Bergeron's ability to connect with teammates helped pave Hall of Fame path

The 2026 Hockey Hall of Fame induction is Nov. 9. This year's class includes Carey Price, Pekka Rinne, Patrice Bergeron, Keith Tkachuk and Cindy Curley in the Player category, and Brian Burke in the Builder category. Here, NHL.com senior writer Amalie Benjamin profiles Bergeron.

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- There were late nights Patrice Bergeron would sit there, his kids asleep, the notes app open on his phone, his mind on his Boston Bruins teammates. He would consider what they were going through, the moments he saw, the tics he spotted, the dips in performance that could have been blips or could have been signs.

He would make a list: players to check in with, mini-speeches to give, ideas for team meetings. He would text Brad Marchand, as his longtime linemate was himself trying to drift off, saying, “Hey, dude, I can’t stop thinking, I was noticing this about this guy today or this about that guy today or here’s how I think we can become a closer group,” as Marchand recalled.

Those nights -- and the talks that would result, the check-ins and conversations, the strategizing with Zdeno Chara or Marchand -- are not the main reason why the former Bruins center and captain is entering the Hockey Hall of Fame on Nov. 9.

That goes back to a playing career that spanned 19 seasons, all of them in Boston, with 1,040 points (427 goals, 613 assists) in 1,294 games, along with 128 points (50 goals, 78 assists) in 170 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, leading the team to the Stanley Cup Final three times (2011, 2013, 2019), winning in 2011, and earning the Selke Trophy a record six times, voted as the best defensive forward in the NHL. It goes back to being one of only 30 members of the Triple Gold Club, having won the IIHF Men’s World Championship (2004), the Olympics (2010, 2014), and the Stanley Cup (2011).

But those nights, that sense of the people who surrounded him, are inextricably linked with his induction, with who he is, who he was to hundreds of teammates on the Bruins, who he remains in his post-career playing days. He was a leader who cared about his teammates, about making sure they were doing well on a human level -- and two decades of tight-knit Bruins teams benefited as a result.

“I think I’m in tune, I guess, with emotions and how people feel,” Bergeron said, sitting unbothered in a café in Wellesley, Massachusetts, last month. “I felt like it was important for me to connect with them. So basically it was all about connecting with my teammates, and once I had a relationship and felt like I knew them more, like beyond the hockey player, I think it opened the door to reach out more and for them to open it up to me more, so then it would be easier to have those type of conversations and for them to open up and say how they felt.”

It mattered.

It is hard to find anyone who played with him, who coached him, heck, who watched him, who has anything bad to say about Bergeron, an accounting over the years that, at times, can veer into reverence.

David Backes: “He’s probably the best teammate, best guy that I played with my whole 15-year career, a guy that would do anything for you.”

Rich Peverley: “Just a tremendous person, tremendous player. Probably one of the smartest players I’ve ever played with.”

Mark Recchi: “His legacy is he’s a tremendous leader. He’s a tremendous player. And the type of person he is, I mean, it’s the whole package.”

But it also feels real. It feels like part of the story, part of the reason he’s here now, set to be enshrined as one of hockey’s all-time greats, as one of hockey’s all-time heroes.

“It could be sometimes negatively portrayed, like, never meet your heroes because they’re sure to disappoint you,” former teammate Andrew Ference said. “That’s such an old line. But there are guys that truly not just live up to what you think they’d be but, for him, he probably exceeded it to be honest.

“People probably don’t understand that the human’s even better than the hockey player. Like, meet this hero, because he will surpass your expectations.”

* * * *

There are echoes of that sentiment everywhere, interspersed with his greatness on the ice, with his defensive prowess and all those Selke trophies, with the 2011 Stanley Cup and the Triple Gold club, the collapsed lung, the aura of perfection.

But his greatness wasn’t entirely obvious from the start.

