it Jan. 8, 1999, glamour was already returning to the show’s real-life counterpart. A cultural renaissance defined the decade for a long-downtrodden state capital.

It would have been trickier to try to script the winter and spring the locale savored in that culminating year. In January alone, primetime network TV premiered two series set in the 401 area code. While that signified the place’s renewed photogenic appeal, real-life Rhode Island had its share of riveting storylines in the works.

Over the ensuing months, one Providence sports team went on an unprecedented thrill ride and record-book rewrite. Another traveled a rockier emotional road with a halfway Hollywood ending that would have been cheesy were it not the naked truth.

The two shows and two teams would all succeed despite low-to-middling expectations, unfavorable preseason assignments or both.

Yes, some harsher political realities concurrently fizzed in the area. In that regard, some of the unpleasantness was not vanishing. But in a timely coincidence, one of the new works of fiction was offering Rhode Island some laugh-at-itself satire for the other 49 to see.

Under the growing shadow of a new century, these developments gave the Ocean State a perfect storm of attention grabbers. This place was ahead of most others in experiencing much-anticipated change, largely for the better.

News, sports and entertainment media never combined for this much gratifying concentration here at once. Some of the first-time visitors instantly noticed what they had been missing.

In a Jan. 6, 1999 Deseret News article, Providence creator John Masius admitted to never having previously seen the city. He told reporter Scott D. Pierce that he took his first impression of the location after the NBC greenlit the series.

That first-time firsthand experience only emboldened his intrigue, and brought everyone back for several on-site shots afterward.

“I was incredibly impressed with the diversity of the town and also the sort of renaissance of the city,” Masius told Pierce. “It’s good timing all around.”

Oh boy, he really did not know the half of it. Then again, even the locals who live to “Catch the Wave” could not be sure of the delectable deluge ahead.

Look what we’ve got now

An all-encompassing Rhode Island history and culture website, quahog.org, ponders the reason for the uptick in depictions of the state.

“Up until the last few years, television has had very little use for Rhode Island,” begins the site’s facts and folklore page. “Now, every other show seems to be set in the Ocean State. Is it because of the Providence Renaissance? The natural beauty of our coastline? Our lovable accents?”

Masius’ word was one endorsement of the first theory. After all, the other (or “othah”) two qualities are essentially immutable. But more a positive perception of the state and its capital can equal more attention for the rest.

That effectively began with the personal redemption of Providence mayor Buddy Cianci and his second stretch in office. He redressed his image and was reelected in 1990 after assault charges and near-imprisonment forced him out six years prior.

Upon returning in 1991, Cianci pushed for a host of new attractions to the town’s Downcity district. His first major head-turner was enticing the Boston Bruins’ AHL affiliate from Portland, Maine. With that, the newfangled Providence Bruins took root at the Providence Civic Center for the 1992-93 season, replacing the long-bygone Rhode Island Reds.

Two years later, the Rhode Island Convention Center opened next door to the Civic Center. In warmer months, locals and tourists got their first look at the original WaterFire display in the city’s rivers. The new Waterplace Park served to amplify the show’s aesthetics.

The park was a product of scrapping an eyesore of a bridge, replacing it with walkways and accentuating the majestic modern and Venetian-inspired architecture around the water. WaterFire would be the site’s first of many recurring festivals.

New or revamped restaurants and hotels only capitalized on and furthered the cycling downtown (or Downcity) economic boom. For those seeking a glitzy vibe away from L.A., Providence was a ringing new option.

Two decades prior, the area’s residents were reportedly deriding it as the “armpit of New England.” Escaped zoo animals embodied the disarray before and during Cianci’s first reign (1974-84). The city was teetering on bankruptcy in 1981.

By 1997, it was ranked among the 10 most livable American cities by a variety of general and niche magazines. And that was the year before the two scripted series began production in earnest ahead of their midseason premieres. By then, those who had not traveled could have a weekly look from their living room.

In the meantime, other communities were getting in-person looks at what made the Divine City the Renaissance City. In 1998, WaterFire creator Barnaby Evans, a Brown University alum, spread his gift to Houston. A who’s who of more cities, stateside and abroad, have demanded a version of his magnum opus as well.

Back in Providence, a downtown state-of-the-art shopping center was in the works. In addition, residents could not help taking notice of Masius’ cast and crew taking shots for the show.

