Posted in Zdeno Chara September 20th, 2007
Chara drops gloves! (also of note: Bruins win)
In a shocking development in the game to kicking off the Bruins’ ‘07-’08 exhibition season, Zdeno Chara actually dropped his gloves in a move that was unrelated to him heating a Cup O’ Noodles in the locker room during the second intermission.
Also of note, the Bruins beat the Islanders (thanks in part to two Jeff Hoggan goals).
But enough about that, let’s get back to that fight by Chara. According to the Globe article, “Chara had been jawing with Chris Simon on the preceding faceoff, then went toe-to-toe with Brennan, throwing several punches before the two fell to the ice.” According to ESPN, it appears the fight was a little more in Brennan’s favor. “Tension boiled over several times, and Islanders enforcer Kip Brennan took down hulking Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara in a fight.” Yeah, thanks for the “hulking” reference. I’m sure every beat writer will be sure to cram a size adjective into every story that involves a Chara fight this year (and hopefully there’ll be more than just this one).
Hopefully, this will be a sign of things to come for Chara, who didn’t drop the gloves to fight at all last season…perhaps due to Dave Lewis, perhaps due to his captaincy title and the responsibilities with it. Either way, it’s good to hear that he let loose for once…even if it’s just an exhibition game. This team needs a re-energized Chara since the defensive corps behind him (Dennis Wideman, Mark Stuart and the Awesome A’s: Andrew Alberts, Andrew Ference, Aaron Ward, Andrew Ference, and Bobby Allen) all have a lot to prove this season.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 3:26 am and is filed under Zdeno Chara. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Comments on this post
Posted by number4bobbyorr September 20th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Dropping the gloves is a good start, but to me what Chara most needs to do is a lot more hitting with his gloves on. One telling stat to look for by mid-season will be his penalty minutes. Pronger saw a lot of elbowing penalties last year, but that didn’t thwart him. If Chara really starts standing people up on the blue line he’ll have a lot of elbowing penalties too, and that will be a good thing!
Posted by Doobie September 20th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Agreed. Chara played relatively subdued last year, perhaps due to Lewis’ coaching style. I’m hoping that yesterday’s performance is going to be indicative of a more aggressive Chara this year.