For your convenience, part 1 is here first, in italics. Scroll down to Part 2 if you'd like. It's in regular print style.

Trencin, Slovak Republic (July 2011) – Not far from the forest he played in as a boy and where he continues to train in the off-seasons, Bruins captain Zdeno Chara thanked his family, his friends and his hockey supporters for helping him realize the dream of a Stanley Cup championship. The tallest man in National Hockey League history stood on the stage of an outdoor amphitheater, high on a fortified hill, inside the walls of ancient and imposing Trencin Castle, in front of 200 guests from his native country and a handful from North America.

During his address Chara singled out and introduced just one man: John Gajdosik. Nineteen years earlier, while sitting on the same hillside on one of the same wooden theatre benches where friends and family sat now, Gajdosik and teenager Zdeno Chara met to talk about his hockey career, or lack thereof. Gajdosik, then an employee at this historical site and also a part-time European scout for the New York Rangers, told the 15-year-old he would do everything within his power to help him reach his goals.

“Others said I should quit, go on to wrestle like my father, or play basketball,” Chara remembers. “I wanted to play hockey, but I couldn’t even get on a junior team in Trencin, forget about OHL or Western League. I kept working hard and John kept looking.”
“Hard” is a dramatic understatement. Chara began a legendary local training regimen that continues to expand.

"When we're done with what he calls his Russian cycle (of weight lifting) and I'm absolutely done, finished, no mas,” says Trencin native and former ECHLer Vladi Nemic, “he's ready to start all over again."

With his size, work ethic and potential skating ability, and with the help of Gajdosik, Chara eventually played some junior hockey in Slovakia in 1994, and after being drafted as a “project” by the Islanders in the 3rd round in 1996, Chara landed in Prince George, British Columbia as a 19-year-old in the Western League, where his North American hockey career began to take shape.

“There’s no doubt this guy was a project,” says Bruins coach Claude Julien, “but his work ethic and his determination is what made him a great player. He’s had to have some good coaching along the way, but he’s also a guy you have to pull back, as opposed to having to push. He wanted to prove people wrong. Tim Thomas is one of those stories, and to a certain extent Zdeno is one of those too, because no one thought he should have been playing hockey.”

Symbolic of their dedication, and as a thank you, Chara placed the Stanley Cup between himself and Gajdosik, on the very same bench where they had met two decades prior, for a championship photograph he will cherish as much as any.
That’s how the Captain of the Boston Bruins began his Stanley Cup party, one that included dancing, a buffet and an open bar.

The celebration scene was a bit surreal on many levels. One, because the Bruins aren’t used to winning Stanley Cups, two, their Captain is of course Slovakian, and three, Chara isn’t exactly known for hanging around folks while they’re throwing back the cold frothies. “Big-Z” practically never drinks, allowing himself on this very rare occasion two sips from a vodka concoction before setting it aside.

This is not to say Chara hasn’t been whooping it up in his own way. Equally as important as the team title, if not more so for “Zee”, is the internal satisfaction of reaching a monumental personal goal. For a reason unbeknownst to most, there’s a little party going on inside the big man.

“I’m just happy that in my time, my first contract, that was my fifth year, we were able to accomplish it,” Chara points out. “That was my goal. It may sound funny now, somebody might think I’m making it up, but when we talked, Peter (GM Chiarelli) and Charlie (owner Jacobs) and those guys, I told them that ‘I want to get it done in five years’. Obviously it’s a process and we had some bumps to overcome those first three years. But eventually we find a way and the goal is accomplished. We did it in five years and now we can put in new goals and are excited to do it again.”

Chara doesn’t want to wait until the last year of his new deal to win another title; that would mean waiting seven years. In Prague, on the same day as the team’s season opener in October 2010, the Bruins announced the contract extension with a no-movement clause worth 6.5 million dollars a season. Chara is wrapped up until age 41.

“It gave me the chance, the opportunity, to have that piece of mind,” Chara says. “Not to have to, I don’t want to say worry; I would work the same if it were a one year deal. But it’s just much more comfortable for my family and for myself when you know, OK, you don’t have to deal with a contract.”

