It’s pretty hard to believe that Patrice Bergeron is only 25 years old. I don’t mean that in the typical “This guy managed all these accomplishments and made all that money” tone that people use when discussing most young professional athletes, either.
Nope, what makes Bergeron’s young age stunning is all of the valleys that came with his peaks. There was a time when concussion issues seemed like they would crush a promising young career entirely, but Bergeron gradually fought back from those problems to become an extremely underrated two-way forward for the Boston Bruins.
Of course, then he suffered another concussion in the 2011 playoffs, this time from a hit by Claude Giroux of the Philadelphia Flyers. That injury seemed very troubling - especially considering his lengthy history of head issues - yet Bergeron only missed two postseason games thanks to the long break the Bruins earned by sweeping the Flyers.
He seemingly didn’t miss a beat when he came back, either. He scored nearly a point per game overall in the postseason (20 in 23 games) including two big goals and a +4 rating in Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup finals. Bergeron was also an assassin in the faceoff circle, winning an astounding 60.2 percent of the draws he took.
Of course, winning the Stanley Cup isn’t the only great moment Bergeron experienced in Vancouver: he also won the gold medal with Team Canada in the 2010 Olympics. When asked to compare the thrills of both victories, he favored the Stanley Cup, though.“It is amazing. It is an unbelievable feeling,” Bergeron said. “This is for us as a team but also for the city of Boston. They’ve waited so long for that -- too long for that. To have a chance to be part of the team that is bringing it back means a lot to me.”
(snip)
“Sorry Canada, but I’ve got to go with the Stanley Cup,” Bergeron said when asked to compare the feeling of winning the Cup and an Olympic gold medal, which he did with Canada in February 2010. “The gold medal is up high for sure, but this is a childhood dream. When you’re playing hockey, you’re thinking about hoisting the Cup. Now I’ve had that chance. I was five years old and playing outside with my brother. We were always dreaming about winning that Cup. To have a chance to get it now is amazing, but that gold medal is something special too.”
Before people start flipping over cars again, it’s probably important to note a few key reasons why he might feel more attached to a Cup win than a gold medal win. Here are the top two ones:
1. The huge difference in the number of games played.
To win the Cup, Bergeron played in 103 of the Bruins’ 107 games between the 2010-11 season and the playoffs (Bergeron missed two games in the regular season and two in the postseason). Obviously, those contests include the ups and downs of a long regular season and the grind of the playoffs.
Compare those 103 contests to just seven games played in the Olympics and it’s beyond reasonable that Bergeron feels this way.
2. He played a bigger role with the Bruins
While spending much of his time with Sidney Crosby isn’t exactly dealing with table scraps, Bergeron finished the Olympics with zero goals and one assist in seven games. With all due respect to his talents, he was relatively anonymous on a team full of stars. There are probably a significant amount of casual fans who didn’t even know he made the team.
Meanwhile, in Boston, he was either the No. 2 center or the “1b” to David Krejci’s “1a.” His 20 points left him in second place on the team in playoff scoring and his absence was felt in the first two games of the Eastern Conference finals.
Maybe he wouldn’t have had the same dreams if he didn’t grow up in Canada, but it shouldn’t be that surprising that Bergeron preferred winning the Cup to winning the gold. Too bad we all can’t have such “tough questions” to answer, though.
