Former captain Zdeno Chara, in first year of eligibility, joins long list of Bruins greats in the Hockey Hall of Fame

Boston Globe

7 hours ago

The son of an Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler, the Slovak-born Chara went from the near-anonymity of being an Islanders third-pound pick in 1996, to crafting an illustrious, oft-intimidating career in which he also amassed 2,085 penalty minutes. Though he preferred not to fight, in part because it played into a stereotype that he felt diminished his talents, he was a frightening force amid the battle, easily overwhelming opponents with his long reach, wrestler's iron clenches, and a heavyweight's punches.
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'Bruins fans will love him,' offered his agent, Matt Keator, the day his client signed in Boston as a free agent in July 2006. 'He's a killing machine.'
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That intimidation factor indeed played heavily in Chara's favor, and served as protection for the entire bench. But he was much more than a strongman. He was a powerful, durable, and prolific force throughout his career, his longest run with the Bruins, spanning 14 seasons and 1,023 regular-season games, as well as 150 more in the postseason, when he helped lead the Bruins three times to the Cup Final.
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In the spring of 2011, the first of those trips to the Cup Final, the Bruins won what today stands as their lone title over the last 53 years. An exhausted Chara eagerly collected the Cup from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman near center ice that night in Vancouver and, standing a full 7 feet on skates, the bearded behemoth shook the shiny mug high over his head with such a vigor that he all but poked a hole in the roof of Rogers Arena.
'It's a huge honor,' Chara said on the ice that night 14 years ago. 'I'm so humbled to be in this position. It was so hard, such a long road, such a grind. I'm so happy for everyone to be able to cherish this moment. I will never forget this.'
As a kid in Trencin, where coaches often insisted he was better suited for basketball, a frustrated Chara was repeatedly cut from his amateur hockey teams or denied promotion to better squads. When drafted by the Islanders, basically as a curiosity, he had but his size, strength, and fearsome fighting skills as his potential ticket to an NHL career. In a league trending more to skill than power and strength, his odds of making it appeared slim.
Yet Chara opted to move (technically defect) to North America — eschewing Slovakia's mandatory military service — and stuffed all of his belongings into one suitcase as he made his way on a flight out of Bratislava to western Canada, at the invite of the WHL Prince George Cougars. It all could have ended there, before it even started.
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'I wasn't going back,' Chara recalled years later, explaining why he had brought so little with him on his journey. 'I had big hope.'
By Nov. 19, 1997, barely more than a year since leaving his homeland, he slipped into the lineup of the Rick Bowness-coached Islanders, logging 7:03 of ice time in a 3-2 win at Detroit. Almost 25 years later, he skated in his final game, April 29, 2022, scoring a goal (No. 209) for the Islanders in a 6-4 loss to the Lightning in Elmont, N.Y.
What carried him through all of it was a near-mythical off-ice training and nutrition regimen that Chara began to craft in his teens under the watch of his father Zdenek.
By his father's telling, his son sat down with him one day at the kitchen table for a lesson in visual and life arts. Dad drew a train, noting his son that day was in the last car. Listen to me and train with me, dedicate yourself to hard work, his father said, and you'll move up and one day drive the train.
'But get off,' he told his son, pointing to the drawing on the kitchen table, 'and the train leaves.'
Zdeno remained aboard for the full ride, training not at a state-of-the art gym or nearby fitness club, but in the family's backyard. There was yardwork to do, mowing and weeding and gardening. Zdeno did all of it, while routinely stopping, per his father's direction, in basic workout stations his father created among the trees and flower beds.
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'Obstacle courses around the garden, and I was grateful for it,' Chara said recently. 'Every time I went by and was watering the garden, or raking, or cutting grass, mowing the lawn, whatever we were doing, I was doing pushups or pullups or dips or squats. It adds up. You wouldn't believe it, at end of the day. You wouldn't feel like you did, I know how many, 50 or 70 or 80 pullups. But by end of day, you're like, 'My God, I did all that?!' Over time, day by day, it becomes a habit, part of your routine. It becomes part of you and you feel good because you see the improvement, how you are getting stronger, more comfortable, and you can tolerate more and more. On top of it all, you just become more proud and self-aware that, 'Hey, I am doing what I can with what we have,' and you are getting better.'
Chara, his No. 33 one day to be hoisted to the Garden rafters, joins a legendary group of Bruins defensemen, including Eddie Shore, Bobby Orr, Ray Bourque, and Brad Park, to be named to the Hall of Fame. He is the 58th member of the Bruins, be it as player or builder, to be named to the Hall.
The train kept rolling, Zdeno Chara remained aboard, moving forward in the cars, and on Tuesday the journey of some 35 years and 4,200 miles came to an end at the Hockey Hall of Fame station in Toronto.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at