Both the mall and the program would come in 1999. Ditto a less-publicized Rhode Island-set animated series being produced back in a SoCal studio. While they waited, the citizens renewed Cianci’s tenure once more, this time in a one-candidate election.

But not all of the big news was rosy for Rhody culture that autumn. In October 1998, citing Title IX, Providence College announced it would fold its 76-year-old baseball program. The next spring was designated the swan song for a program that produced, among others, then-Red Sox infielder Lou Merloni.

Concomitant with that prickly pill, the P-Bruins were starting their seventh season desperate to kick ice chips on its predecessor. They had won 19 games out of 80 in 1997-98, finishing 18th out of 18 in the AHL’s collective standings.

Further struggles on the ice would potentially test the loyalty of the fans, who now had more on-the-town entertainment options than in 1992-93. Fortunately for the Bruins brass, the team at least regained a competitive persona to start Season 7.

With one-time captain Peter Laviolette as their new head coach, they climbed above the .500 mark by Game 12. By the time 1998 gave way to 1999, they were 21-10-3 on the season.

Although, with many of its home games occurring on Friday nights, AHL Providence would soon go head-to-head with NBC Providence.

 

 

From a TV town to a title town

With a self-explanatory title, Providence had protagonist Dr. Sydney Hansen (Melina Kanakaredes) moving back cross-country to the Rhode Island capital. While no locals permeated the cast or brass, the show had reason for lofty expectations. It was the creation of an award-winning Touched by an Angel veteran in Masius.

The program took its share of fact-and-flaw liberties in portraying the town. Beyond the on-location outdoor scenes, it relied on its Los Angeles hub to look the part. But there was enough to flatter Ocean State viewers. As the network’s local affiliate, NBC 10, noted ahead of the pilot’s premiere, SoCal spots did their best impression of the Foxy Lady strip club and Roger Williams Park.

Meanwhile, up-and-coming actor and animator Seth MacFarlane was putting his Rhode Island School of Design education to use. MacFarlane had graduated in 1995, when the Providence renaissance was in full swing. The P-Bruins completed their third season of existence, and their third of four straight as the AHL’s runaway attendance leaders. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Convention Center and WaterFire were each in their first full calendar year at the time.

As part of his senior thesis, MacFarlane produced an animated short, The Life of Larry. He himself gave title character and his dog, Steve, the same basic voices as Peter and Brian Griffin later on. The familiar cutaway gags were an immediate habit as well.

Upon moving to L.A., amidst other work, MacFarlane produced a sequel, Larry & Steve. That played no small role in convincing Fox to give him a tryout at a full-fledged series. He triumphed, and set Family Guy in fictional Quahog, an obvious Providence suburb based on the remarkably accurate backdrop drawings.

The series premiered it on the final night of January as a Super Bowl lead-out. Going in, there was some critical skepticism, as many adult animated series were susceptible to unfavorable comparisons to The Simpsons.

Three weeks ahead of the premiere, Chicago Tribune pundit Steven Johnson questioned MacFarlane’s experience. “A 25-year-old is behind it, so expect something more like “South Park” than “The Flintstones,’” he wrote.

After the first episode aired, some critics cringed over its crassness and supposed shortage of originality. But others envisioned a solid foundation for the series ahead.

Regardless, six more installments constituted the short inaugural season, all airing in the spring. This introduction coincided with Fox’s last ride as the NHL’s U.S. network abode, allowing for a cross-promotional teaser.

The only question is why did a family of Ocean Staters cheer for a Rangers goal against the Bruins? Did the Connecticut-born MacFarlane lean New York?

That aside, Rhode Island’s real-life Bruins affiliate was generating unprecedented fervor among its fans. While NBC viewers were checking out Masius’ new creation, the P-Bruins were on the road, edging the Rochester Americans, 4-3.

That Jan. 8 win was their eighth in an eventual streak of 11. They would keep going unbeaten until the eve of the Family Guy premiere, when they lost a 6-1 laugher in Hershey.

Despite that uncharacteristic stinker, the Baby Bruins still went 10-1-1 on the month. In between, four of their players participated in the AHL all-star game. Three forwards (Randy Robitaille, Andre Savage and Landon Wilson) each scored an assist. Goaltender Jim Carey played one period, stopping all seven shots faced.

(That’s Carey with one R, not the Jim Carrey from the first Farrelly brothers movie — 1994’s Dumb and Dumber.)