So is it alright, especially considering the party in a castle, to call Chara’s career thus far a fairy tale? A dream come true? Maybe, but for the largest man to ever play in the NHL, that terminology doesn’t seem to compute, unless the fairy tale begins: “Once upon a time there was an ogre …”

Let’s face it, when Chara showed up in Prince George he was, to use the term kindly, a bit of a freak. 6-foot-9?! Come on, who is this guy? He couldn’t skate, plus he sounded, and sometimes still does, like he’d be the perfect Eastern European bad-guy boxer from “Rocky Part 9”.

“I’m going to kick your ass.”

And he did. He was challenged constantly by the other rough-and-tumblers around junior hockey’s toughest circuit. In his lone WHL year, he learned quickly, he beat people up, and tallied 120 penalty minutes in 49 games, with another 45 in fifteen playoff games.
For two seasons Chara then split time between the NHL and the American Hockey League, before reaching the big show for good with the Islanders in 1999-2000.

“When I played against Zee he was Bambi (skating-wise) on ice,” states Bruins assistant general manager Don Sweeney, “but he just absolutely went to work. He worked on his skating, he worked on fitness, and he just buckled down. He was determined to make it and be the best.”

On June 23rd, 2001, as part of a series of disastrous hockey decisions by the club, the Isles sent Chara, Bill Muckalt, and a draft pick that turned out to be Jason Spezza, to Ottawa for Alexei Yashin. During his four seasons there, the Senators won a President’s Trophy with the best regular season record in 2003 and advanced to the Eastern Conference final. Then in 2006, in what some have called “the greatest NHL free agent signing ever”, Chara moved on to the Bruins and was quickly named Captain. Being thrust into the primary leadership role was as big a challenge as he had ever faced.

“I think everything takes a little time,” Chara states. “Coming to a new team, a new organization, new coach and GM, everything was so new, I think it was tough on everyone not just on me. We all tried to adjust and find a way to be the best, but obviously it took a little time for all the changes to kick in.”

“What I thought, seeing what he did, coming to Boston and being named captain and everything else,” explains Julien, “I think he took way too much on his shoulders and tried to do everything. I saw the guy running around trying to do everybody’s job in the defensive zone and stuff like that. So on the hockey side I thought settling down a little bit would help his game. Also, as captain, I think he’s grown so much, realizing that he has to use people around him to help him do that job. It’s not a one man job. Obviously (Patrice) Bergeron has become a real, real good leader and more vocal over the years, and (Mark) Recchi who is obviously an experienced guy, those two guys really helped take a lot of the burden that he had been carrying on his shoulders by himself.”

“You have to talk things over; it’s something you have to share,” Chara agrees. “All leadership, you can’t be totally relying on one or two guys. Obviously that would get sick and old pretty quickly in a long ten month season. I was glad that somebody else had some things to say and I could focus on my game.”

Chara was as diligent with this mental side of the game, with the communication, leadership, and team maintenance elements, as he was with his physical preparation. Ironically, legendary Islanders coach Al Arbour, a neighbor of Chara’s near his part time home in Florida, played a big part.

“Some of the people I met with helped a lot, like Al Arbour, I’ve met with him out on Longboat (Key)” Chara explains. “Our team psychologists, Frank Lodato, Max Offenberger, those guys are really good with people. I’d also have meetings with some other athletes, other sports. Reading books too. It doesn’t have to be sports, when you’re reading about life surviving stories, or any kind of story that you can learn from. You imagine yourself in those situations and it’s pretty interesting.”

“I think it’s the emergence of a great player becoming more of a well rounded leader and having more of a well rounded game,” points out Sweeney, a former NHL defenseman for 16 years. “I think that all teams that win, their best players become that. I think Z kind of epitomizes that. I think he takes very good care of his own body and game, but I think he’s learned to help others, and that’s how the best players help teams win.”


