Patrice Bergeron may no longer be a member of the Bruins – or of any team, for that matter – but his mark on this team remains very concrete. The former captain is still in regular contact with his successor, Brad Marchand.
“In the contacts in my phone, it’s Bergie and my wife, in that order! “, joked Marchand, in the visitors’ locker room at the Bell Center on Saturday morning.
On a more serious note, the Bruins like to talk about their “culture,” a term that comes up a lot around here. A culture embodied by the captaincy of Zdeno Chara, then Patrice Bergeron, and which now falls to Marchand.
Knowing how differently Marchand and Bergeron act on the ice, the choice of number 63 as runner-up to 37 may have been surprising from the outside. But certainly not from the inside.
“I had no doubts at all,” assures Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery. Brad is very competitive. Like Patrice and Zdeno, he is proud to play for the Boston Bruins. They want us to continue to have good teams and they will do everything they can for us to be successful. »
Aside from the pride of playing for the Bruins, this culture is difficult to understand, again from the outside. Matthew Poitras, one of the young newcomers, recounted a drill at the very beginning of 2022 training camp, when Bergeron raised his stick at the very end of the sequence, as if to remind him that he had to constantly compete.
If the sense of competition is at the heart of this culture, Marchand will certainly be an adequate standard-bearer.
Marchand simply wants to leave the team in the same state as when he was appointed captain. Under Chara and Bergeron, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, reached the Finals in 2013 and 2019, and set an NHL record last season by scoring 135 points, before falling in the 1st round of the playoffs.
“I don’t want to change anything. The culture here over the last 20 years has been incredible, ever since Z and Bergie came. You don’t want to be the guy who lets this culture crumble. We want to maintain that on a daily basis. This is the recipe for success, which is why the team has been successful for some time. »
The Nova Scotian could hardly ask for a better start to his reign. The Bruins were 13-1-1 before facing the Canadiens on Saturday.
The retirements of Bergeron and David Krejci have obviously created a void at the crucial center position. Pavel Zacha and amazing 19-year-old rookie Matthew Poitras now lead two of the three offensive lines (the other center being Charlie Coyle) and the recipe is working so far.
“Zacha plays everywhere: on the power play, on the penalty kill, at 5-on-5, when the other team pulls the goalie,” Montgomery said. We have a lot of confidence in him. Even if he’s just going for 65 points, he’s a guy who’s going to help us win every night. »
We remind you here that “just” 65 points is one less than the Canadian’s best scorer last year, Nick Suzuki.
