The Hockey Show: Zdeno Chara

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Transcript

00:00What do you remember most about Chara, and what sticks out about his career that he had?

00:05So, you know, we talked about this a little bit on the air the other night in kind of preparation for our trip up here.

00:12We had a retrospective of Chara's career in Boston.

00:17Number one, it's just the consistency and the longevity of it, you know, really over his entire NHL career,

00:25but specifically the 14 years as the Bruins captain.

00:30You know, it just, there were no nights off, right?

00:33It was, he is the epitome of everything that the Bruins organization has stood for here for these last couple of decades.

00:43You know, so much of that came from him, and he brought that with him when he came to Boston.

00:49And, you know, Beersley mentioned, you know, that first year that Chara was here was, you know, the Dave Lewis year,

00:54and it was not exactly, you know, not exactly a raging success.

01:00But, you know, he was the foundation for everything that came after that, and that in a lot of ways still does exist here.

01:09And, you know, listen, I think ultimately, you know, you think back of, you know, with any great player of some of the moments,

01:19and Beersley mentioned it the other night, you know, him coming back with a broken jaw

01:24and the response from the crowd that night at TD Garden is one of those that, you know,

01:29you still get goosebumps even thinking about it.

01:32You know, him lifting the Stanley Cup higher than it had ever been lifted before by an NHL player because of his height.

01:41But he was just a consummate professional, and I think if you've seen any of the videos that the Bruins social media staff has put together here

01:54over the last few weeks about, you know, they've got some of his old teammates telling stories,

01:59and they're like Paul Bunyan-type stories.

02:01I mean, you know, he's that kind of a, you know, not only an outsized, you know, a huge physical player,

02:08but he's such a huge part of what this organization has been here.

02:15And, you know, we can't be more excited that he's going into the Hall of Fame.

02:19And the other thing that I'm struck by, too, Ty, is, you know, whether it be the announcement of the Hall of Fame

02:25or when Cam Neely, you know, told him that he was going to have his number retired later this year

02:31or, you know, any of these things that have happened along the way, you know, just in the last couple of days,

02:37they posted another video of Patrice Bergeron who had done this whole film about Zidane O'Chara

02:44and took him and surprised him with it.

02:48And Chara just seems so emotionally touched by all of it.

02:52Like, almost like he doesn't expect any of this, you know, fanfare.

02:58When he's one of the great, you know, the great defensemen that this game has ever seen

03:02and certainly is, you know, one of the best of his era, you know, for him to have done everything

03:08that he's done in this game and still have that level of humility about it is really amazing.