The comforts of home

Tonight, with the Bruins and Celtics both on the road, the TD Banknorth Garden will be quiet. But as recently as two years ago, even when the local teams were home, they played in relative silence.

Not anymore.

"There's been a huge change, obviously,'' said Bruins center Marc Savard, whose first season in Boston was the dreadful 2006-07 campaign. "I know Boston likes a winner and they've been spoiled in that regard. Since that first year, it's been night and day with people coming out and being a lot louder.''

Spoiled? You bet we've been spoiled, with Boston teams producing an astonishing six titles in three major sports beginning in early 2002: Three Super Bowls, two World Series and one NBA title. In that span, the Patriots have played in five AFC Championship games and the Red Sox have played in four American League Championship Series, meaning this city was thisclose to 10 league championship games or series during the administration of George W. Bush.

In these parts, Barack Obama clearly has a great deal to live up to.

But the Garden? Until recently, it might as well have come equipped with a drive-thru window. Two years ago at this time, the B's and C's were both earning D's (at best), the Celtics mired in a franchise-record 18-game losing streak and the Bruins taking the ice without any apparent plan or discipline, routinely skating around in circles under the passive watch of vagabond coach Dave Lewis.

Visiting clubs could simply pull up to the Garden and order up their wins, then drive away without ever really setting foot on the ground.

But not now.

Through Monday's doubleheader split at the Garden, the Bruins (17-3-2) and Celtics (21-2) are a combined 38-5-2 at home this winter season. Of the combined 45 home games they have played, they have just five outright losses. Already, the Bruins and Celtics have eclipsed their entire 2006-07 win total by 26 percent -- that's 38 wins combined now to just 30 two seasons ago -- and their current schedules are barely half complete.

In many ways, the momentum is self-sustaining. The teams win, inspiring better attendance and a more invested audience, which only makes the TD Banknorth Garden a far more difficult place to play.

Note: Drive-thru service is no longer available at this location.

"I think that makes for a huge advantage for us,'' said Savard of the increase in attendance this year. "It gives you more life and you feel a lot more pumped up. If it's flat in here, you've got to make your own energy.''

In 2008-09, at least, the Bruins are the obvious variable. They are now enjoying the kind of awakening the champion Celtics celebrated last season. The irony is that the Bruins, in some ways, have done this in an entirely different fashion than the Celtics, benefiting from the simultaneous development of several young players, from Milan Lucic, Phil Kessel, and David Krejci to Matt Hunwick, Blake Wheeler, and Mark Stuart.

The exceptions are Savard and defenseman Zdeno Chara, who came to the Bruins as major free-agent acquisitions in the aftermath of the historic NHL work stoppage that cost the league the entire 2004-05 season, making all other lockouts and strikes look like a coffee break. But where Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen immediately made the Celtics a winner -- or, rather, a champion again -- Chara and Savard have had to endure a more deliberate growth process.

Different game, different rules.

"Obviously, I first envisioned [the success] right away. It was frustrating [for a time],'' Savard admitted. "For it happen right now, this is what I envisioned. When I talked to Peter [Chiarelli, the Bruins general manager, before signing], he told me this is what they wanted to do.''

In the interim, Danny Ainge turned the Celtics from a team with the second-worst record in the league to one that secured a 17th champion, a startling metamorphosis that effectively took place overnight. Two years ago, the Celtics went 12-29 at home, a particularly dreadful mark in a league where the playing floor is all but tilted. Nonetheless, before last season, the Celtics actually set an undefeated home schedule as one of their preseason goals, ultimately settling for home marks of 35-6 (regular season) and 48-7 (including postseason, during which they went 13-1).

Now the Bruins have reached a comparable level of home success, despite Monday's frustrating overtime shootout loss. The Bruins have the dubious distinction of the city's most championship-starved franchise -- after all, it has been since 1972 -- and one of the great remaining questions about them concerns their performance in the spring, when the games truly mean something and the intensity and importance of every shift grows.

The good news? For the Bruins, like the Celtics, the majority of games likely will be played here, in Boston, an advantage each teams has earned by staking its claim as one of the elite clubs in its league. Years ago -- for you young'uns, we called that era "the '80s" -- playoff hockey and basketball were New England rites of spring, taking precedent over the NFL draft and the start of a new baseball season.

And so this year, it seems, we will renew an old tradition in the building on Causeway Street.

Besides, winter doesn't really end here until at least May, anyway.