Zdeno Chara and Duncan Keith didn’t let their unique body types stall their dreams of playing in the NHL. Once there, the former defensemen took their careers to another level, culminating with their induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday in Toronto.
Chara and Keith joined six other former players and coaches in the latest induction class. Former NHL players Joe Thornton and Alexander Mogilny, former Boston University coach Jack Parker, former Canadian women’s coach Daniele Sauvageau, and former women’s players Jennifer Botterill and Brianna Decker were the others.
Standing 6-foot-9, Chara is still the tallest ever to appear in an NHL game.
Initially a project, he ended up playing 24 seasons in the NHL, and his 1,680 games are the most by a defenseman in league history. He won the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman in 2009, and he led the Boston Bruins to three Stanley Cup finals, winning the championship in 2011.
“Playing youth hockey, with my size, wasn’t easy, but … I had hope,” Chara said. “I had dreams to one day play in big games, but it wasn’t until I left (Slovakia) that I realized that my size was seen as an advantage. When I came to America, I was just a tall kid, could barely speak English, but I was so lucky and grateful for families that were willing to take me and accept me as their own son.”
Keith, listed as 6-foot-1, 192 pounds, won three Stanley Cup titles with the Chicago Blackhawks in his 17-year NHL career, two Norris Trophies, a Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP and two Olympic gold medals.
“I never got to be the biggest player out there, but I got tall enough to make it,” he said. “It was just one of those things, just being smaller I knew I had to be quick and fast and working hard to get that speed up. … It was survival more than anything.”
Thornton was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1997 NHL Draft and he also played 24 seasons in the NHL, leading the league with 125 points in 2005-2006, even after getting traded from the Bruins to the San Jose Sharks early in the season.
Mogilny played in 990 NHL games, amassing 473 goals and 1,032 points. He led the NHL with 76 goals in 1992-93, and won a Stanley Cup title with the New Jersey Devils in 2000.
Parker won three NCAA national championships at Boston University, three NCAA coach-of-the-year honors and five Hockey East coach-of-the-year awards, retiring as the third-winningest coach (897 wins) in NCAA history.
Sauvageau coached the Canadian women’s team to their first-ever Olympic gold medal in 2002.
Botterill is a three-time Olympic gold medalist with Canada and a five-time gold medalist at the World Championship. She was also one of the most dominant players all-time at the collegiate level with Harvard, twice winning the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top women’s collegiate player.
Decker was an Olympic gold medalist and six-time world champion. She was named the best women’s college player in 2012 while playing for Wisconsin.