Scott Bradley, the Bruins director of amateur scouting from 1997-2008, now a senior adviser, had fought long and hard to convince the Bruins brass that Bergeron was the player for them: a kid with little English, boundless intelligence, skating deficiencies, limitless potential, a kid he saw as special right from the start.

There was pushback.

Bradley, though, always believed, impressed by a “hockey IQ that was off the charts,” and Bergeron ended up in the top 15 on Boston's draft board, despite questions about skating that graded out to average. They selected in the second round (No. 45) in the 2003 NHL Draft; he now ranks third in points from that draft, behind only Joe Pavelski (No. 205, 1,068 points) and Eric Staal (No. 2, 1,063 points).

“It wasn’t easy,” Bradley said. “It was a fight, I know that. We were in draft meetings and we had to battle. We had to step up and voice our opinion to get him, and really the process worked and I’m thankful and I think the Bruins are thankful that it did.”

Had Bradley not convinced the rest of the team's braintrust -- or had another team swooped in and taken Bergeron ahead of their slot -- they would likely have opted for another bold-faced name: Shea Weber, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame two years ago and was taken five picks later by the Nashville Predators.

But Bergeron rewarded that faith, when he had 73 points (31 goals, 42 assists) in his second season, when he made the most of every moment, every shift, when he impressed the coaches and the management, when he proved to be “one of the best defensive players I’ve seen in any era,” as former Bruins goalie, head coach and scout Gerry Cheevers put it, calling him the best centerman that Boston had, up there with Jean Ratelle.

Which is not to say that Bergeron is without fault.

“I was never necessarily the fastest, even in juniors or minor hockey," he said, "so I think my stick and my anticipation and natural instinct was always to compensate from that, for the skating. I think I’ve always worked a lot on that. … I was always honest enough with myself to know that you need to work on different things in your game.”

He adapted, making quicker plays, ensuring he didn’t get caught, some of it coinciding with a greater defensive focus under coach Claude Julien.

“He had a sense of what play the player with the puck wanted to make next, had a really good ability to kind of snuff that play out," said Bruce Cassidy, who coached him from 2017-22, "whether it was with his great stick -- because his stick was always on the ice -- but that usually started with IQ to put him in that position.

“He used his body well, without being overly physical, and his stick well. He just could cut those things off. It was just hard to make plays through him. There’s hand-eye in there too, obviously, but I think it’s his hockey IQ because he didn’t do it with blazing speed.”

Years after Cheevers had first compared Bergeron to Ratelle, the same thought occurred to Bradley, along with the concept that the two French-Canadian centers should meet. He brought Ratelle to Ristuccia Arena in Wilmington, where the Bruins then trained. The pair walked in, over to Bergeron, who was putting on his pads, and Bradley made the introductions.

He thought, as he left them engaged in conversation in French, “Wouldn’t it be something if he turned out half of what Jean is?”

Bradley still doesn’t quite remember what prompted it all, just that, to him, it made sense.

It seems prescient, all these years later.

“To me, as it turned out,” Bradley said, “he’s just like Jean Ratelle.”

* * * *

According to popular understanding, the line came out of desperation.

In that scenario, it was a blender in a game against the Columbus Blue Jackets that generated the trio that would become arguably the NHL’s best for the next half-dozen seasons: Marchand, Bergeron, and David Pastrnak. But to hear Bergeron tell it, that wasn’t the first time the three players noticed they had a spark.

The Bruins had gathered for a captain’s practice ahead of the 2017-18 season, Pastrnak’s fourth in the NHL and the first after he had become a true offensive force.

“We all grabbed, let’s say it was a white practice jersey, and we ended up being on the same line for captain’s practice,” Bergeron recalled. “We’re like, ‘oh my God.’ It just seemed right away to click and have some chemistry there.”

It didn’t become regular until after that Oct. 30 game in Columbus, with Cassidy wanting to spread out his offense, to keep it from being too top-heavy. But after that point, it was too good, too dynamic to break up.

