Combined, they played 3,623 NHL games, the equivalent of nearly 45 seasons, scoring a cumulative 1,766 points (427 goals, 1,339 assists).
Yandle leaves the game without a championship or an individual trophy, but for now he holds the NHL record for his 989 consecutive regular-season game played between March 26, 2009, and March 29, 2022. His ironman record seems likely to fall early in the 2022-23 season, Vegas Golden Knights forward Phil Kessel having played 982 straight.
Chara won the Stanley Cup in 2011 as captain of the Boston Bruins and the 2009 Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenseman.
Subban won the Norris in 2013 and in 2022 was voted recipient of the King Clancy Award, going to the player “who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community.”
It was a momentous Tuesday with these three retirements falling like dominoes. The NHL doesn’t keep official record of single-day retirements of greybeard veterans, but League statistician Liv Ellis dug deeply to unearth a list of players with a minimum of 834 games played — Subban’s total, the fewest of the three — who won the most career Stanley Cup championships and individual awards and never played another game following that season.
The 2009-10 season saw 16 players who met the 834 games-played criterion, combining for a total of 28 Stanley Cup titles and 15 individual awards, not play again: Chris Chelios, Rod Brind’Amour, Darryl Sydor, Mathieu Schneider, Rob Blake, Bill Guerin, Scott Niedermayer, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Kirk Maltby, Miroslav Satan, Brad May, Stephane Yelle, Paul Kariya, Jere Lehtinen, Pavol Demitra and Aaron Ward.
On Tuesday, from his home in Florida, Hall of Fame defenseman Larry Robinson first considered Chara, whose 1,680 games is the most ever played by anyone at that position.
“I remember Chara when he first came to the Islanders,” said Robinson, a six-time Stanley Cup winner with the Montreal Canadiens between 1973-86 whose 1,384 games ranks him 15th all-time among defensemen.
“He was this huge, huge, huge guy who had difficulty skating. He had no balance, well, some balance, and he really looked a bit out of place. I think they started working with him and he made himself into a heck of a hockey player. Everyone’s looking at how long he played but look at the success that he had.”
Robinson was a senior consultant with the St. Louis Blues in 2018-19 when Chara took a Brayden Schenn shot to the face during the second period of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. The Bruins captain would need two plates with wires and screws to repair multiple fractures of his jaw to allow him to play to the end of the Final, won by the Blues in seven games.
“The guy came back to the bench for the third period wearing a mouth and chin guard,” Robinson said, Chara not playing that period but in Games 5, 6 and 7. “We just looked at each other and said, ‘Man, this is a guy who has a lot of character and desire to win.’
“That’s why he’s been able to play so long. He’s kept his desire. He was 40-something years old and he was still fighting kids the last few years. He still played the game the same way the last few years of his career. Kudos to him. I am inspired and grateful for his keeping up the legacy of the defense. Good for him.”
In the Czech Republic, retired defenseman Jaroslav Spacek remembered Chara as a gangly teenager in the mid-1990s, skating for Sparta Praha, trying to break into the Czech league.
“Everybody was looking at him as a huge guy, obviously,” said Spacek, today head of youth through junior programs for general manager Martin Straka’s HC Plzen organization.
“He didn’t really skate well and then the Islanders drafted him (in 1996). Everyone was so surprised. But his work ethic got him to where he went. He became a captain in the NHL and he won the Stanley Cup. I think it was a pretty good career for him.”
Spacek broke into the NHL with the Florida Panthers in 1998, a year after Chara debuted with the New York Islanders.
“With Chara’s size and the small NHL rink, I wasn’t surprised that he played as long as he did. That might have helped him,” Spacek said. “He went through a few different styles of hockey and he adapted to all of them. The NHL was more physical when we broke in, less like European hockey. Then after the (2004-05) lockout, there was more speed, less contact. I was surprised how easily he handled that.”
Spacek, who played 880 NHL games for eight teams from 1998-2012, marvels at Yandle’s ironman record.
“That streak is unbelievable, especially for a defenseman,” he said of the durable 6-foot-1, 192-pound Boston native. “You go through the battles, all the stuff around the net, it’s surprising that he run that streak as long as he did.”
Robinson, too, is impressed by Yandle’s run.
“When I met him out in Arizona, we were doing one of (Wayne) Gretzky’s fantasy camps and he happened to be around,” he said. “I was amazed. He’s not really small but for a guy who plays that position, the size that he is, it’s very impressive that he able to play for that length of time. Hat’s off to another player who played as long and as well as he did.”
Brian Gionta captained Subban for four seasons with the Canadiens, from 2010-14, with a front-row seat to a sometimes larger-than-life defenseman.
“It’s not easy for a young guy with the stardom he had in Montreal to handle it,” Gionta said from Buffalo. “You can argue that P.K. got distracted by it but you can also say that he still made one heck of a career out of it. Plenty of other guys have been swallowed up by the temptations of a great city and a great team like that.”
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