With their streak carrying over from December, the Bruins had gone unbeaten for 16 straight outings before the January finale. They would drop seven more regular-season games after that, never by more than two goals.

By mid-April, the P-Bruins were the AHL’s regular-season champions with 120 points and a league-record 56 victories. Robitaille was the regular-season MVP, Laviolette the coach of the year.

The run signified a resurgence for the entity credited with spearheading Providence’s modern renaissance when it came to town in 1992. The Bruins’ historic turnaround put any specter of a Reds-like demise to rapid rest. As the modern representative of one of the league’s charter cities, they looked like they were there to stay.

But the same could not be said about another sports team across town. By January, PC baseball was in the homestretch of a bittersweet offseason ahead of February’s opener. The team entered the season ranked seventh in the Big East poll, which only turned up the fire below.

While a Major League-like surge would not reverse the school’s decision, the Friars channeled the Rachel Phelps-owned Cleveland Indians’ mentality. In so doing, they also matched the contemporary P-Bruins’ otherworldly output, winning a program-high 45 games leading up to the conference tournament final.

The week after Rhode Island’s historic TV season ended (Family Guy’s Season 1 finale aired May 16, Providence’s May 21), the Friars delivered on their defiance. They won their second and final Big East pennant and an automatic bid to the NCAA regionals.

In a subsequent in-depth wrap-up, Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs called the Friars’ mid-May home finale “a scene both sad and wonderful.” Outfielder Michael O’Keefe told Jacobs that, despite the decision’s obvious downside, “it did turn a lot of college kids into young adults.”

Two nights after Jacobs’ report was published, the P-Bruins throttled the Fredericton Canadiens, 6-1. That home triumph at the Civic Center in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final gave them a slot in their first Calder Cup Final. To sweeten the moment further, it happened on May 29, Rhode Island Statehood Day.

But even with everything else quieting on the entertainment front, hockey was not the only local newsmaker. While Fredericton, the affiliate of the Boston Bruins’ dreaded Montreal nemesis, was briefly staving off elimination in Game 5, an indictment was made in connection with a Providence mayoral scandal.

The FBI had made its first Operation Plunder Dome arrests the preceding month. Ultimately, the investigation made its way to the top of Cianci’s office. The late Prince of Providence was no Adam West of Quahog. But he was one of the reasons for Rhode Island’s reputation for political corruption.

Cianci, who guest starred on the March 12, 1999 Providence episode “Taste of Providence,” lasted another three years. But racketeering would catch up to him, ending his political power in September 2002. He would serve a five-year prison sentence and then spend the rest of his life as a radio talk-show host.

 

But that was not before the man who campaigned to bring the P-Bruins down from Maine joined in their party. Providence met the aforementioned Americans, the regular-season and playoff champions of the Western Conference, in what paper proclaimed a titanic final card.

At home, though, the Bruins were multiple cuts above. East Greenwich native and Brown University graduate Steve King spelled the difference with two goals in Game 1 on June 5. The next night, Providence posted a 6-0 runaway.

A week later, after splitting two tilts in Rochester, the Bruins sold out the Civic Center and paced themselves to a 5-1 Cup clincher. It was Providence’s first AHL playoff title since the bygone Reds raised the trophy in 1956.

A midweek parade followed in Downcity, ringing in the summer solstice in style. Two months later, the newly opened Providence Place Mall offered a little dog-day relief. Now, instead of going out to Warwick, Lincoln or out of state to Massachusetts, local shoppers could flock across the street from one of WaterFire’s best viewing spots above the river.

And not to be forgotten, the Farrellys released their third locally shot-and-based film in six years prior to Labor Day. Adapted from Peter Farrelly’s 1988 novel, Outside Providence fetched a decent 65 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie variously utilized and depicted the city proper plus Cranston, Kingston, Pawtucket and Woonsocket.

Still no encores

Two nights after the anniversary of the fateful Friars baseball announcement, the P-Bruins raised their Calder Cup banner. A more tumultuous 1999-2000 regular season did not indicate their playoff preparation, as they came within an overtime goal of another Eastern Conference crown. That was enough for Laviolette to move up the coaching ranks to the NHL afterward.

It was also enough for the Bruins to remain the royals of Rhode Island’s sports scene for a while longer. And still no other team has ravaged the AHL record book quite like the bar-setting 1998-99 Providence squad.

