There are days I wonder how many Boston Bruins fans are true believers. The Bruins had two terrible games against the Montreal Canadiens and the Dallas Stars. If you watched them, then you know what happened. The Bruins didn’t play with their expected tenacity and the other team took advantage of that weakness. The Bruins pulled Tuukka Rask in both outings in attempt to correct their mistakes. It just stings more that both games were decided by a fluke clearing play that led to empty-net goals.
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Now the current discussion around Boston is the replacement of the Bruins’ captain. Apparently Zdeno Chara is no longer considered to be worthy to wear the ‘spoked B’ by some in the area media. They believe the thirty-seven year old-time as being a Stanley Cup contender is over and it’s time to move him while they can still get value for him.
Chara understands that as team captain a fair amount of blame will land on him when the team isn’t doing well. He’s one of those captains that takes full responsibility for the team’s failures on the ice (Wouldn’t you love to see Alex Ovechkin or Dion Phaneuf do that for their squads?) He pointed out the team’s failures after the B’s dropped their second game in a row.
Eyes On Isles
“We know that when we play a certain way we are pretty effective,” said Chara after the 5-3 loss to the Dallas Stars. “When we are not we start doing something different, that is how we get into trouble. A lot of times we need better effort, we need better urgency, we need better mental focus. It is just a combination of all of those things.”
“It is disappointing. We know that it was our last game for a while at home and now we have a long road trip. For sure we wanted to finish with a way better effort and result than we did tonight. So for sure that is disappointing.”
That’s the voice of a leader taking responsibility for his actions. You’re not going to find that in other NHL teams.
Has Zdeno Chara lost a step? Yes. (I suspect he’s still playing hurt to some degree.) He had an injury that took him out for a good chunk of the 2014-15 season. He’s still not playing at one hundred percent. (To be fair, neither is Dennis Seidenberg. The big difference here is that people aren’t openly talking about booting the big German blueliner out of town.) He’s no longer the super-human monster that has physically and psychologically intimidated players in the NHL.
Chara is just a man playing for his team. A team that has a very on-again, off-again struggle to find its core identity. While Chara is a big part of that identity, he’s certainly not the only one at fault here. The offensive punch of the top six forwards hasn’t been spectacular this year. It certainly hasn’t helped that NHL ready players like Ryan Spooner and Alexander Khokhlachev haven’t been used because they don’t fit into Claude Julien‘s paradigm. The once famed Merlot Men have been close to non-existant this season. (You know it’s bad when the NHL’s super-goon John Scott has more goals than Daniel Paille.)
There is also that matter of a no-trade clause that guarantees that Chara isn’t moving anywhere except of his own volition.
I’m not Peter Chairelli, and I certainly wouldn’t want his job. For all the positives he’s brought to Boston, he has a certain culpability in the current Bruins culture. My biggest criticism of the man is that I feel that he still thinks its June 2011. Four years ago, other NHL coaches didn’t know how to counter the Julien system. It’s safe to say they do now. Chiarelli seems to make trades that reflect on the past, not looking towards the immediate future. Sure, draft picks are nice. Jordan Caron and Daniel Paille were first round draft picks once too. (Thankfully, David Pastrnak is showing incredible potential. (If the big hits he’s taken to make plays doesn’t get him killed first.))
There is plenty of blame to go around here in Boston. It’s irresponsible to put all the blame on the captain. Trading him for the sake of making a move would be asinine, bordering on insanity. Zdeno Chara helped shaped the culture in the Bruins locker room. He became the leader the B’s needed to help bring the first Stanley Cup in nearly forty years to Boston. Removing that leader would be a damning indictment on the Bruins commitment to excellence.
Keep Zdeno Chara in Boston.