Patrice Bergeron Announces Retirement, So When Are We Renaming The Selke After Him?

Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron — inarguably one of, if not the best two-way players in NHL history — has announced that he is calling it a career.

Bergeron spent 19 seasons with the Bruins, and on Tuesday he announced his retirement in a statement on the team's website.

"For the last 20 years I have been able to live my dream every day," Bergeron wrote. "I have had the honor of playing in front of the best fans in the world wearing the Bruins uniform and representing my country at the highest levels of international play. I have given the game everything that I have physically and emotionally, and the game has given me back more than I could have ever imagined.

"It is with a full heart and a lot of gratitude that today I am announcing my retirement as a professional hockey player."

He added that he felt "blessed and lucky" to have the career that he did.

And man, what a career it was.

Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron in 2017 with one of the six Selke Trophies he won during his career. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)

Bergeron Will Go Down As One Of The All-Time Greats

The Bruins captain skated in 1,294 NHL games and tallied 427 goals and 613 assists, good for 1,040 points. He was a key piece of the Bruins Stanley Cup-winning team in 2011, but the Cup isn't the piece of hardware he's most synonymous with. That would be the Selke Trophy.

Bergeron won the trophy — given "to the forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game" — a record six times. That sixth victory came just this past season.

So, with all due respect to the late NHL Frank J. Selke, it's time to rename the trophy in honor of Bergeron. Surely, at some point that will happen.

It was entirely possible that Bergeron would've retired last summer. Instead, the future first-ballot Hall of Famer inked a one-year deal to return to Boston.

It was a great call. The Bruins went on to post the best regular season in the league's history. However, the team fell well short of a storybook ending. They were eliminated in the first round by the eventual Eastern Conference champions, the Florida Panthers.

Bergeron signed off by making it clear he was wrapping things up on his own terms.

"As I step away today, I have no regrets," he wrote. "I have only gratitude that I lived my dream, and excitement for what is next for my family and I. I left everything out there and I'm humbled and honored it was representing this incredible city and for the Boston Bruins fans."

Congrats on one hell of a career, Bergy!

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