For Boston Bruins \u201cfeel good\u201d moments, it\u2019s going to be difficult to top watching Zdeno Chara\u2019s No. 33 getting retired in a classy, emotional ceremony that hit all the right notes immediately before the B\u2019s went out and swept their first five game homestand since 2019, with a solid 4-2 victory over the Seattle Kraken at TD Garden on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always going to be a good night when 2011 Cup champs like Mark Recchi, David Krejci, Tim Thomas, Tuukka Rask, Dennis Seidenberg, Andrew Ference and Patrice Bergeron are in the building, and that goes doubly so for Bobby Orr, Johnny Bucyk, Willie O\u2019Ree, Terry O\u2019Reilly and\u00a0Ray Bourque\u00a0making the ceremony as well. And it\u2019s a fitting show of respect and admiration to Chara\u2019s 15 years in Boston that it felt like everybody who played a part in Chara\u2019s glorious run in Boston was at least a small part of the ceremony.<\/p>\n
The win on the ice after the ceremony kept the Bruins in the second wild card spot in the playoff standings and continued to underscore the efforts of this season\u2019s team to return to the culture that Chara restored to the Black and Gold back in 2006 when he signed in Boston as a free agent.<\/p>\n
Chara called it \u201cthe best decision of my life\u201d signing with the Bruins and taking a bit of a risk on an unknown NHL city and an Original Six organization he didn\u2019t know all that well, but he became the greatest free agent signing in NHL history.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo well deserved,\u201d said\u00a0Bourque when talking about Chara\u2019s retirement ceremony after walking the Gold Carpet on Thursday night. \u201cThings really changed when (Zdeno) came here as a free agent, and from that point on, the culture and everything that comes with that, the success, the run they had, he was such a big part of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just remember him as a fresh young player coming up with the Islanders, and what he became. It\u2019s a credit to him and how hard and dedicated he was for the game, and just so much, so much fun to watch him develop into the player and person that he is. He’s a legend. He really deserves to be up there\u2026deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pomp and circumstance, the organic \u201cThank You, Chara!\u201d chants that almost made the 6-foot-9 Slovakian burst into tears and the sight of Chara watching wife Tatiana and children Elliz, Zack and Ben lift his banner to the rafters all had to make a sizeable impression on current core Bruins players like David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, Morgan Geekie, Jeremy Swayman, Nikita Zadorov, Elias Lindholm and so many others.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chara had a message for all of those Bruins players \u2013 and to everybody really \u2013 about how his moment could be possible for them, and why it was so important that he rattled off every single one of his 2011 Stanley Cup champ teammates while making a speed ahead of the banner getting raised.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s just that without championships, you are not going to be successful. You are not going to be recognized. The championships, that’s what they do. They rise everyone [up],\u00a0they extend careers for everyone. Everybody does better with the championships. I mean, you create dynasties, you create stories, you create memories, you create what we are experiencing [with the number retirement.] It’s very simple,\u201d said Chara. \u201cOnce you win a championship, everything gets so much better and greater and better, for everyone, and that is the most beautiful thing about it. You create extended families with each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s true, you have bonds, you have friendships that are now sealed forever. We see each other. It’s amazing. It’s like you’ve seen your brother for real, and you can trust the person, you know everything about him, and anytime anybody needs something, you’re there for him. That’s what championships do, not just like I said, from a career standpoint, they help you\u2026but also for the rest of their life. They create something very special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chara is right, of course, that the Hall of Fame inductions and the jersey retirements don\u2019t happen, or take much longer to become a reality, if there are no Stanley Cup titles to go with it. But we are also still talking about the career NHL leader in games played for a defenseman, a Norris Trophy winner and a larger-than-life hockey icon that was the tallest player in history with the hardest slap shot by anybody, ever.<\/p>\n
So there was always something special about the 6-foot-9 Slovakian as he mastered a handful of languages that he can speak, became a licensed real estate agent and spends his free time running marathons all over the world as he\u2019s done since retiring as a hockey player. But it\u2019s the importance of a hard-working, unselfish and team-oriented culture teeming with respect and competition that has always been the true Chara legacy in Boston, and it\u2019s one that has been passed down to guys like McAvoy, Pastrnak and Sean Kuraly who played with him during the Boston years.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously he\u2019s a big mentor. He\u2019s been a part of my growth in my career. I have a lot to thank him for\u2026and he knows it. We have a great relationship,\u201d said\u00a0Pastrnak. \u201cIt\u2019s this simple: If you pick up his work ethic, the way he works and the way he shows up to the rink every day and leads by example. There was no other way than to follow him and that\u2019s the easiest way to put it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was easy to see how the positive energy transferred from Chara\u2019s ceremony right into the B\u2019s scoring a pair of goals in the opening four minutes of the game that allowed them to cruise to a fifth straight win. As Chara said about the banner raising itself, \u201cit was even better than I could have imagined to be\u201d when the Bruins players wrapped everything up into a bow in one of the surefire season highlights for the Black and Gold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Boston Bruins \u201cfeel good\u201d moments, it\u2019s going to be difficult to top watching Zdeno Chara\u2019s No. 33…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4,46049,46050],"class_list":{"0":"post-411571","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-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-top-bruins","15":"tag-top-story-2"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115907092978966619","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411571","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=411571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}