 

Meanwhile, the state’s two fictional sagas caught on, with one enlisting the aforementioned West for an April 25, 2000 episode.

With Providence and Family Guy, January 1999 proved the beginning of a still-uncontested one-two punch. In the annals of Ocean State teleplays, no other era comes close in collective prominence and staying power.

Previously, CBS had 40 episodes of Doctor Doctor from 1989 to 1991. In 1992, the same network contemplated the Providence-based Better Days but never aired its pilot.

No other Rhody-set network program mustered a full season between then and the Providence premiere. Ocean Staters’ best bets for entertaining local depictions in that interlude were the Farrellys’ Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary.

Since the pair that premiered in January 1999, none of the state’s scripted small-screen sagas have matched their legs.

In the spring of 2008, Julianna Margulies played the title role in all six episodes of Fox’s Canterbury Law. Margulies would soon have more success in another legal drama, CBS’ The Good Wife, set in Chicago. Meanwhile, back in “Rhody,” ABC carried all 13 episodes of Eastwick in the fall of 2009.

CBS could have fictionalized the state and capital city government’s infamous side, but decided against it. Five episodes of Waterfront, featuring Billy Baldwin as the state attorney general, were produced but never aired.

Outside of the four main networks, only two Rhode Island series have sustained a multi-year run. Last year, historic Newport got the last of its love from Comedy Central, which cancelled Another Period after three seasons and 32 installments.

Beyond basic cable, Showtime shot Brotherhood on location, giving Providence an authentic depiction from July 2006 to December 2008. But that only amounted to 55 episodes in three seasons.

Conversely, despite occupying the inauspicious Friday-night slot for its whole ride, Providence mustered five healthy seasons and 96 episodes.

Family Guy was cancelled in 2002, the same year Cianci was jailed, but returned in 2005. It is now in its 17th overall season, a Sunday-night staple opposite The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers. As of this week, it has churned out 320 episodes.

Besides MacFarlane’s breakout brainchild, the P-Bruins are only other holdover from that momentous winter and spring. They still draw exemplary fanfare in the AHL, but have yet to win another championship. Four return trips to the penultimate round of the playoffs have not yielded a second Calder Cup Final ticket.

And PC baseball has had no renaissance. In fact, America’s pastime is preparing to peel more of itself away from the Ocean State. The Pawtucket Red Sox will conduct their 48th and final campaign next year before moving to Worcester, Mass., in 2021. Providence could have kept that club in its eponymous county, but no deal for a venue nailed down the pegs.

Both Providence and Quahog’s most famous mayors have passed away within the last three years. Cianci was still hosting a local talk show when he died unexpectedly at age 74 on Jan. 28, 2016. In June 2017, West’s 88-year-old homonymous voice artist of Batman fame succumbed to leukemia.

But even with the former’s sketchy side, each are remembered for their shots in Rhode Island’s cultural arm. West was the first established A-list ringer with a recurring role on Family Guy, appearing 117 times. His 17 years in office (also nonconsecutive, as Lois Griffin briefly replaced him) fell only four short of Cianci’s.

Amid West’s reign, his constituents were seen advertising Del’s Frozen Lemonade, buying groceries from Stop & Shop and driving by the Big Blue Bug. More out-of-staters undoubtedly saw those entities because the guest star’s veteran presence drew them to the series. He gave it some Y2K compliance after its 1999 grace period.

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have given us, Mr. Mayor,” MacFarlane stated on Twitter after West’s passing. “You’re irreplaceable.”

Quahog’s school system even acknowledged West’s Providence counterpart with Buddy Cianci Junior High.

“I wish I had gone there myself,” the namesake joked to Bloomberg TV in a June 2015 interview.

Well, you can’t have it all, as Cianci learned the hard way when his misdeeds caught up with him. But he and others also warrant credit for the way substantial scripted and sports narratives went through his city and state two decades ago this year.

Dave Goucher talks Rhode Island sports scene’s past, present, future

(Photo courtesy of Dave Goucher)

Dave Goucher is on the all-time roster of Pawtucket Red Sox announcers in much the same way David Ortiz is on the all-time roster of Pawtucket Red Sox players.

