Usually when a player gets traded, the next couple days are a whirlwind as he moves to a new city and tries to get settled into his new surroundings.
That was not the case for Pavel Zacha. He didn’t have to move at all after the Bruins acquired him from the Devils on Wednesday, because he was already living in Boston.
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Zacha has been spending his summers in Boston since 2018, when then-teammates and Massachusetts natives Brian Boyle and Jimmy Hayes invited him to train with them in Foxboro over the summer. Zacha enjoyed the experience, his girlfriend lived in Needham at the time, and so he decided to keep coming back every summer after that.
Last summer, he bought an offseason home here. That’s where he was when he got the call that the Bruins had traded for him, and that’s now where he’ll remain beyond the summer.
“I really like it,” Zacha said of the Boston area. “It’s a big hockey town, so you get a chance to train and skate with a lot of good hockey players. … I got a place here last summer, so it kind of worked out really well for me, that I didn’t have to move and I can just stay where I’m living now this summer.”
It also doesn’t hurt that Zacha was already close with two fellow Czechs on the Bruins as well. He grew up in the same town as Jakub Zboril and played with him until they were 13, and he played on the same line as David Pastrnak on some Czech national teams in their teen years.
“Zboril I basically grew up with,” Zacha said. “I’ve known him since I was four years old, so we were like best friends growing up, played together until we were 13. So he texted me right away. It was funny how it played out for us. ... Pastrnak is only one year older than me, so we played national teams together and were linemates on national teams. It’s great to know a lot of the players coming here to the team, and everyone’s been really nice so far.”
The 25-year-old Zacha is currently a restricted free agent. He is coming off a career-high 36 points last season.
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