In what can only be described as the Bruins’ most impactful move of the offseason, they signed a 45-year-old defenseman Zdeno Chara to a one-day contract so he can retire as a Bruin.
All kidding aside, Chara was probably the reason I, and a lot of other people my age (35), got into the Bruins in the mid-2000s. The team had been unremarkable for most of our lives. We were far too young to remember the two Cup Finals they appeared in in the late 1980s, so most of us that didn’t grow up in a hockey household only knew the bad Bruins (and Celtics) of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Then came Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard. Both signed in the 2006 offseason and immediately changed not only the results on the ice, but also the perception of the team around town. The Jacobs, who had a reputation of not wanting to spend on the team, and being completely happy with a team that would barely make the playoffs, had just traded away franchise cornerstone Joe Thornton to San Jose. The Thornton move was met with a lot of resentment, so the ownership group knew they needed to act quick to fill his shoes. That summer they wasted no time finding the next face of the franchise, and a new cornerstone piece to build around, Zdeno Chara.
The organization continued to add through free agency, via trades, and through the draft, culminating in a 2011 Stanley Cup Championship that officially put the Bruins back on the Boston Sports map. That Cup title was what sucked a lot of people my agent into hockey and the Bruins and many of us haven’t left.
Another two Cup Finals appearances in 2013 and 2019 that came up short further re-cemented hockey’s place in the Boston sports scene. By the end of the 2010s, names like Bergeron, Marchand, Pastranak, and McEvoy supplanted Chara as the face of the organization, but it was still Big Z who wore the C on his sweater.
I don’t consider myself to be a big Bruins fan. In fact, I’m the definition of a fair weather fan (not to be confused with bandwagon), but I know how much Zdeno Chara meant to the Bruins and to Boston, and for that I say thank you.