Both men had cemented their place in the top echelon of their respective fields when they came for a cameo performance at the home of Boston baseball’s Triple-A partner. Ortiz was coming off his second World Series championship when he made a three-game rehab appearance in July of 2008. He and the MLB Red Sox were on their way to a third title when he played six more Triple-A games in April of 2013.

Four months later, Goucher brought his skills to McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., coming off his 12th season as the Boston Bruins radio announcer. He showed up for a mid-August game against Louisville, then another versus Syracuse two weeks later.

But whereas Ortiz and a host of other Boston baseballers come to McCoy for restoration, Goucher’s guest gigs in the booth were a time for reflection. At that point, he was coming off a sprinting marathon in his full-time job. The Bruins had crammed 70 games into a five-month window between the end of a season-shortening lockout and the 2013 Stanley Cup Final.

Before that, he had called the team’s 2011 championship run. He had even worked a game at the home of the PawSox’ parent club, Fenway Park, when the Bruins hosted the 2010 NHL Winter Classic.

But as a former intern with Rhode Island’s minor-league ball club, he had a game in the McCoy booth sitting next to an unchecked box with no flexibility for substitutes.

“Going back to call a few games there in 2013 kind of brought things full circle for me,” he said in an email to Pucks and Recreation. “It was only a couple of months after the Bruins had lost in the Stanley Cup Final to Chicago, and I kept thinking about how much my life had changed from the time I worked at McCoy (1987) until then.”

Born and raised in Pawtucket, four miles north of Providence, Goucher was experiencing a homecoming of the highest order. “From the booth,” he remarked, “I could see past the right field fence to the old McLean Trucking building where my father worked when I was a kid.”

And he was calling the action for a franchise that has existed for almost as long as he has. The PawSox began as a Double-A team in the Eastern League in 1970, then were elevated to the International League in 1973.

In Goucher’s top sport of choice, the local sports scene soon reprised a practice of taking an associated Boston team’s uniform and simply substituting a “P” for a “B.” The Providence Bruins took root as the Hub’s new American Hockey League base in 1992. It marked the area’s first claim to a pro hockey franchise since the AHL’s Reds left for Binghamton, N.Y., in 1977.

By the time the P-Bruins were inaugurated, Goucher was a senior and a student-sportscaster at Boston University. Over his Christmas break that year, he opportunistically took in a game at the Providence Civic Center, but admits that “I never would have thought I’d actually be calling the games three years later.”

Yet after graduating and breaking into the broadcasting ranks with the ECHL’s Wheeling Nailers, he got that opportunity. He would man the Civic Center booth for the next five seasons before successfully pursuing an opening at the Boston Bruins radio network.

Since that time, Goucher has garnered his share of celebrity. Besides his play-by-play duties at the TD Garden, he has amused listeners on 98.5 The Sports Hub with his recurring “Dave Goucher Goes to the Movies” segment on a weekday talk show. There, he channels his vocational energy to lend unique commentary to classic film and TV clips. When the Bruins are out of action, he has enjoyed freelance NHL playoff assignments for Westwood One and college hockey for the NBC Sports Network.

All the while, key constants have stuck back home. The PawSox are in their 45th IL season, while the P-Bruins just finished their 25th campaign. Only Rochester, N.Y., with baseball’s Red Wings dating back to 1899 and the AHL’s Americans since 1956, has sustained the same Triple-A baseball-hockey combination longer than the Rhode Island market.

In addition, with their Boston ties, Providence and Pawtucket claim the longest active affiliations in their respective sports.

“The long run for both the P-Bruins and the PawSox is a great testament to how knowledgeable, caring and passionate sports fans are in Rhode Island,” Goucher said. “I think they take great pride in knowing that their respective teams are the last step on the way to big-league careers for players. I grew up within walking distance of McCoy Stadium and still remember seeing Wade Boggs, Marty Barrett and Roger Clemens all play in Pawtucket.”

Hoping for a Pawtucket perk-up

Given the decades of tradition, it jarred many local minds and even more hearts when an out-of-state relocation looked palpable for the PawSox. Just like Fenway, McCoy Stadium is the oldest baseball venue at its level, currently celebrating its 75th year. Attendance has steadily sagged despite general on-field success, and complicated renovate-or-replace tugs-of-verbal-war have erupted.

As the team’s previous lease was nearing its end, CEO Larry Lucchino of the parent club initiated a push for a park in downtown Providence. After that 2015 outline — which would have come to fruition this year — fell through within months, speculation proliferated over a slew of cities in neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut.

