The rock upon which the Bruins’ most recent stay among the NHL’s elite has now been recognized with hockey’s highest honor.
Zdeno Chara, the long-time Bruins’ captain who is possibly the most impactful free agent signing in NHL history, was announced as one of this year’s inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame, it was announced on Tuesday.
Chara, elected in his first year of eligibility, was part of the heavy Boston flair in the Class of 2025 inductees. Legendary Boston University coach Jack Parker was voted in as a builder, while Harvard product Jennifer Botterill and Joe Thornton, who preceded Chara as Boston’s captain before going on to a stellar career in San Jose, went in the player category. Also going in as a player is Brianna Decker, the American stalwart who played local for the Boston Blades and Pride.
At BU as head coach from 1973-2013, Parker won three national titles and was at the forefront of the American growth in the sport of hockey. Parker joins long-time crosstown rival Jerry York, the Boston College coach who was elected into the HHOF in 2019.
The 80-year-old Parker, who’d been fielding calls from many of his former Terrier players since getting the call, accepted the honor with humility and his trademark humor.
“When I saw that Lanny MacDonald (HHOF chairman) called, I thought ‘Wow. I know Lanny MacDonald but he doesn’t know me.’ I thought it might be something about (new Ranger coach and BU alum) Mike Sullivan. I’ve been getting a lot of calls about the guys down in New York lately. But then he tells me I’ve been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame and I’m absolutely flabbergasted. I’m very excited about it and very humbled to be associated with such a great class,” said Parker. “It’s something I never thought would be possible to tell you the truth. I was on my boat and I had to get get off the boat for this call. A friend was giving me a ride home and he asked ‘When is the induction?’ I said “Not until November.’ He said ‘Do they know how old you are?’…I don’t know what to say. When I heard it was for the Hockey Hall of Fame, I thought it was for someone else. It was really something to get that call. It’s really something. I appreciate it so much.”
In a business in which movement is part of the job, Parker only knew one home and it was on Commonwealth Ave.
“I coached at BU for 40 years and I had a lot of fun doing it. We won a lot of games. You don’t get to coach 40 years if you don’t win games. But we won a lot of games because I had great assistant coaches, great players and my assistant coaches were the ones who found those players,” said Parker. “I had chances to leave a couple of times (he was once offered the Bruins’ job) but it was a great experience for me all those years.”
Botterill was a four-time first team All-ECAC and All-American at Harvard and a three-time Olympic gold medalist for Canada.
Also going in to the Hall in the player category are Duncan Keith and Alexander Mogilny.
Chara’s career stats – 1,680 games (the most of any defenseman), 209 goals, 471 assists, 2,085 penalty minutes, one Norris Trophy, one Stanley Cup – do not do justice to what a feared, suffocating defender the 6-foot, 260-pound Slovakian native was in his prime. That he won just one Norris is due to two factors – HHOFer Nick Lidstrom’s dominance in the first half of the this century in which he won seven and the Norris voters’ (of which the author is one) tendency to lean heavily toward point production. The year Chara did win it in 2008-09, he posted the highest goal total (19) of his career.
“Across his exceptional 24-year career, Zdeno put forth an unparalleled combination of size, strength, and ability each time he took the ice. He kept opponents on notice with his commanding physicality and set the tone for his teammates with a stout defensive acumen, all while having the power at any given time to unleash one of the hardest shots ever recorded,” said B’s team president Cam Neely in a statement. “His legendary leadership qualities were also continually on display, particularly when it came to his renowned off-ice conditioning which set a standard for all our players to follow. To put it simply, Zdeno’s skill set stands among the most unique in the century-plus history of the National Hockey League, making him enormously worthy of enshrinement into the Hockey Hall of Fame where he will be remembered forever as one of the very best to play our sport.”
Chara was on vacation and had been able to be reached by the HHOF committee.
It is hard to underestimate the effect that Chara’s signing in the summer of 2006 had on the Bruins’ franchise.
After the owners’ lockout in 2004-05 that pushed for a salary cap, led in part by B’s ownership, the club floundered. They had let several of their best players go via free agency and they could not be adequately replaced. To try and fill the holes, former GM Mike O’Connell decided to trade superstar Thornton to San Jose for three players – Brad Sturm, Marco Sturm and Wayne Primeau.
As a means to save the ‘05-06, the trade failed and O’Connell, and later coach Mike Sullivan, were dismissed.
But that opened the way for the signing of Chara in the summer of ‘06. The Ottawa Senators could only afford to sign one of their top top two defensemen, Wade Redden or Chara, and they chose Redden, making Chara a free agent.
Shortly after Chara signed in Boston – he would immediately become captain and begin a rebuilding of a winning culture – the B’s were also able to ink Marc Savard and a couple of pieces of the remake were in place. Patrice Bergeron and Tim Thomas were already in place and David Krejci, Brad Marchand and Milan Lucic would soon follow.
There was one false step with the hiring of Dave Lewis as coach in that first year, but after GM Peter Chiarelli swallowed hard and replaced him with Claude Julien for the ‘07-08 season, that kicked off a run of seven straight playoff seasons, two trips to the Stanley Cup final and the club’s first Stanley Cup in 39 years in 2011.
And yet it was a moment of incredible courage that cemented Chara’s almost mythical status among fans and his peers alike. In the B’s third and final trip to the Cup final in Chara’s 14-year run with the B’s, he was hit in the face with a puck that shattered his jaw in Game 4 in St. Louis. But as most everyone assumed that he was out for the series, Chara was there on the blue line with his jaw wired shut to start Game 5, eliciting a goose bump-inducing ovation from the Garden crowd.
Chara played one more year in Boston before finishing his career with the Capitals and finally the Islanders, the team that originally drafted him.
In his 14 seasons as Bruins’ captain, the club amasses a 615-353-134 record for a .619 winning percentage, tied for third (with Thornton’s Sharks) in that time period behind only Sidney Crosby’s Penguins and Alex Ovechkin’s Capitals.
If there was a criticism of the Chara Era it is that the B’s should have won more than one Cup. But it was certainly fun while it lasted.
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