Patrice Bergeron will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame Monday night in Toronto, a little more than 23 years after he arrived in Boston as a second-round draftee from Quebec City, age 18, with his English fragmented and his game a jumble of yet-to-interpret pieces.
Oh, how it all eventually fell into place.
Bergeron, 41, will stand at the podium as perhaps the most complete two-way centerman in NHL history, his record half-dozen Selke Trophies as the league’s top defensive forward the signature of his 19 seasons with the Bruins.
“I mean, how many times did he win the Selke?” mused an impressed Alex Ovechkin, the Capitals’ goal-scoring legend, whose own stellar career overlapped all but Bergeron’s rookie season in 2003-04. “A leader. A great human being. It was a pleasure to play against him.”
Lest anything be lost in the Big Russian Machine’s translation, Ovechkin’s “pleasure” was meant as praise.
Oilers pivot Connor McDavid, today’s most electrifying and prolific NHL star, duly praised Bergeron both for his defense and his masterful work at the faceoff dot, the underpinning to those Selkes. From 2003-23, Bergeron led the league in total faceoffs, along with faceoff wins and winning percentage.
“Playing against him was incredibly difficult,” said McDavid. “He was so hard on faceoffs, so responsible.”
Bergeron, added McDavid, had a penchant for always being in the “right spot,” wielded a “great stick,” and also produced on offense (1,040 regular-season points).
“The total package,” praised McDavid. “A complete player. A nightmare matchup, for sure.”
As for Bergeron comparables, Ovechkin offered sublime Red Wings pivot Pavel Datsyuk, a three-time Selke winner. The “Magic Man” also helped pace the Red Wings to a pair of Stanley Cup titles. He was a more clever, stylish puck handler and playmaker, but logged fewer (14) NHL seasons than Bergeron.
“Similar skill-wise and skating-wise,” said Ovechkin. “Both hard-working, as well.”
Brian Burke, the general manager in Anaheim when the Ducks won what remains the franchise’s lone Stanley Cup title (2007), said both Datsyuk and Igor Larionov, the great Russian center known as “The Professor,” were fair Bergeron comps.
“But I think the best one is Ronnie Francis,” said Burke, also one of Monday’s inductees, in the “Builders” category.
“I know people talk about a lot of guys being 200-foot players. For the most part, it’s a misnomer, in my opinion. Ronnie Francis and Bergeron played every foot of the ice. They’re the only 200-foot guys, off in their own category. Otherwise, if a guy’s good, he’s a three-zone player … good, but not their equal.”
Bergeron broke in with the Bruins not as a center but on the wing, then-coach Mike Sullivan opting for the same rookie immersion plan that is on display again today with Marco Sturm and James Hagens. Bergeron produced a solid 16-23–39 freshman campaign, then spent the full following season at AHL Providence during the NHL’s lockout season of 2004-05.
“Scott Gordon was our coach,” recalled Bergeron. “And Sully came down from Boston just before our playoffs started, and told the team, ‘Don’t miss this opportunity, because your careers go by so fast.’ I understood it, but not really, because I was, what, 19 years old? I’d say the same thing now to younger guys — it goes by so fast — and I think it would resonate, but not fully. It takes experience to understand it.”
Bergeron reported to training camp in September 2007 with Claude Julien his third head coach in Boston. Only 10 games into that season, Bergeron, 22, suffered a severe, potentially career-ending concussion when hammered into the wall by Flyers defenseman Randy Jones. Bergeron resumed his career the next season and played another eight-plus seasons under Julien’s tutelage.
“No doubt, the most reliable two-way player I ever had,” said Julien, reached by telephone in Zurich, where he is coaching in Switzerland’s top pro league. “So his being honored in the Hall of Fame doesn’t surprise me a bit — he richly deserves it.”
Prior to Julien’s arrival, working a year in the helter-skelter coaching scheme of Dave Lewis, Bergeron logged a career-worst minus-28 in 2006-07. The third-year center who eventually would win all those Selkes barely stayed ahead of only R.J. Umberger (minus-32) and Joffrey Lupul (minus-29).
