It has been a tremendous past year for Chara, with his induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame coming in November, with his rejoining the organization as hockey operations advisor and mentor, with his number retirement making him the 18th and final player to wear 33 for the Bruins.

“Everything he’s accomplished — let’s not kid ourselves — he earned every ounce of it by his discipline and by the way that he persevered, by the way that he conducted himself on and off the ice,” Bergeron said.

Chara, who holds the record for games played by a defenseman in NHL history with 1,680, seventh among all skaters, played 1,023 games in Boston, where he was the captain for 14 seasons and won the 2009 Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the NHL. He scored 481 points (148 goals, 333 assists) with the Bruins, part of the 680 (209 goals, 471 assists) he scored for four teams — New York Islanders, Ottawa Senators, Bruins and Washington Capitals — over his career.

But it was on the Bruins that he made the most indelible mark.

“I think they became the Bruins again,” Bourque said, of the teams Chara led after he signed in Boston as a free agent on July 1, 2006, changing the trajectory of the franchise.

Chara led the Bruins to the Stanley Cup Final three times, winning in 2011, but it was that moment in 2019 that Thursday night seemed to mirror. That night, June 6, was when Chara stood on the TD Garden ice with a full face shield covering the multiple jaw fractures he had sustained one game earlier.

“I’m lined up on the blue line next to him, starting the game, and I’ll just never forget how deafening that noise was,” defenseman Charlie McAvoy said. “It was the loudest I’d ever heard TD Garden, the stakes as high as they were. It was just amazing. He wasn’t going to be denied the chance to play in that game.

“I think that kind of wrapped it all up, who he was as a person, the toughness that he had.”

That was what they all remembered on Thursday, the toughness, the mental strength, the work ethic, the sheer force of making himself into not just a hockey player, not just an NHL player, but one of the greatest of all time, and bringing his teammates with him.

As forward David Pastrnak said, “There was no other way than follow him.”