BOSTON \u2013\u2013 Patrice Bergeron sat down on the couch, prepared to talk about one of his favorite subjects: Zdeno Chara.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A few days earlier, Chara called Bergeron to ask for a favor promoting his \u201cZee\u2019s Final Shift,\u201d happening later this summer in Tren\u010d\u00edn, Slovakia. Bergeron is one of Chara\u2019s former teammates skating in the farewell game and, of course, agreed to record anything needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What Bergeron did not know, though, was that Chara’s request was all part of a ploy en route to revealing that No. 37 would be raised to the TD Garden rafters during the 2026-27 season \u2013 an honor that was bestowed upon Chara\u2019s No. 33 in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing part of the surprise for Patrice is super exciting because he\u2019s done so much the other way for me last year,\u201d Chara said. \u201cI am just, first and foremost, grateful and feel privileged to be part of it. I am so excited for him and so happy for him. He deserves everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And so, Bergeron welcomed cameras into his Massachusetts home to record a message and some follow-up questions about \u201cZee\u2019s Final Shift\u201d and what Chara means to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bergeron was mid-sentence when the doorbell rang. His wife, Stephanie, motioned to him to come get the door. With a raised eyebrow, Bergeron pardoned the interruption and headed to the front of his house, where Johnny Bucyk stood with a grin. Bucyk, whose No. 9 already hangs in the rafters, handed Bergeron his banner from the 2011 playoff run at TD Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw Chief, and he sold it pretty good, saying he was going around because it was the 15-year anniversary of 2011 \u2013 giving out flags,\u201d Bergeron said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thinking this was all part of a look-back project on the 2011 team, Bergeron sat back down on the couch to answer questions about that championship run. As he was detailing the feeling of hoisting the Cup, and the guts it took to come back in the final series from down 2-0 and 3-2, the doorbell rang again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is going on?\u201d he remarked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bergeron went to the door once again. He, Stephanie and their four kids \u2013 Zack, Victoria, Noah and F\u00e9lix \u2013 were greeted by Charlie Jacobs, Cam Neely, Rick Middleton and Terry O’Reilly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the second one with Cam and Charlie and Nifty and Taz, I was like, \u2018Alright, something is happening here,\u2019\u201d Bergeron said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2013\u2013 Patrice Bergeron sat down on the couch, prepared to talk about one of his favorite subjects:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-745242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}