from Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe,

Less than a week after the Bruins closed up shop for 2019-20, all we know for sure is that free agent Zdeno Chara, their 43-year-old captain, would like another kick at the can.

“I want to be a Boston Bruin,” Big Z proclaimed to one and all on Thursday, placing the negotiating puck squarely on GM Don Sweeney’s desk.

What we don’t know is whether Sweeney cares to extend Chara that opportunity, particularly if he wants to make a bold play and offer, say, St. Louis free agent Alex Pietrangelo huge dough to be the next franchise defenseman hitched to the Bobby Orr-Brad Park-Ray Bourque-Chara legacy train.

We get lost in a lot of discussions around here, but that has been one incredible, unparalleled string of backline dominance. Orr, Park, and Bourque all have been inducted in the Hall of Fame. Chara’s plaque is at the Yonge Street pickup window. The continuum, dating to Orr’s arrival in Boston in 1966, was interrupted only by the six years between Bourque leaving in the spring of 2000 until Chara was hired on in the summer of ’06.

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