Krejci at peace with retirement
BOSTON — David Krejci’s body told him it was time to bid the National Hockey League farewell.
While Krejci, who announced his retirement from the Bruins on Monday, left the door open to play in Europe after the New Year’s in preparation for possible participation in the World Championships when the tournament will be held in Prague, the Czech-born center knew his 37-year-old frame could not hold up to the rigors of a full schedule in the best league in the world.
Krejci didn’t go into the 2022-23 season knowing it was going to be his last, but the injuries that kept him out of the final six games of the regular season and three playoff games removed most of the doubt. He said to continue playing in the NHL he would need surgery (he did not identify the injury) and that’s not something he was willing to do at this stage.
He didn’t want to announce anything right at the end of the season, especially after the painful upset loss to the Florida Panthers, so he wanted to make sure he gave this fork in life’s road the proper deliberation.
“I just realized there’s never arighttime,arightmomentto retire from NHL. But I felt like it was time,” said Krejci on a
Zoom call from his home in South Carolina on Tuesday. “I knew my body couldn’t take 82 games anymore and that was the decision.”
And so, after 1,192 games (playoffs included) in a Bruins sweater, Krejci’s estimable career is done. He leaves as one of the greats in the Bruins’ century-long history, a player who elevated his game when it mattered most, twice leading the league in playoff scoring, including in 2011 when the B’s snapped a 39-year Stanley Cup drought.
There were chances at other Cups. They lost in the Finals to a great Blackhawk team in 2013, then again in 2019 in a brutally tough Game 7 loss at the Garden to St. Louis Blues. And of course, this great season of Bruins’ hockey ended in similar disappointment, bowing out in the first round after a record 65-win season.
“The last year is always going to be there. It’s a missed opportunity and its always going to be there with 2019 and 2013 … but (the Stanley Cup) is the hardest trophy to win,” Krejci said. “You could see it this year. Florida goes from the eighth spot or out of the playoffs with a few games to go in the regular season and they made it all the way to the final.”
But he didn’t want to dwell on those disappointments. Though Krejci’s team suffered their share of gut-punches, it should not be forgotten that he and his contemporaries — Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Tuukka Rask, Tim Thomas, Milan Lucic, David Pastrnak are at the top of the list — put
some electricity back onto Causeway Street, which by the time Krejci arrived and his cohorts arrived hadn’t experienced much voltage since the old Garden was torn down in the mid-1990s.