Tom Larson stayed the course

The Boston Bruins’ longest-serving playoff beard?

Not the one that Raymond Bourque began growing on April 5, 1990, for Game 1 of the Adams Division opening-round series against Hartford and shaved off prior to the final game of the 1990 Stanley Cup final against Edmonton on May 24.

No, that distinction belongs to Lanny Lee Larason, known through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s to Bruins fans as Tom Larson, the TV38 and later NESN studio host for Bruins games. When the Red Sox went to TV38 in the ’70s, he took on that studio role as well.

Take a trip on YouTube and you can still see Larson run through Bruins highlights from their 1971-72 championship campaign and assorted other intros to the way-back time machine.

Larson passed away on Wednesday in Virginia.

In the fall of 1973 during first intermission of a Bruins home game, Larson interviewed my older brother, Don Colageo, who had done a unique oil painting of Garnet “Ace” Bailey’s game-winning goal that saved Game 1 of the 1972 Stanley Cup final against the New York Rangers.

His career continued in radio at WHDH in Boston, headquartered in the Prudential Center where he was visited in 1985 by a 28-year-old career changer aspiring to someday replace the legendary Bob Wilson high above rinkside as the radio voice of the Bruins.

Larson greeted that young man with a big smile and a question: “So you really want to do this?” The answer was an unwavering yes, and so he said to take any opportunity, get your foot in the door, sweep the floor if you have to.

Words to live by for anyone on the road less traveled.

Many floors have been swept, none in radio stations, but career-making opportunities are often behind doors not directly associated with the preconceived blueprint, and a broadcaster, for instance, could wind up a writer, find out he enjoys the work, spend many years in the newspaper industry, most notably with The Standard-Times (New Bedford, Mass.) and eventually contribute to affiliated publications, The Hockey News, USA Hockey magazine, podcasts and websites like BostonHockeyNow.com.

What are the odds that a pretty good Division II basketball player from rural Missouri will, through opportunities in television, became so familiar to Boston fans that, in one playoff opener during the eight-year streak of Bruins-Canadiens playoff series, he greeted the viewers by simply saying, “Here we go again.” We knew exactly what he meant, it was all that familiar.

You just never know, and perhaps that’s what Larson most wanted to get across.