With his grace and talent, Patrice Bergeron was a modern-day John Havlicek
It was a privilege to have Bergeron in Boston’s corner all these years, and I hope we can again. Couldn’t you see him running the Bruins someday?
Patrice Bergeron mastered it all, even the graceful goodbye.
He spent 19 seasons with the Bruins as the ideal all-around player, a faceoff-winning, goal-scoring, authentic first-line center who was so adept for so long defensively that the Selke Trophy ought to be renamed “The Bergy.”
And by all accounts, he is a better teammate and person than he is a player. That’s an extraordinary feat of character given that his on-ice achievements will be celebrated with a Hockey Hall of Fame induction.
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In terms of how he carried himself as a Boston superstar athlete, it seems to me that Bergeron is essentially the modern-day John Havlicek, albeit not quite as accomplished individually or in matters of team achievement. Slightly-less-than-Hondo status still lands Bergeron comfortably in the gallery of Boston sports gods.
It was a privilege to have Bergeron in Boston’s corner all these years, and I hope we can again. Couldn’t you see him running the Bruins someday?
As is the case with most athletes, he does depart with some what-ifs, some opportunities lost along the way that can never be recovered. Bergeron’s name was etched on the Stanley Cup 12 years ago, his two-goal performance essential in the championship-clinching Game 7 victory in Vancouver.
But in 2013, just as the Bruins were poised to force a Game 7 with the Blackhawks, they were suddenly, crushingly defeated in Game 6. The Game 7 loss to the Blues in the Cup Finals six years later leaves even more of an ache, because the Bruins were the better team and just could not prove that when it mattered most.
This past season stung in a different way, and it’s fresh enough that no recap is necessary or welcome. The Bruins were built to win their second Cup of this generation. They could not get past the admirable menace Matthew Tkachuk and the Florida Panthers in the first round, and truth be told, Bergeron was a shell of himself after suffering a herniated disk in the final regular-season game in Montreal. A confluence of bad decisions, bad performances, and bad luck led to a shockingly abrupt end to the most promising of seasons.
In the realistic daydream, the final scene on the Garden ice this season would have been Bergeron and friends hoisting the Cup. Instead, what lingers is the image of Bergeron pausing for a few moments to salute Boston fans, with the reciprocation returned his way at full volume.
We weren’t sure then it was goodbye. But the gratitude had to be shown, just in case. It would have been a failing of Boston fans had a player and person of Bergeron’s magnitude been allowed to go without one last full-blast, heartfelt thank you. We get farewells right around here, especially when we don’t want to say farewell at all.
The disappointing ending to the Bruins season denied Bergeron the perfect ending of going out as a champion. And while he’s never been about the individual, it is a tribute to him that he was so darned good in his final season, at 37 years old (he turned 38 this week).
Bergeron was still, undeniably, a first-line center, a defensive force, and the fulcrum of everything coach Jim Montgomery wanted and needed the Bruins to do. It ranks near the top on the fairly short list of the best final seasons by a Boston athlete that I’ve witnessed.
One of the first NBA games I remember was Havlicek’s last. I have a vivid recollection of riding around with my dad in our family’s spectacular brown Pontiac and listening to Johnny Most call the action as Hondo scored 29 points (on 33 shots!) for the 1978 Celtics. The team was wretched, and so it cannot be considered a “best” final season just because of the team’s circumstances, but Havlicek, who averaged 16.1 points that season, still had enough to give.
He later would lament that he might have stuck around a little longer had he known that Larry Bird would be, well, Larry Bird. Imagine Havlicek ending his career as he began it, as the sixth man on a team guided by one of the 10 greatest players ever.
The best final season? If we’re counting Boston legends who wrapped it up elsewhere, the answer must be Raymond Bourque, who skated off into the sunset with a Stanley Cup in Colorado. But we’re not counting those whose goodbye came elsewhere, even if Bourque did bring the Cup to City Hall in the long-ago days when Boston sports fans had little to celebrate of their own.
So the obvious answer must be David Ortiz, who at age 40 in 2016 led the majors in doubles (48), slugging percentage (.620), and OPS (1.021) while hitting 38 home runs and driving in an American League-leading 127 runs. The OPS was the fourth-best of his Hall of Fame career, and his 5.2 WAR remains the best by a player in his final season since 1990.
Ortiz was as close to irreplaceable as a player can be. I’d say the Bruins will find out the same thing about Patrice Bergeron next season, but they already know. We all do.
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