That notion drew natural upset from Rhode Island’s sentimental seamheads, but it is a more personal matter for Pawtucket citizens.

With a legacy from the cotton and textile boom that precipitated the Industrial Revolution, Pawtucket prides itself on its marked blue-collar heritage. Dwarfed by the cultured capital and county namesake in population by more than 100,000, it validates its status as its own city by harboring the state’s favorite ball club.

At the time of Lucchino’s Pawtucket-to-Providence proposition, even before the trajectory went from out-of-city to out-of-state, a sense of lost lifeblood took hold. Pawtucket mayor Donald Grebien told the local press that the announcement “just took the air out of the room.”

Goucher weighed in on Twitter by calling the occasion “An unnecessary, sad day for my hometown.”

Two years later, though, all earthshaking changes are on hold. The Triple-A Red Sox renewed their McCoy lease through 2020, and are now using the time they bought to seek a state-of-the-art facility in their lifelong town.

In late April, Lucchino unveiled a proposed multifaceted, year-round recreation district for downtown. If approved, the natural nucleus would be McCoy’s replacement, which would add punctuation to the Boston connection with its own version of Fenway’s hallowed Green Monster.

Other existing or proposed aspects of the complex would be geared toward keeping the historic Slater Mill neighborhood sleepless every summer day. To supplement the calendar, Lucchino’s group is including none other than a community hockey rink in the package.

For Goucher, a former youth puckster in town, that blueprint is all but his boyhood in one panoramic Polaroid. But he is more interested in his hometown’s future health.

“The new ballpark near Slater Mill would play a vital role in helping revitalize downtown Pawtucket,” he said. “The ice rink piece of it is an added bonus.”

Separate cities, similar stories

Goucher and fellow Pawtucket residents have seen the likes of this pattern before. During the franchise’s wee phases in the mid-’70s, the fan support and stadium conditions fueled and reeked of eventual bankruptcy. Relocation appeared inevitable until some arm-twisting convinced the late Ben Mondor to take a chance.

The affectionate expression “PawSox” did not even come to life until Mondor owned the team. But over time, he formed a revered front-office troika with club president Mike Tamburro and general manager Lou Schweccheimer. Throughout three-plus decades, they made McCoy an appealing choice for a family outing and gradually added more seats, modern amenities and extravagant murals dedicated to the on-field alumni.

By the second decade of that era, Goucher got in on the Mondor-Tamburro-Schweccheimer combination’s second-family feel as a high-school intern in the summer of 1987. Players of note that season included Brady Anderson, Todd Benzinger, Ellis Burks, Oil Can Boyd and Sam Horn.

“My fondest memories of working at McCoy are just the people involved, led by Ben and Mike and Lou,” Goucher said. “They took the time to actually learn your name.”

Goucher worked primarily in concessions, an ostensibly thankless position given its setup away from view of the field. But he was also on call for reinforcement with the grounds crew whenever inclement weather lurked.

“We had to be ready to pull the tarp if the skies opened up,” he recalled. “If they didn’t, we got to stand there and watch the game and get paid for it!”

Eight years later, not long after a pack of Providence investors followed the PawSox pattern, Goucher’s green came from standing, watching and describing quality minor-league action in Rhode Island’s other premier sports facility. In some ways, the establishment that granted that job did for Providence what he now hopes can happen for Pawtucket.

The old Rhode Island Reds bolted in the summer of 1977, ironically the first year of McCoy’s Mondor revival. It took 15 years for hockey to come back at the behest of the late Providence mayor Buddy Cianci. When it did, a multitude of new downtown attractions followed in a manner that cemented the capital’s “Renaissance City” moniker.

Having now finished their first quarter-century of operation, the P-Bruins boast the third-longest tenure of any AHL brand. Support has been sustainable through thick and thin, both of which Goucher witnessed firsthand during his stint. He called a 19-win, last-place season in 1997-98, followed by a Calder Cup championship in 1999.

“I think 25 years for the P-Bruins in Providence is an exceptional accomplishment,” he remarked. “During my five years there, the team routinely led the AHL in attendance, proving just how passionate hockey fans are in Rhode Island, dating back to the days of the Reds. And I think fans like the fact they can see a player in Providence one night and, theoretically, in Boston the next.”

