Kings offered Chara more than Bruins did?

Thanks to Gator Mike for breaking the news resulting from Zdeno Chara's radio interview. Apparently, there's a number of reasons that made the Slovak defenseman go for breezy Boston rather than sunny SoCal. Here's what G-Mike reports:

1. The Bruins got former players such as Ray Bourque, Cam Neely, and Bobby Orr to call Chara personally and convince him to come to Boston. Marc Crawford was the only person from the Kings organization to contact him.

2. He had a personal relationship and thought highly of new Bruins' GM Peter Chiarelli, even though he was prohibited from negotiating.

3. He felt more comfortable talking on the phone with Scott Gorton (Assistant GM) and Dave Lewis than he did talking with Marc Crawford

4. He was more familiar with the city of Boston than Los Angeles, and thought highly of Boston. According to Chara, parts of the city remind him of his hometown.

Hmm, the No 1 reason might indicate the Kings were not *really* very heavily after Chara. I understand they could still use some more leverage on the management front to make sure Zdeno felt right at home with the Kings. On the other hand, as far as I remember, Chara signed very soon into the free agency period, which means that perhaps Dean Lombardi was courting some other big-money d-man in the meantime ("Hi, you've reached Rob Blake. Leave the message after the beep") and could not find time to get the country code for Slovakia ;).

No 2 - Anybody, who thinks higher of Chiarelli than our own Lombardi, is not worth a contract with the Kings (wink wink).

Reason No 3 - perhaps zey rili spouk wiz ze accent hee kud understand?

There's no point in arguing reason No 4 though. There are very few cities in Europe, let alone Eastern Europe (not to mention Slovakia) that would resemble LA...