“My goal when I got there,” mused Julien, “was to try to make it a more complete team, a better two-way team. And that’s where Bergy really bought into it. He took so much pride in being a good two-way player.”
Bergeron was fun to coach, added Julien, because “he never put himself above the game — he was always open to feedback and trying to get better.”
Earning his coaches’ praise has been a Bergeron trademark from the time of his arrival on Causeway Street. Oilers coach Mike Babcock, on the same day McDavid praised Bergeron’s game, drew a chuckle from an Edmonton media gaggle when he said, “Every time you would hang out with [Bergeron], you would win.”
Babcock pointed to Bergeron’s Team Canada contributions that led to gold medals at the IIHF World Championship in 2010, the Olympics (2010 and 2014), and the World Cup (2016). He also won gold for Canada in the World Junior Championship.
“I really didn’t know who he was,” said Babcock, reflecting on first meeting Bergeron at the 2004 Worlds in Prague. “He was just a kid. Next thing you know, he’s killing penalties, he’s out on the power play … ”
The best teams in international competition have two centers, said Babcock, who can play down low in the defensive end.
“Because they’re smarter than anybody,” said Babcock. “That’s what he was. He made the players around him better.”
Another coach, Rod Brind’Amour, who won the Selke in 2006 and 2007, sized up Bergeron as “probably the coach’s dream player.”
“You need this, you put him out there,” noted Brind’Amour, bench boss of the defending Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes. “You need that, put him out there. Constant. Put him on the power play … kill penalties. He’s on the ice for the last minute, no matter what the situation.”
Brind’Amour laughed when adding, “I played against him a little bit, didn’t like it. Didn’t like coaching against him. So kind of happy he’s in the Hall of Fame.”
The task at hand now for Bergeron, one he recently said he’s fully prepared for, is to boil down his life’s work to a six-minute speech on Monday night. He’ll have some 50 family members and friends, including his wife and four children (ages 3-11), along with his mother and father, in the audience.
No fewer than 14 of his former Black and Gold teammates also will be there, including Zdeno Chara, Tuukka Rask, and Mark Recchi. Ex-linemate and fellow former captain Brad Marchand will be there. Good pal Sidney Crosby, frequently Bergeron’s linemate in Canada’s gold-medal wins, has to be in California amid the Penguins’ three-city Golden State tour.
“I wish I had more time,” said Bergeron, referring to the tight window the Hall imposes on all the recipients’ speeches.
His desire to deliver the end of his speech in French makes the near-impossible task a tiny bit harder.
“I’m feeling some nervousness, I guess that’s the right word, but also excited. And I feel like it’s all still hard to believe,” he said.
Now more than three years since retiring, Bergeron has yet to determine the nature or field of his next act.
“I know that there’s a next chapter, the next adventure for me,” he said. “But I just don’t know where it is yet.”
As he promised upon packing it in in the summer of 2023, Bergeron has immersed himself fully into being dad, shuttling kids to and from school, coaching his older sons in hockey and his daughter in soccer.
He has taken up learning how to play guitar, something he wanted to do for years, but lugging a stick took priority over the strumming of strings.
“It’s fun and hard … and challenging, which is good,” he said, referring to his once-a-week guitar lessons. “There are good days, where you feel better, and others you feel like you can’t even pick it up.”
He recently joined UNSUNG, an athletic shoe company, as a strategic adviser. Last year, Bobby Farrelly, of the moving-making Farrelly brothers, cast him in a small part in the movie “Driver’s Ed.”
The comedy, which came out this spring, is about a high schooler stealing his driving teacher’s wheels and setting out with friends to visit his girlfriend in college.
Bergeron, the Bruins’ Hall of Fame center, played “Monsieur Francois,” the high school French teacher.
“I had to think about it for a second,” said a smiling Bergeron, referring to Farrelly offering him the part. “And then I was like, ‘Oh, my God, yes, I have to try it, I have to give it a shot!’ ”
No telling where any of it leads from here, but Bergeron has seen that movie before — the unknown kid in a new world offered a chance to make the most of things.
Monday night confirms he pulled it off with the best of ’em.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.