PART 2

Aside from physical and mental preparation and evolution, Chara’s success can also be attributed to a little natural luck. It’s an overlooked factor: The size of his feet. Chara has relatively small boots to support his near 7-foot, 260 pound body. At size 13 “I can turn” as he puts it. With more body-appropriate size 16 or 17 clodhoppers, Zdeno would have been right where many people thought he belonged, on a basketball court or a wrestling mat. Dad Zdenek was a Greco Roman Olympic wrestler for Czechoslovakia back in 1976.

Combine all these elements, with a little Eastern bloc discipline and work ethic thrown in, and you’ve got yourself an ogre with an upside.

Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman makes an interesting observation about the physical development of Chara’s game. It’s not as “physical” as one might think; as in “banging people around”. Bowman sees the effectively developed subtleties of size.

“The only other player that I can ever relate to Chara as being so effective by positioning his body, by getting in a position where you can’t get the puck if he’s getting it, is Mario Lemieux,” Bowman states. “Mario was not a physical player, but Mario was about 6-foot-6 on skates, and he used to extend his arms to hold on to the puck. I think when guys tried to get at him or around him to get to the puck, he used his body in a different manner, kind of like Chara, to get the puck and protect it. It gives them a little extra time to make the next play. They’re not using their size for belting guys or batting them around, they’re using it by reaching, and they’re both the same. When Mario was in his prime and started holding on to the puck, the way you get the puck off him is to take a penalty.”

While the two would be using this prowess in different areas of the ice generally, Lemieux while angling in maybe, and Chara while working out of a corner, it’s an interesting correlation, one that Chara finds flattering.

“In the Final against Vancouver I thought he was effective,” Bowman continues, “but I didn’t think he was effective because he was physical. I thought he was effective because you couldn’t get around him. It drove the Sedins (forwards Henrik and Daniel) crazy because they need time and space. They’re not real speedsters, but they’re heady, and they back you off, and they couldn’t get that extra time around Chara.”

Prolific scorers, Henrik won the NHL scoring title in 2010 and Daniel in 2011, the Sedins were held to a cumulative 5 points, 4 of them for Daniel, in the seven game Final. The twin brothers combined for a minus-12 in the series.

That said, because of depth, their team just as easily could have won the Cup in Vancouver. The home team had claimed every game in the series until Game-7. It turned out Boston had the better goalie, had physically worn the Canucks out, and entering the pivotal match, had a distinct mental advantage.

“There was pressure, great experience,” Chara says. “The whole morning and how we were preparing, we had so many guys feeling good about Game-7. The coaches made sure we had all the time we needed. The meetings weren’t long at all, or almost at all; it was just more about us, and preparing mentally, especially mentally. You need that, and you need to have certain guys, who feel a responsibility and know this is the time where they could step up and speak. Especially in times like that, when things are so close and tight.

“I was really calm,” he continues. “I don’t know why, right from the morning when I woke up. I was a little nervous but I wasn’t like, some say, sweating, or shaking nervous. Right from the morning I was in my bubble and I was OK, I’ll give everything I have, no regrets. But I was really confident, I was confident in the group we had and felt really good about the game.”

As for a dramatic speech from the captain, there wasn’t one that night. Maybe Chara felt the team didn’t need it. However, there had been one prior to Game-3, with the Bruins on home ice for the first time, trailing in the series 2-0. Big-Z chose that time, or maybe the situation chose him, to make an impassioned appeal. Chara doesn’t get specific about the speech that will apparently go down in Boston sports lore - details are the domain of the dressing room - but he does admit some important words were expressed.

“Before we went out I had a little speech,” he admits. “Before we went out for the warm-up I made sure everybody was really ready. It was intense and it was emotional. And I really felt that those games, Games 3 and 4 were so huge for us. I think if we fell behind and went on to lose one of those games it would have been so tough to comeback.”

