Zdeno Chara Was Boston Bruins' Most Valuable Skater in November

Just as the calendar Zamboni was razing off November in favor of December, the Boston Bruins unveiled a new three-year contract for one of their highest-grossing forwards, David Krejci.

Meanwhile, otherworldly goaltender Tim Thomas accepted the NHL’s monthly first-star accolade, an honor that is tough to dispute in the wake of a 9-0-0 run with three road shutouts and a .941 save percentage.

Tyler Seguin’s radiance is still refusing to taper off, even though the surging sophomore has decelerated a touch with four points in his last eight games. If nothing else, the team’s 12-0-1 finish to November has clouded that development.

Unfortunately for the sake of another key individual, he too seems to have thrived under the radar. Kind of extraordinary given that he is the most handsomely paid Bruin, one of the team’s primal nightly minute-munchers and the most sizable skater in the NHL.

Seguin started the past month with a five-game point streak with seven goals and 10 points. He finished it with a cumulative 14 points, tied with towering captain Zdeno Chara and his linemate and fellow second-year scorer, Brad Marchand.

Marchand’s November collection of seven goals and seven helpers is a touch dubious, seeing as he most recently inserted an empty-netter Wednesday night in Toronto and in the Bruins’ last home game versus Winnipeg. If not for those, he would be nursing a three-game production drought and would have one goal and no assists to his credit in the last five ventures.

But for Chara―who during the Bruins’ 13-game unbeaten streak has had a hand in six equalizers, four go-ahead goals and four clinchers―there is no pulling the goalie to leave any loopholes.

Whereas Seguin has gone arid in five of his last eight games and mustered three goals in his last nine, all against Buffalo, Chara has been both copious and consistent.

That is a claim no other Boston skater can make at the moment.

Unlike Seguin, Chara has not gone more than two consecutive games without a point since Oct. 27. Like Marchand, he has three goals over his last four outings, but unlike Marchand, all of those goals had to be scored against a masked man.

Chara commenced this past month with three straight two-point nights, all of those points being assists. He wrapped it up with a goal-assist value pack as part of a 6-3 triumph over the Maple Leafs.

His goal Wednesday night gave Boston a 3-2 lead to take into the second intermission. One period prior, his secondary setup helped to draw a 1-1 knot as Milan Lucic converted on a power play.

Of Chara’s last four points, three have come during a 5-on-4 advantage. As part of a 4-10-14 log for the past month, he charged up 2-3-5 totals on the power play.

In the more trying month of October, the Bruins failed to flex any improvement in the special-teams department, converting a mere five out of 39 opportunities for a 12.8 percent success rate.

November saw Boston’s power play improve by almost nine percentage points with 10 goals out of 46 advantages, or 21.7 percent conversion.

Chara was on the ice for half of those strikes and had a hand in all five. On the season as a whole, he boasts a team-leading 3-4-7 line on the power play, tangibly contributing to nearly half of the 15-for-85 harvest.

Conversely, the Bruins’ penalty kill has authorized six opposing goals in their last 13 outings. Chara was on the ice for only two of those and was also in action when Chris Kelly deposited a shorthanded tally against Winnipeg last Saturday.

Those special teams stats are the only item precluding any further additions to Chara’s snowballing plus/minus rating. The Bruins tallied a final November goal differential of 57-24 and outscored their adversaries, 26-11, when their captain was partaking in the action.

Only once, in a Black Friday tie/shootout loss versus Detroit, were they outscored during Chara’s shifts.

In turn, after finishing October merely one point in the black, Chara piled on 14 more in November and is now tied with Nashville’s Shea Weber for the lead among NHL defensemen with a plus-15 rating.

Amongst all NHL skaters, he trails none other than two teammates in Kelly (plus-16) and Seguin (plus-19) and is in the company of Marchand and Weber in a three-way tie for third place.

Of those four, only Marchand matched Chara’s November rating and the captain was on the bench for that empty-netter in Toronto.

Thomas may be sparkling brighter in his position than any other Bruin.

But of all those who are tasked with assisting the goalie on the home front and whipping up support for him in the other zone, no one had a November quite like Chara’s.