Chara’s playoff date with Bruins will bring some pain for players and fans

BOSTON — Seeing an athlete return to play their former team is always a weird sight. It’s like seeing an ex in public; some interactions are warm and cordial, some bring up sour feelings, and some are just plain awkward. In Boston, we’ve had our fair share of sports reunions both good, Paul Pierce, and bad, looking at you Johnny Damon.

This Saturday, Zdeno Chara squares off against the Boston Bruins, his former team where he served as captain and defensive pillar for 14 seasons, in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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Chara, now a member of the Washington Capitals, has already returned to TD Garden this season, both with and without fans. But seeing Big Z suit up against the black-and-gold as they try to win the franchise’s seventh title will never not feel weird. It’s just plain wrong.

The Bruins are no strangers to watching former team captains play in the postseason with other teams after departing the Hub. But this will be different as the B’s will look to play spoiler to those championship aspirations.

All of Boston supported Ray Bourque as the defenseman sought a Stanley Cup in Colorado after 21 years with the Bruins. And most B’s fans will tell you they’ve rooted for Joe Thornton during his days with the San Jose Sharks, especially during their lone Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2016 when the Bruins failed to make the playoffs. (Though I wouldn’t hold your breath on finding Boston fans rooting for Thornton’s new team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, this postseason.)

Tyler Seguin and his 2020 Dallas Stars squad assumedly had some fan support in Boston, especially after their opponent in last year’s Cup Final, the rival Tampa Bay Lightning, dispatched the Bruins in five games in an earlier round.

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But despite Boston fans’ chagrin with his trade – along with that of Mookie Betts, who went on a championship run of his own a season ago with the Los Angeles Dodgers – Seguin was never a longtime pillar of a Boston sports franchise in the way that Bourque, Chara and even Thornton were.

The last Bruin of note that I can remember squaring off against the B’s in the postseason was Phil Kessel, and there was plenty of love lost between fans and Phil the Thrill by the time he made his playoff debut for Toronto. It felt great when the Bruins eliminated Kessel and the Leafs from the postseason. If they do the same to Chara and the Caps, the feelings will be a bit murkier.

This isn’t Roger Clemens facing the early 2000s Red Sox in pinstripes, or Wes Welker catching passes from Peyton Manning wearing his Broncos orange crush jersey, or even Kyrie Irving burning sage to cleanse the court at TD Garden before a Nets game this season. Chara is still beloved amongst Bruins fans.

He played more than 1,000 games with the Bruins spanning the course of 14 seasons, was named an NHL All-Star seven times with Boston and was a finalist for the Norris Trophy – awarded to the league’s top defenseman – five times with the club, winning the award in the 2008-2009 season.

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He amassed 481 points (148G, 333A) in 1,023 regular-season games for the team, good for sixth all-time in regular-season games played for Boston. His performances in the postseason – from his blinding net-front presence in 2013 to his unforgettable toughness with a broken jaw in 2019 – are the stuff of legend.

Oh, and let’s not forget he led the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup in 39 years and returned the team to the Final two more times during his time in Boston. Before the Chara era, the Bruins had not made it to the Stanley Cup Final since 1990.

A former champion, Chara is the latest – but won’t be the last – in a series of Boston icons making their returns to the hallowed grounds they once called home for dominant stretches of time.

Tom Brady is set to make his return to Gillette Stadium in October. Pierce played 10 games against the Celtics after being traded in the 2013 offseason. Pedro Martinez pitched one game against the Red Sox (3 IP, 6 ER, 7 H, 1 SO) after departing Boston a World Series champ. The list goes on (paging Mookie Betts…).

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But none of those Boston sports icons dueled with their former teams in the postseason the way Chara will. If he and the Capitals win the series, the sting is that much greater after seeing the Bruins pass him over this offseason, choosing instead to fill the left side of their defense with such household names like Jakub Zboril and Urho Vaakanainen.

If the Bruins prevail and send their D.C. nemesis home for yet another humid summer in our nation’s capital, seeing Chara shake hands with old friends – for potentially the last time in his illustrious 23-year career – like Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Brad Marchand and Tuukka Rask will drop a touch of sadness into the hearts of Bruins fans everywhere.

So buckle up fans of the black-and-gold. This series is set to bring hard hits, big goals, extreme highs and lows of raw emotion and, most certainly, some sadness when it comes to an end…no matter who wins.

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