With just one championship Chara joins elite company in Boston. He’s the first “superstar” defenseman to win a Stanley Cup for the Bruins since Bobby Orr. Before that it was Eddie Shore. Ray Bourque, despite being the League’s all-time leading scorer among defensemen, a Hall of Famer, and one of the game’s and the city’s great legends, never picked up the ultimate victory wearing the Spoked-B. Chara could get even with Shore and Orr with just one more title. “Larger than life” would become literal and figurative. Big-Z is not getting ahead of himself.

“I don’t think it’s anything you should be thinking about or worrying about while you’re still playing,” Chara insists. “These are the kind of things you look at, look back at later, OK I’ve done this, I’ve done my share of work, and now its time to pass it on to the other guys. As I’m playing I want to accomplish more. We’re trying for another championship and hopefully it happens for us.

“I want to do as much as I can for the organization, the city, and the fans. I want to represent the sport the right way, and I’ll worry about all that other stuff later. But I realize it’s a big thing and obviously everybody is so excited and happy for us, and it makes us happy when we see all the fans, the people. Everybody is so happy, so it makes us happier.”

Chara does plan to use his additional fame and notoriety in the here and now for one purpose. He’ll promote his causes, one of which is the international humanitarian organization Right To Play. In 2008 he visited children in Mozambique and Tanzania with the group, and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in an attempt to raise awareness for the cause. RTP uses sports and outdoor activity as an outreach, a catalyst to bring kids to school, to get them together, to then teach life lessons about malaria, AIDS, and education. Zee had planned to return to the dark continent this past summer for a similar visit as an RTP ambassador, before a little thing called the Stanley Cup got in the way.

“For sure if you get a bigger name, it can help, and you should be involved in some kind of project to help,” Chara stresses, “either families, or countries, and obviously kids at any level. You can spread the word and talk to other people and that’s the easiest way to get people involved.”

Not unlike other tough guys in the sport of hockey - big guys, enforcers or otherwise - Chara has a big soft spot on the inside especially for children. This ogre is really just a teddy bear. Just find the photographs on the internet of Chara playing “duck, duck, goose” with six-year-olds in East Africa.

“I’m really going to try and push with Right To Play,” he declares. “I want to do some of their projects and maybe do a bigger role in that position. I’m going to find the time and sit down with them and see if I can be, have a major role, maybe as a European ambassador or something, and try and find a possibility.”

“Thoughtful” is becoming one of the more common adjectives to describe the Bruins Captain. Once hidden inside “the ogre” from Eastern Europe, disguised behind a language barrier, buried under a gigantic body, “thoughtful” is now as common a reference for him as “work ethic” and “scary”.

“When you look at how he’s handled this last Cup run here, just how he made sure that everything he did, he shared with his teammates,” Coach Julien expresses. “He always wanted everybody to be a part of it. He also made sure that he thanked everybody no matter where he was, and even with the awards dinner in Vegas, he thanked the psychologists and equipment guys, guys that a lot of times will be swept under the rug. But he’s very thoughtful, and to me that’s the sign of a good captain, making sure he gets everybody involved and everybody is carrying their part of the credit.”

Its starting to sound like the project is more of a prince. Or maybe the new Lord of Vah. It was the original Lord of Vah, named for the nearby river, who built Trencin Castle a millennium ago. King might be a fitting title as well. Chara is surely hockey royalty at the moment, and he already has a queen (wife Tatiana) and a princess (daughter Eliz).

The challenge now: Defend the sovereignty; repeat in the NHL, an accomplishment unseen in the League for the last thirteen years.

“It’s gonna be challenging and we have to represent the championship and ourselves the right way,” Chara urges. “As the champions, we also can’t think it’s gonna happen easy, or anyone is going to be ‘scared of us’ because we won. It’s actually going to be a little bit harder, and we have to be ready for that. We know teams are going to be playing us even harder; they’ll be hungrier. Yeah, we have to overcome the success we had. It’s a short summer, and expectations are going to be high, but that’s what it is, that’s what it’s like to win.”

What would best describe winning it all again? They lived happily ever after.


Filed from the Amherst General Store and Restaurant; Amherst, Maine


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