This time of the year is seen by most, if not all, as a time to show happiness, to be able to thaw from a winter of discontent. Depending on your interests, though, the weather isn’t always the only factor in measuring the degree of happiness. For people living in and around the city of Boston, there’s always something going on at any time of the year, and sports is one of them.

Around April, there’s the beginning of another season of Red Sox baseball. Then there’s the Boston Marathon, and after that there’s our reigning world champion the New England Patriots getting their draft boards together as the NFL draft approaches.

But then there’s the two teams who share residence at the TD Garden, who gather the most attention from the media and the masses of fans as their regular seasons end and the playoffs begin. And those two teams would be the Bruins and Celtics.

If one is to rank what the best springs are in the city of Boston’s history based solely on the performances of those TD Garden tenants, one also needs to look back at what the worst of those seasons. There’s 1950, then there’s 2000 and 2001, then 2006 and 2007, and the worst there ever was of them all, 1997. Both teams missed their respective playoffs in those years, and in 1997, they held the dubious distinction of holding the worst records of their leagues: the Bruins at 26-47-9, snapping a 30-year postseason streak, and the Celtics at 15-67.

Then there’s the years only one of them reached postseason play, but would go on to find championship glory: the Celtics in the era of Red and Russell with titles from 1960-66 as the Bruins were in full-fledged rebuilding mode. And then there was the Bruins themselves in 1970, as the golden days of Celtic basketball had just ended the previous year, and as the Celtics were in rebuilding mode themselves.

Of course, there are plenty of springs when both teams qualified for playoff action and gave good showings for the fans: 1977, 1983, 1988, and 1991-92 were just a few of those years when both teams won a playoff series. In addition to that, those seasons saw either the Bruins or the Celtics reach their conference finals.

When you look at the championship disparity between the Celtics’ 17 NBA titles and the Bruins’ five Stanley Cups, that leaves the latter team with plenty of years when an otherwise good season is overshadowed: 1969, 1976, 1981, 1986, and 2008 were years in which the Bruins made the playoffs, but in which the Celtics would win their championship in those springs. That’s not to say the Celtics have had their moments of title envy for their other TD Garden roommates, examples being 1972 and 2011, the last year in which a Garden-based team brought Boston home a championship.

And with a nod, we must remember that no city has ever had their teams win both an NBA title and Stanley Cup championship in the same year. However, there were two springs in which Boston’s teams had a shot to that double: 1957, which saw the very first Celtics championship while the Bruins fell to the Montreal Canadiens in five games.

And then there’s 1974, when Boston came the closest: as Bobby Orr and the Big, Bad Bruins were bested by the Broad Street Bullies that were the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup final, Dave Cowens would start his own legacy as a Celtic great where his team prevailed over the Milwaukee Bucks for the first championship of the post-Russell era.

Overall, there have been more good spring seasons than there have been bad ones as far as sports go in the Hub.

With that said, how does this relate to this spring of 2017? Well, there’s the Bruins, back in the playoffs after missing it in the last two years. Finishing third in their division and in a playoff match-up with an Ottawa Senators team some could see as either overrated or underappreciated, Brad Marchand and company are licking their chops to give their fans who suffered from their playoff absence a deserving reward for their loyalty. I believe they have what it takes to prevail over the Senators despite going 0-4 in the regular season against them, but how they could do the rest of the way is a question mark.

Then there are the Celtics, with their first division title since 2012, and a good shot to return to their first NBA Finals since 2010 thanks to a high seed in an albeit weak Eastern Conference. I would love a deep playoff run from their roster, who have matured and thrived in Brad Stevens’ system, and are due for a series win.
In any case, look for this spring to be a good one!