Out on his own terms: Bergeron retires at the top of his game
The six-time Selke Trophy winner will not be remembered as a former great who hung on too long. He'll also go down as one of the greatest Bruins, and players, to ever play the game
In announcing his retirement from the game after a 19-year career in the summer of 2023, Patrice Bergeron is displaying the same foresight, intelligence, integrity and selflessness that made him the greatest two-way player in NHL history. Yeah, you read that right. Bergeron was the best there ever was.
Who else other than Bergeron voluntarily would leave the game at the top of his profession? Two years in a row? Think about this for a minute: not only was Bergeron deemed to be the best defensive forward in the world each of the final two seasons of his career, he was a top-three Selke Trophy candidate 12 straight seasons leading into his retirement and a top-fiver the final 14 seasons. That’s, as the kids would say, cray-cray. No player in NHL history has finished in the top three in voting for the same major award as many consecutive times as Bergeron. Not Wayne Gretzky, not Gordie Howe, nobody.
In short, no player, ever, has displayed sustained excellence longer than Patrice Bergeron did. And almost no one left the game at a higher level of performance.
The only parallels I can come up with are among goalies. Bill Durnan, Ken Dryden and Charlie Gardiner all retired after winning the Vezina Trophy, which was then given to the goalie who played for the team with the best goals-against average. But in their final seasons, Durnan, Dryden and Gardiner were all first-team all-stars so they were considered the top goalies in the league. Dominik Hasek won the Jennings Trophy in his final season, but he shared the award as Chris Osgood’s backup with the Detroit Red Wings.
When you take into account that the Bruins have just come off a 2022-23 campaign in which they set NHL records for wins and points, you could argue that Bergeron is retiring after one of the best regular seasons in NHL history. Of course, that all came to a screeching halt when the Bruins were stunned in the first round by the Florida Panthers, a series in which Bergeron missed the first four games with a herniated disc in his back.
It probably says something about the state of his back, and perhaps more importantly, the Bruins’ chances of winning another Stanley Cup in the next couple of seasons, that Bergeron made the choice to retire at the age of 38. But most of all, what it says about Bergeron was that he was not content to show the world any less than the best of himself. It’s each player’s decision to make, but there are probably more than a few former superstars who lament the fact that they hung on for too long, leaving the game after it became clear they could no longer play and as a shell of their former selves. “I have given the game everything that I have physically and emotionally, and the game has given me back more than I could have imagined,” Bergeron said in a statement announcing his retirement. Then he went on to say, “I have the opportunity to leave the game on my terms.”
He has his Stanley Cup, two Olympic gold medals, World Championships at both the junior and senior levels and a World Cup, so there was really nothing left for Bergeron to win. He had risen to the ranks of the most respected player in the game and made just a shade over $100 million, creating generational wealth for his family. His No. 37 will go to the rafters of the TD Garden in Boston in about five minutes and the way is paved for his entrance into the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026. He has a lovely wife and four children and has probably ensured that he’ll be able to lift his newborn son over his head in the coming years without wincing in pain.
When players retire from the game, it’s not because they no longer want to play the games and test themselves against the best competition the world has to offer. It’s certainly not because they don’t want to go to the rink every day. In fact, those are the aspects of retiring that they miss the most. The fact is, the vast majority of players leave the game because they no longer want to put in the off-season work it requires to play at that level. And after doing that for more than 20 summers going back to his junior days, there’s a good chance Bergeron came to the same conclusion.
So Bergeron will go down in history on the short list of the greatest two-way players and greatest Bruins of all-time, which is saying something. (Bergeron would likely fall in line somewhere after Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito and Raymond Bourque and with or ahead of Eddie Shore, Milt Schmidt and Cam Neely.) He was a huge part of the culture that was created around the Bruins that, while short on Stanley Cups, made it a gold-standard organization. And he’ll certainly make the long list of the greatest players to ever play the game. Never an off-ice discretion, no contract disputes and a lengthy career with the same organization. Of the 8,431 players who have played one career game in the NHL, there are probably about 8,400 of them who would have traded everything for a career like that one.
It will be interesting to see what is next for Patrice Bergeron. There will almost certainly be an office in the Bruins’ executive suite if he wants it. A comeback would seem highly unlikely, but you never know. Whatever he does, Bergeron will go down in history as a player who went out on one of the highest notes in NHL history.
This is coming from a lifelong Habs fan, but nothing but respect for Bergeron, a class act on and off the ice. He will walk into the HoF as soon as he is eligible (deservedly so, I might add).
Thanks for breaking the story for me today! I hope you're having a great summer.