Bruins: Chara still providing Boston with (really) big minutes
Bruins defenceman Zdeno Chara recently played his 1,400th NHL game and, at age 41, he told reporters he has no intentions of slowing down.
Three games into the Bruins’ first-round series with the Maple Leafs, Chara is third on Boston in ice time, averaging 21 minutes and 32 seconds. Only 20-year-old Charlie McAvoy (21.45) and 27-year-old Torey Krug (21:55) have played more.
So retirement still seems a long way off, even if he recently acquired a licence to sell real estate.
“No, I’m not preparing past hockey,” Chara said Wednesday. “But, with my spare time, I like to learn things and learn about things I find interesting … But my passion is to play this game, I love the game more than anything.”
That drive to learn things has helped shape Chara. A native of Slovakia, he can obviously speak his native language and English. But over the course of his career, he’s also become fluent in Czech, Russian and, to a lesser degree, Swedish.
He has climbed Kilimanjaro, the 19,341-foot peak in Tanzania, which he tackled in 2008, in part to help raise money for the humanitarian organization Right to Play. He has ridden the Tour de France route, in a group of riders experiencing the race while riding behind the main group of competitors.
More recently, he decided to change his diet, eliminating meat products for the most part, in favour of a plant-based diet. An avid reader, he discovered the choice would help him recover from injuries and maintain his energy levels more consistently.
In an Instagram post last fall, after he made the change, he wrote: “I have learned that it is never too early to make a change, and it is never too late. We have a great power — the freedom of choice.”
Chara is now facing the Leafs in the playoffs for the fourth time in his career. He has 150 games of playoff experience, 24 against the Leafs. They were his first opponents, back in 200102, when he was with the Ottawa Senators. He faced Toronto three times in the playoffs as a Senator — losing all three series — and remembers Mats Sundin as being a “force” in those games and “very tough to defend against.”
The tallest player to ever play the game, the six-foot-nine Chara has spent 12 of his 21 seasons in Boston, serving as team captain and guiding them to the 2011 Stanley Cup.
Playoffs, he says, have changed over the years.
“There’s been a lot of things, change of rules, change of styles, players coming in earlier with bigger size and better skills,” Chara said.
Chara says he now uses his language skills to help communicate with some of the Bruins’ core of excellent young players – players like David Pastrnak, a native of the Czech Republic, whose English is fine but obviously not as fluent as his native tongue.
Chara has also studied skating, in order to keep his place in today’s game, which is faster than when he broke in with Ottawa.
He is quick to point out, though, that his passion for the game is central to his longevity.
“I’ve been working on (skating),” Chara said. “I’m trying different drills, different techniques, things I can benefit from. But my strong passion for the game is still what is most important for me.”