Krejci set for improbable 1,000th NHL game with Bruins

When David Krejci left the NHL after the 2020-21 season, he didn't know if he'd ever be back. He felt compelled to head to the Czech Republic, to play in front of his family, to fulfill a dream and an obligation he'd long harbored. He didn't know what the future might hold.

The forward had played his entire 15-season NHL career with the Boston Bruins, scoring 730 points (215 goals, 515 assists) in 962 regular-season games.
It was unclear if he would ever hit 1,000 NHL games.
But then Krejci, after a year of tearing up the Czech Extraliga, decided he wasn't done. He would come back to the NHL, back to Boston, back to the record books. And here he is, set to hit the milestone Monday against the Philadelphia Flyers where it all started, at TD Garden (1 p.m. ET; SN, NESN, NBCSP, ESPN+).
It's a celebration of one of the steadiest players of this era of Bruins hockey, a center overshadowed by the brilliance of Patrice Bergeron -- but, at times, no less important.
"He's just a quiet guy who goes about his business without making too much noise about himself," former Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask said. "And then at the end of the year, you look how many points he's got, he's always up there. And then he was the leading scorer in the playoffs. Still didn't get credit.
"But yeah, he's just an all-around good player and a key piece in the team for many, many years. Glad he came back."
Because had he not returned, he would have been stuck there, at 962. A respectable number, to be sure, but not kind of round number that stands out. Now, Krejci, selected by Boston in the second round (No. 63) of the 2004 NHL Draft, will become the seventh player to play 1,000 games for the Bruins, joining both a former and current teammate in the process: Zdeno Chara (1,023) and Bergeron (1,253). He will become the 374th player in NHL history to reach 1,000 games.
And perhaps the Bruins -- who, at 33-5-4, are the top team in the NHL -- wouldn't be where they are either. Krejci has 31 points (11 goals, 20 assists) in 37 games.
"You saw what the Bruins were last year without him, and you see what they are right now when they got him back," said Calgary Flames forward Milan Lucic, who spent most of his first eight seasons in the NHL on Krejci's wing.
But what Krejci has never been, throughout his 16 seasons in the NHL, is loud. He has never been flashy, though at times his statistics have been. Instead, he has been a player who has controlled play courtesy of impressive vision and hockey sense, a player who has made those around him -- including Lucic, who called playing with Krejci "a dream" -- better.

"As a teammate and now as a coach, you see how intelligent he is as a player," said Chris Kelly, who was the center on the Bruins' third line when they won the Stanley Cup in 2011 and who is now an assistant coach with them. "He saw the game like most people see it up from the ninth floor. He'd just see two steps ahead."
Especially in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The forward was the NHL's leading playoff scorer in 2011 and 2013, two of the three seasons in his career when the Bruins have reached the Stanley Cup Final (also 2019).
"He loved those kinds of situations," said Claude Julien, who coached Krejci for 10 seasons (2007-17). "He seemed really happy in the playoffs. For David, the bigger the game, the more he enjoyed it, and the more he enjoyed it, the better he played."
In 156 playoff games, Krejci has 124 points (42 goals, 82 assists), including 23 points (12 goals, 11 assists) in 25 games in the 2011 playoffs and 26 points (nine goals, 17 assists) in 22 games in 2013. He is the third-leading postseason scorer in Bruins history behind Ray Bourque (161 points in 180 games) and Bergeron (127 points in 167 games), who passed him last season.
And it wasn't only that.
Julien noted that the Bruins had a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference Second Round against the Flyers in 2010 when Krejci dislocated his wrist in Game 3. He wouldn't play again, and the Bruins dropped four consecutive games and lost the series.
"We had other injuries, but we were able to sustain it, but the minute he went down, you saw the impact that he had because we ended up losing the next four," Julien said. "That's what David Krejci meant to our team when he was in the lineup."
Or, as Lucic put it, "He's a big-time player in big-time games. … He always knew how to raise his game to the highest level when the team needed him the most."
Since 2008-09, with the exception of last season, Bruins coaches have had an impressive one-two punch at center at their disposal, Bergeron and Krejci. Or, sometimes, Krejci and Bergeron. That's 14 seasons of continuity, 14 seasons of steadiness, 14 seasons of center strength, offensively and defensively, a place where Krejci has at times been sold short given that he has played behind a five-time Selke Trophy winner as the best defensive forward in the NHL.
Fourteen seasons of opponents picking their poison.
"That was a big key for us and part of having success," Julien said. "I think I was spoiled having a couple of centers like that that you could really rely on as far as having two No. 1s. David Krejci on any team would be a No. 1 and I would still say there was No. 1A and No. 1B."
It's also probably why Krejci's career has been undersold, as the understudy to a future Hall of Famer.
"He did it quietly because that's just the way he is," Julien said. "I don't think he really cared that much about how much accolades he got. He just cared about doing it and doing it right."
This might be Krejci's final season in the NHL. He is living apart from his family -- wife Naomi, daughter Elina and son Everett are living in South Carolina this season -- in a rented apartment that harkens back to his younger years in the League. He will turn 37 on April 28, though, like Bergeron, he is hardly playing like it.
"He's very similar to 'Bergy' in the sense that it's just not pure numbers that reflect his value to our team," Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. "He's cool, calm, he's extremely poised. He makes passes that I don't see from the bench coming, and that's a credit to his creativity but also how competitive he is. He's really competitive."
Which is partially why he has come up so big in so many situations, partially why his teammates revere him and credit him as much as anyone with the success the Bruins have had over the past 1,000 or so games.
As Kelly put it, "I don't have a ring without David Krejci."