With his own career chronicle, Goucher has added the precedent of potentially hearing a future NHL announcer on his last stepping stone. In the ’80s, he enjoyed watching Barrett’s and Boggs’ slugging and Clemens’ fireballing before the Fenway faithful did.

In the latter half of the ’90s, he more or less returned a favor. His fellow Rhode Islanders heard his thorough pre-faceoff descriptions of each team’s jersey and contrasting excitement for a Bruins goal and trademark deflated deadpan for an opposing tally before the rest of New England could.

‘Enormous pride’

Time will grade the merit of the perpetual curmudgeonly complaint that sportscasters are not what they used to be. For now, Goucher’s former haunts are proof that tomorrow’s top-level announcers are not groomed under the same conditions that he was.

P-Bruins listeners can no longer use a physical radio to take in the action, as audio and video webcasts are the sole method of dissemination. On the flipside, as long as they have Wi-Fi, fans need not be in Southern New England to stay up to speed.

The resultant outreach is greater in number, but the overall signal quality can be erratic. In addition, under league auspices rather than that of a local outlet, the personal flavor has wilted.

It is not what it was when Goucher was calling games on WPRO-630, the Providence market’s signature station. Those presentations were complete with a complementing color commentator, a half-hour pregame show and a postgame wrap. Today’s broadcasts are typically accessible from five minutes before faceoff until the immediate aftermath of the final horn, and the play-by-play voice usually flies solo.

The PawSox have pounced on the luxuries of the Internet as well, but still partner with a slew of stations throughout the region. However, the expressed kinship between the state’s two Triple-A franchises is a shell of its old self. (Although the P-Bruins did observe a moment of silence before their 2010-11 season opener, five days after Mondor’s passing.)

Six months after Goucher got his start in Providence, Pawtucket enlisted another play-by-play prodigy in Don Orsillo. A former employee of Springfield’s AHL teams, Orsillo found his long-term niche in baseball and began a four-season run with the PawSox in 1996. A year later, the team found a new flagship radio abode in WLKW-790, a sister station to WPRO and a backup channel for P-Bruins games at the time.

Goucher and Orsillo’s brotherhood as broadcasters came to reflect the sorority of their stations. The dreams of the two twentysomethings manifestly matched those of the various Boston prospects they covered.

“Occasionally we’d get together, have a beer and wonder if we were ever going to make it,” Goucher recalled.

By the turn of the century, both men’s ambitions were fulfilled. Orsillo was off to the New England Sports Network in the spring of 2000, Goucher to WBZ-1030 the subsequent fall.

Goucher’s elevation to Boston made him the second P-Bruins alumnus to find NHL employment in his field. Joe Beninati called the franchise’s first two seasons on WPRO before becoming the Washington Capitals’ TV play-by-play man in 1994.

The PawSox, two decades the P-Bruins’ senior, have a denser scroll of distinguished alumni. In their own sport, they have honed Major League personalities Gary Cohen, Dave Flemming, Andy Freed, Glenn Geffner, Aaron Goldsmith, Dave Jageler, Jeff Levering and Dave Shea.

Orsillo’s predecessor as NESN’s Red Sox broadcaster, Bob Kurtz, is another PawSox product, and has long since settled in with the NHL’s Minnesota Wild. Football has Dan Hoard of the Cincinnati Bengals and Bob Socci of the New England Patriots, the Bruins’ Sports Hub cohabitants.

But Goucher, the belated addition to that celestial roster, is one of the few who has known the team and the park since childhood. If he has any influence, there may be more of his kind to come. Last July, as part of Boston’s Play by Play Sports Broadcasting Camp, he took the campers on a day trip to see the PawSox host the Red Wings.

Whether any of those campers will one day call the team by the same name in the same town remains to be seen. Schweccheimer and Tamburro have gone elsewhere since selling the keys to Lucchino and company. Ample debate, both economic and emotional, among state officials and constituents will sway the proposed “Pride of Pawtucket.”

Four years after Goucher viewed elements of his childhood from the McCoy press box, he refrains from investing in crystal balls. Instead, the city’s most recognizable product in the sports world only hopes there is much more ahead for the city’s only pro sports entity.

“The team is part of the fabric of the city, something the city takes enormous pride in,” he concluded. “I don’t have a great understanding of the finances involved, but it’s hard for me to envision that team playing in another city.”