Bruins finally announce that they will support their arena employees.

The Boston Bruins have finally done the right thing. 

The Bruins were the last team in the entire National Hockey League that had not yet made a commitment to support their arena employees as of Saturday morning, but the team has just now made a brief announcement that has officially remedied that situation. According to an announcement via the Bruins official website the team has now set up a fund that will help support the arena staff that has been hit hard as a result of the NHL suspending the 2019 - 2020 NHL regular season for the foreseeable future.

From the Bruins:

The Jacobs Family has established a $1.5 million fund for the Boston Bruins and TD Garden part-time gameday associates who will be financially burdened if the six remaining regular season Bruins games are not played. We thank our associates for their patience and understanding while we worked through the complexity of this unprecedented situation.

Now I hardly believe that the timing of this announcement has been purely a coincidence. On Friday Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a public official with some significant political capital, personally called out Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs and the Jacobs family for their failure to follow the example set forth by the rest of the NHL's teams. Healey called on the Jacobs family to act, and more importantly to act immediately, after having personally heard from multiple TD Garden employees who have been left in the dark about what comes next for them.

“I just want them to act, I just want them to step up and do something,” said Healey. “Do something for their workers. Every other team has said they are going to provide financial support for hourly workers who have been hurt by this, and that runs the range of paying their salaries or paying for their living expenses. … I just want them to act now.”

Earlier this month the Boston Bruins players, including notorious Bruins agitator Brad Marchand, contributed to a GoFundMe that was set up to help the employees that Healey was speaking out for but the Massachusetts Attorney General argued that it should have never come to that.

“Delaware North is a billion dollar company and it shouldn’t take Bruins players themselves contributing to GoFundMe pages to support these workers,” she said. “Every other NHL team stepped up, I hope the Jacobs family will step up too right now. It will make a huge difference for workers.”

Thankfully it seems the Bruins and the Jacobs family have finally stepped up.