Charlie McAvoy remembers his first meeting with Zdeno Chara well.<\/p>\n
McAvoy was still a teenager, just recently signed out of Boston University, and he was called up from Providence to go with the team for a playoff series against Ottawa in April 2017. They met first at the Bruins\u2019 practice facility at Warrior Ice Arena and McAvoy was still unsure how to approach the future Hockey Hall of Famer with an intimidating presence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I met him, I called him \u2018Mr. Chara\u2019 and he was like, \u2018Don\u2019t do that. Call me Z,\u2019 \u201d said McAvoy, laughing at the memory. \u201cHe just has that larger than life persona. I was just wide-eyed. You look up to him, obviously, and I was just blown away by how much of a gentleman he was and how kind he was to me. At that point, I was just a 19-year-old kid and it was just amazing how welcoming he was and that was really part of the culture that he created here.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Chara created \u2013 re-instituting and re-imagining the Bruins\u2019 hard-to-play-against work ethic that had been taken for granted until it had slipped in the early 2000s \u2013 will be enshrined on Thursday night when the HHOFer will have his No. 33 raised to the rafters of the Garden before Boston\u2019s game against the Seattle Kraken.<\/p>\n
For McAvoy, everything he is as a player traces back to the days that Chara shepherded him into the National Hockey League.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really wide-eyed from what I remember when I first met him, getting that chance on the first go-round to play with him a little bit in the playoffs,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cThen ultimately that rookie year we became partners. I just learned so much for him, so much. He really helped me grow as a pro and to find the game, the consistency and what I wanted to become as a professional. I credit so much of that to Z, I really do.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, Chara\u2019s unique game would have been hard for anyone to replicate. But there was a path that Chara forged which McAvoy could follow and traits to which he could aspire.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow hard he was defensively. His ability to manage a game and play a ton of minutes. I always thought that was incredible. That was something I wanted to do, to be that guy who could play 25 a night, maybe more. And that was Z,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cHe could shut down the best players. That was a lot of what I learned that first year. And maybe when I was in college I was run-and-gun and trying to play offense every shift. He really reined me in and said, \u2018Look, our responsibility every night is to shut down the best players on their team. And that\u2019s how we win.\u2019 That should feel like a goal and an assist, if you can keep a (Connor) McDavid off the scoresheet. I had to digest that and really take it to heart. And that was something that I think was responsible for becoming the player I became, learning from him and really trying to get better at the defensive side.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAvoy is doing his best to pay that forward. He just turned 28 in December, so he\u2019s not quite the grizzled veteran just yet, but he does try to impart what he learned from Chara to new players coming in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it helps me with every guy I\u2019ve played with,\u201d said McAvoy, who is currently paired with 26-year-old rookie Jonathan Aspirot. \u201cHe was really the first consistent partner I had. We played together for years. The way that we communicated, the way that we piggy-backed off each other, when it was time to put a fire out for each other, those were the things that I saw as being attributes of being a good partnership. And I try to take that and carry that with whoever I\u2019m playing with. But, yeah, there are really so many things and I never really thought of that till you just mentioned it. There\u2019s so many things that I attribute to him. He really laid the foundation for everything for me as pro hockey player.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a sense, Chara hasn\u2019t really gone anywhere. He has rejoined the team in a mentor role and, as you might expect, he hasn\u2019t approached the new gig half-heartedly. Coach Marco Sturm and several players have spoken glowingly about the impact he\u2019s had on the operation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really neat. It\u2019s awesome to see him and to still have the relationship now, just in a different role,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cBut it\u2019s just great to have him around. I get so excited when those guys come back. They pop in every now and then but Z\u2019s here consistently. It\u2019s great. He brings so much insight to us. His wealth of knowledge and experience is only going to help us. It\u2019s nice to meet with him and do our little state of the union. He\u2019s always there to help us any way he can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked for his most indelible memory of Chara, on or off the ice, his former defense partner answered like most fans would. It was Game 5 at the Garden in the 2019 Stanley Cup Final against the Blues when Chara, his jaw shattered from a shot in the game before, was introduced in the starting lineup.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it was Stanley Cup finals, that was electric. But I\u2019m lined up on the blue line next to him starting the game and I\u2019ll never forget how deafening that noise was,\u201d said McAvoy. \u201cIt was the loudest I\u2019ve ever heard TD Garden, the stakes as high as they were. He was just amazing. He was not going to be denied the chance to play in that game. That wrapped it all up in who he was as a person and the toughness that he had.\u201d \u2026\u00a0Hampus Lindholm joined an optional practice in a red non-contact jersey. Sturm called it a good step but ruled him out for Thursday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlie McAvoy remembers his first meeting with Zdeno Chara well. McAvoy was still a teenager, just recently signed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,2154,5,40,4,43,4079],"class_list":{"0":"post-408143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-charlie-mcavoy","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-zdeno-chara"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115896299211347974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}