The legend is gone. The Canadian who made NHL history ended a magnificent career at the age of 38
Jul 25, 2023 23:00 UTC Audio Version: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Patrice Bergeron never won a second Stanley Cup with Boston, but he has plenty of other things to be proud of.
20 years ago, the NHL draft took place, which after the passage of time can be safely called legendary. The Boston Bruins first drafted a twenty-year-old at that talent fair and secured defenseman Mark Stewart. The American built a good career, played almost 700 games in the best league in the world, only offensively he missed the Stanley Cup: during the Bears’ championship season, they traded Stewart to Atlanta for forward Rich Peverley, who, by the way, played a significant role in Boston’s final success.
Related Materials
Lost Russian talents and a huge number of stars. 20 years of the legendary NHL draft
But the Bruins still caught their diamond in the 2003 draft. In the second round, under the overall number 45, Boston selected Patrice Bergeron, providing themselves for many years with an authoritative, selfless, spiritual, devoted and incredibly skilled player, who eventually went down in the history of not only the club, but the entire league.
patrice bergeron
Photo: www.nhl.com
Bergeron began playing for Boston immediately after the draft and has since traded in the Bruins jersey only for the Canada jersey. In his club career, Patrice had only one team, and only lockouts in the NHL forced him to play in other clubs: in the 2004/2005 season, the center forward played in the AHL, spending the beginning of the 2012/2013 tournament in Switzerland as part of Lugano. The rest – 1464 games in the NHL (regular season + playoffs), and all for Boston, which has become a native of the Canadian province of Quebec.
Bergeron was neither a brilliant scorer nor a super-talented shooter: the 2018/2019 season was the best for him according to statistics, when at the age of 33 Patrice scored 79 (32 + 47) points in the regular season. But his value was elsewhere. Bergeron is the base, the skeleton, the spirit of Boston, an example of courage, dedication. Legendary in this sense was the final series of the Stanley Cup – 2013 with Chicago, during which the Canadian damaged his rib cartilage, broke a rib, hit his shoulder, earned a collapsed lung, but played the round to the end. He also with several stitches on his eyebrow and a cut on his nose. Bergeron looked very colorful then, but after the end of the series he did not think to worry about his health. “It hurt so much more to realize that we had lost the Stanley Cup,” Patrice recalled.
Related Materials
“Ideal Leader” Three-time Stanley Cup Winner in Bergeron
Fighter. That is the first thing that comes to mind when you talk about Bergeron. But he became a living NHL legend not just because of his countrymanship and leadership qualities. Still, Patrice is probably the best two-way center forward in NHL history. Smart and correct play on both sides of the court became Bergeron’s main feature, and the award for rare talent was universal recognition – the Canadian won six Selke Trophies during his career, becoming the absolute NHL record holder in this nomination.
With the Bruins, the forward went through several tough losses, but experienced many more happy moments in his career. First of all, it concerns the 2011 Stanley Cup, suffered by Boston, in which Bergeron became the second scorer for his team after David Krejci. Boston failed to reach the second trophy, which was a certain tragedy for the Bears’ quarry of great veterans (Bergeron, Kreychi, Hara), but the Canadian managed to “carry” the honors in the selection. In 2004, Bergeron became a world champion, in 2010 he won the home Olympics with Maple, so winning the Stanley Cup with Boston paved the way for Patrice to the Triple Gold Club.
patrice bergeron
Photo: Andre Ringuette/Getty Images
Bergeron is a player of an era and an era for Boston. Patrice spent his entire NHL career in one club, for which he became a backbone hockey player, while the Canadian never made fabulous money in Massachusetts. Bergeron signed his biggest contract at the age of 28, having received an eight-year deal capped at $6.8 million. Modern day Toronto stars laugh out loud at such amounts, but Bergeron has argued throughout his career that there are more important things in hockey than money.
Now, 38-year-old Patrice has found himself on the free agent market, but he didn’t squeeze every last bit of juice out of himself, even though he didn’t look like a veteran at all last season. It would be nice if Bergeron left hockey as champion, having won the second Stanley Cup with Boston, but the fantastic regular-season Bruins stumbled mightily in the first round with Florida and Sergey Bobrovsky, and it’s now abundantly clear that another generation will have to carve out new franchise victories.
