Zdeno Chara's Out, But Bruins' Captain Will Certainly Return
BOSTON (CBS) -- Zdeno Chara is down, and for the next month, he will be out. But make no mistake: He will be back.
The Bruins captain and resident Ironman left Thursday night's game against the Islanders with what at first was a mysterious injury. It was later identified by ESPN's Joe McDonald as damage to Chara's knee ligament, and Peter Chiarelli said Friday morning that it's a torn PCL. Surgery is likely not required, and for now the prognosis is four to six weeks.
Naturally, the Bruins' captain, ice time leader and No. 1 D-man being out for a month comes as most unwelcome news for a team that has sputtered out of the gates this season. And with Johnny Boychuk dressed in Islander blue and orange, there's just no silver lining that can be found in the Bruins' defensive corps during Chara's absence. Dennis Seidenberg has not been great as he comes back from his own knee injury, and the pressure now ramps up tremendously for Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Matt Bartkowski and Adam McQuaid, who are the most experienced D-men left in the organization and are about to learn just how hard NHL minutes can be without the aid of big No. 33 helping them out.
There will also be added strain on the forwards to work in their own end. Patrice Bergeron has already been asked to do too much this season, with the team essentially leaning on him to carry the team through the first week, and it may be starting to take its toll. The Bruins currently rank 22nd in the NHL with just 2.33 goals per game, and as the defensive responsibilities increase for the forwards, it's hard to imagine that number climbing in Chara's absence. Factor in the fact that the big man will no longer be planting his 6-foot-9 frame in front of goaltenders' faces on the power play, and the task of scoring goals grows even more difficult.
Undoubtedly, the Bruins are in for a rough stretch. The only positive working in their favor might be the schedule, in which 11 of their next 14 opponents currently sit in ninth place or worse in their respective conference. So optimistically, the Bruins could be able to tread water through November, and Chara could return in early December for a team that's in the middle of the pack.
That's the bad news. The good news? The good news is that there's absolutely nothing that is going to keep Chara from returning to the ice this season.
Nobody really knows Zdeno Chara. Sure, his family knows him well, but publicly, Chara has remained one of the most guarded figures in Boston sports. He's been in Boston for nine years now, and he's maintained his image as one thing and one thing only: a driven, undeterrable machine.
Simply put, nobody works harder than Zdeno Chara -- that's on the ice, which we can all see, and off the ice, which is done every day when nobody's watching. His teammates may not even know him very well, but they know how hard he works, and they all have tremendous respect for him.
That's why even though they were all disappointed on Thursday night, they knew that no matter the injury, Chara will be back.
Chara may be 37 years old, but he keeps himself in better shape than any 27-year-old. Kevan Miller, Chara's defensive colleague, is a workout maniac, yet even he could not best the captain in this year's preseason pull-up competition. The idea that Chara is too old only gets perpetuated because he works so hard, skates so many minutes and grinds down the NHL's best players so often that toward the end of long playoff runs, he loses a burst and doesn't always look like his dominant self. That's simply something that tends to happen when defensemen skate 25 minutes per night for 82 games and then up it to 27, 28 or 29 minutes per game in the playoffs, when every shift is a grind.
But Chara is still every bit as strong as he ever was, and he's every bit as determined to lead his team every night. It was just last year when he spoke openly about not wanting to sit out any games at the end of the year in the weeks leading up to the playoffs. He said playing in the NHL is a privlege and an honor that he never takes for granted, so even though his body badly needed rest after a seven-month season that included a four-game stint in Russia for the Olympics, Chara wanted to skate his 20-plus minutes every night.
Likewise, Chara watched his occasional postseason blue-line partner work his own way back from a torn ACL last year, as Dennis Seidenberg would have been ready to go in the conference finals if the Bruins could have gotten past the Canadiens. They couldn't, but the fact that Seidenberg was that close to pulling off an unheard-of four-month recovery from a torn knee tells you everything you need to know about the mind-set of the Bruins' leaders.
That mentality comes from Chara and works its way down, and it provides reason to believe that no matter the severity of his current injury and no matter what the road to recovery may be, Chara will do the work that is necessary to get back on the ice and once again lead his team. It has always been the man's singular focus. Even though he won't be seen until the beginning of December at the earliest, so long as he is an NHL player, there's no reason to believe his drive and determination will ever wane.
In the spirit of Halloween, the short-term picture for the Bruins is flat-out frightening. But in the long term, they will survive this injury. Zdeno Chara will be back, and when he returns, he will be the same reliable workhorse he's always been for the Bruins. It's in his DNA, and no knee injury can change that.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here, or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
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