“It just felt really natural from the get-go,” Bergeron said. “It was just a perfect mix of vision, chemistry, shooting, and even making the plays. It clicked right away.”

That season Bergeron would have 63 points (30 goals, 33 assists) in 64 games before surging to his NHL career-high 79 points (32 goals, 47 assists) in 65 games the following season. It was a new era for a player as adaptable as anyone, a player who could excel in any situation -- power play, penalty kill, defensive zone, offensive zone, face-off dot -- a player just as important to the defensemen with whom he was paired as his linemates.

“He’s a dream to be on the ice with as a defenseman,” Ference said. “I would make an easy argument that he was way more valuable to whatever D-pair he was out there with than whatever wingers he was with.

“The center, especially in the system that we played, the demands of supporting a defense in the defensive zone, he was always 5 to 10 feet away from you, supporting the play and talking to you and always in the perfect position where you can dig a puck out and disrupt the play or do a quick little 10-foot pass and he was always there to pick it up just in the perfect spot.”

He was, effectively, a third defenseman.

“I always saw myself early maybe as an offensive player,” Bergeron said. “But I felt like I was able to play different styles and adjust to what was needed or wanted from the coaching staff. … I felt like it was always within me, but which facets were going to come out (depended) on what was needed, in a way.”

And it was that unselfishness, that adaptability, that leadership, on and off the ice, that landed him here, in the Hall of Fame.

“To me, it was a no-brainer,” Julien said in June. “He is a complete player, a coach’s dream because you could rely on him offensively in the big moments, you could rely on him defensively also in the big moments, rely on him for big face-offs. Every part of the game, he was one of those guys that a coach could lean on when you really had to. Patrice was that player who could do it all.

“When you talk about Hall of Famers, it’s not just about the guy that scores goals or the guy that stops every goal. It’s the guy that did everything during the game.”

* * * *

And everything away from it.

The sensitivity, the sense of people, had always been there for Bergeron, going back as far as his childhood. But as he contemplated the impact of the Oct. 27, 2007, hit from Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Randy Jones, which resulted in a significant concussion, he considered whether that might have sharpened it, made it more acute.

Bergeron would miss the rest of the season with reverberations from that concussion, dizziness, sensitivity to light, periods spent sitting alone in a dark room.

To tell it now, he never believed that his career would be over, never contemplated the end.

But it had an impact.

“I think there’s a lot of things that changed at that point because obviously you appreciate the game a lot more,” Bergeron said. “I think it gives you a different perspective on how fast it can be taken away from you, how much you love it, how much you miss it.”

Bergeron would turn to a sports psychologist, Dr. Steve Durant, earlier than many in professional sports, after he sustained a second significant concussion early in his return, during the 2008-09 season.

“I think that gave me the perspective of, I’m not alone feeling like this,” he said. “There’s a lot of guys that never really talk about it. I personally think, as a leader, it’s OK to show that you’re vulnerable and you do feel the same feelings that (someone else) might be going through.

“That perspective changed my view on it, to share with people and open up and, at times, just to talk makes it better.”

It was something that Pastrnak brought up recently, after he was named captain of the Bruins -- the way that Bergeron could “sense” when something was amiss, the feel he had “for the players, for the humans.”

He called it a gift.

It’s what they still try to live up to, which was why just 10 days ago the Bruins leadership group gathered to ensure that enough support, enough touches were flowing through the room, using a younger player like forward Fraser Minten to reach out to other young players, the way Bergeron (or Chara) had once sent defenseman Charlie McAvoy over to forward Jake DeBrusk or defenseman Matt Grzelcyk.

As McAvoy said, “(Bergeron) was always so mindful of taking care of everyone else. He always had an eye on that stuff. … You’re like, OK, this guy’s different. He’s different than other people. This guy really cares about you and he’s not afraid to show that he’s thinking about you and concerned and wants you to be OK. That’s a special thing.

“It’s one thing to be good at hockey. It’s another to be the best person.”

NHL.com Columnist Dave Stubbs contributed to this report