Boston is one of the most storied cities in the world. It's pretty much the center of excellence in pro sports these days. I don't need to tell you about the champion Patriots or the Red Sox, but I might need to tell you about the New England Revolution pro soccer team who lost in the Major League Soccer championship this year, and have been perennial contenders for the league championship. And of course, the NBA is buzzing about the revived Celtics who are running roughshod over their NBA opponents.

Many of you may think that getting tickets to any Boston pro sporting event is as easy as buying a Nintendo Wii. Actually, the Wii is easier to purchase.

But yesterday I went to the new Boston Garden (officially known as the TD Banknorth Garden) to watch a Boston Bruins hockey game. It's been almost 20 years since I went to my last one. Part of the reason is that the Bruins have played mediocre to horribly for much of that time.

Truth be told, getting a ticket at the Boston Garden used to be the most difficult ticket ever (about 20 years ago), but both the Celtics and Bruins have fallen on rough times. Now that the Celtics are looking like a championship team, tickets to their games have become tough to get.

That leaves the Bruins who sit tied for second in the Northeast Division of the Eastern Conference. In a nutshell, they're a top NHL team.

They're also the greatest secret in Boston entertainment. It's far easier to get a Bruins ticket than for any other pro sporting event or musical in Boston. No joke.

So, on a nice Saturday afternoon, I sat in the balcony and happily watched the Bruins lose to the St. Louis Blues 4-1. Usually I can't stand losing, but this was different. I expected to go there and see a mediocre game, after all these were the Bruins.

What I saw was an amazing game played by both teams. Had Bruins captain Zdeno Chara not single-handedly lost the game for them with his slow play and terrible decisions, the Bruins might well have won the game.

I single out Chara because the guy looks huge on the ice. He's 6'9" and the tallest player in the NHL. When the Bruins signed him, I was curious how such a tall guy would function in a game that is dominated by shorter and quicker players. After watching him, he was exactly what I expected: tall, gangly, and a bit slower than everyone else. Maybe he had an off-game, but he repeatedly made decisions that lost the game.

Aside from an anemic power-play unit, the rest of the game was fantastic. The slow and boring play of Bruins teams in the past was replaced with a team that has sharp and creative passing. They easily could have scored 4 or 5 more goals had Blues goalie Manny Legace not played a great game.

But the score was irrelevant. What was far more important was the highly skilled level of play exhibited by the Bruins, the countless scoring chances that they put themselves into through aggressive forechecking and imaginative passing, and the moments where the new Garden sounded like the old Garden (despite the fact that only 60% of the seats had a body in them).

That's right, 40% of the seats were empty. Whole sections around the Garden were empty. But here's the wonderful thing about the new Garden, the sightlines are fantastic. Even the seats at the top of the arena have a fantastic view of the game.

I remember the new Garden sounding too quiet several years ago when I went to a Celtics game with my cousins. Maybe the Garden made some changes to its acoustics, because it sounded amazing at times yesterday. I've been to many a sold-out game at the Patriots Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA, and never did I hear it sound as loud as the Garden was yesterday.

So, if any of you are in Boston this winter and looking for great sports entertainment at a reasonable price (my balcony seat was $36.50), go to Causeway Street and catch a Bruins game. You won't regret it, and even better is that no advance purchase is needed.