If you were to assemble a list of the Top 10 Ottawa Senators who got away, Zdeno Chara would rank pretty high on that list.
Chara was traded to the Senators at the 2001 NHL Draft as part of a deal to acquire perennially disgruntled star forward Alexei Yashin. He spent four seasons in Ottawa before leaving in free agency in 2006 and signing with the Boston Bruins.
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Not to torture Sens fans, but after leaving Ottawa, Chara did it all. He won the Stanley Cup as captain of the Bruins, was nominated for six Norris Trophies, winning once, and last year, he entered the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Next month, on August 21st, Chara will be honoured at an event in Trenčín, Slovakia, called “Zee’s Final Shift.” Organizers describe it as a farewell and “a definitive and natural end to his great career.”
The farewell game will be held at the Winter Stadium in Trenčín, which is named after former Senator Pavol Demitra, who perished in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl KHL team plane crash in 2011.
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Chara is inviting mainly NHL players to his farewell, and that includes three other former Senators.
Naturally, one is Marian Hossa, his Sens teammate for three seasons. It’s often been speculated that Chara might have pushed harder to stay in Ottawa if Hossa, one of his best friends, hadn’t been traded a year earlier. The deal that sent Hossa to Atlanta for Dany Heatley happened just hours after Hossa had signed a three-year contract with Ottawa.
Also at the event will be Chris Kelly, who was Chara’s teammate in Ottawa before they went on to win a Stanley Cup together in Boston.
And hockey trivia buffs might also remember former Sens defenceman Radek Hamr, who played 11 games with the Sens in their expansion years. Hamr never played with Chara but works for the European arm of the player agency Chara belongs to.
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Other confirmed guests include Thomas Vanek, whose son Blake was a Senators third-round pick last year, and Michael Ryder, the former Bruin and Hull Olympique.
The rest of the guest list is loaded with NHL stars, mostly from the past: Patrice Bergeron, Johnny Boychuk, Ray Bourque, Andrew Ference, Michal Handzuš, Jaromír Jágr, Tomáš Kaberle, Duncan Keith, Anže Kopitar, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Adam McQuaid, Daniel Paille, Žigmund Pálffy, David Pastrňák, Mark Recchi, Robert Reichel, Andrej Sekera, Dennis Seidenberg, Miroslav Šatan, Marco Sturm, Aaron Ward, and Jakub Voráček.
It’s an impressive lineup for a special night honouring one of the most unique players in NHL history.
And a player that Senators fans wish they’d been able to hang on to.
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By Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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