There is no backchecking contest. There is no faceoff contest, either. Those wouldn’t exactly rival Zdeno Chara’s specialty — the hardest-shot competition — for the most exciting showcase for fans.

“If there’d be like a backchecking contest, it’d be in my alley,” he said on Friday, smiling.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — When trying to contemplate where he would fit into the NHL All-Star Skills Competition, scheduled to take place on Saturday night, Patrice Bergeron cracked the same joke that everyone around him has been making since he was named to his first All-Star Game.

As fellow Selke Trophy candidate Anze Kopitar said on Friday, “I don’t think the guys are going to be laying down blocking shots, stuff like that. That’s reserved for the season and the playoffs. It’s tough to say how you’d bring out the defensive skill in this kind of weekend. I don’t think anybody’s interested in blocking shots and taking a whole lot of faceoffs.”

So it goes that the skills most crucial to Bergeron’s game — his two-way play, his defensive prowess, his intelligence and awareness on the ice — do not lend themselves to All-Star Games. They do not stick out in statistics or, sometimes, in the highlights. Bergeron’s is a more subtle talent.


“Maybe it is a little bit underappreciated,” Kopitar said of those two-way skills. “But people that are involved about hockey, they know this stuff, so it’s not a big deal.”

Still, those talents don’t make a player stand out in an exhibition that is far more about showing off dips and dekes and special moves to the net than it is about passing and teamwork. The All-Star Game, to be played at Nationwide Arena on Sunday, is about individuals shining.

That’s not Bergeron, at least not in the system the Bruins employ, the one favored by coach Claude Julien. It was something that Bergeron really started to understand when he returned from his concussion-shortened 2007-08 season, a time when his career was in jeopardy.


“Definitely Claude had a big impact on my game, made me realize that it was important to play both ways,” Bergeron said. “It was something that was in my game, but I really needed to get better at it.”

It’s safe to say that happened.

He has the hardware to prove it, and his name on the Stanley Cup. That’s why he doesn’t wonder about what it would be like if he played in a different system, if there would have been more All-Star Games on his résumé, more goals from his stick.

“I want to win,” he said. “I feel like this is giving me the best chance to do so. It proved itself in 2011 and 2013 by going to the Final and winning in 2011. It doesn’t really matter to me, to be honest with you. I’m happy in Boston. All I want is to have success as a team.”

Though, in the end, individual achievements aren’t all that bad. Unless he’s forced to take Chara’s spot in that hardest-shot competition, that is.

That won’t happen. Bergeron was placed in the accuracy competition (along with the skills challenge relay and the shootout) by Jonathan Toews, the captain of his team for Sunday’s exhibition. Still, even if those events match his skill set slightly better, it’s still not exactly in his wheelhouse. It’s not where he’s most at home.


“It’s definitely different,” Bergeron said. “It’s definitely going to, I guess, get me out of my comfort zone. I’m pretty shy and some of those [skills] events are different, definitely out there, but we’ll see.

“I’m happy to be recognized here, but you’re right, sometimes it’s more for the offensive skills only, and I’m just happy that I got recognized.”

Bergeron has a Stanley Cup title, two Olympic gold medals, and two Selkes. But this is his first All-Star Game, which wasn’t held the last two seasons because of the lockout and the Olympics.

“It’s another thing I can say that I was part of and lived the experience and I know how it’s like,” he said. “Definitely something that when I’ll look back on my career, I’ll be happy that I’ve done it.”

Like many of his Bruins teammates, Bergeron has not had his best season, which was why there was no clear-cut All-Star candidate for Boston.

But Bergeron got the call, coming to the weekend with 11 goals (and 21 assists) this season, off the pace he set last season on his way to 30 goals and 32 assists. His totals also lag behind his pace from 2012, when then-teammate Tyler Seguin felt the need to apologize to Bergeron for having made the All-Star team over his center.

“I remember when I got the nod and he didn’t, I felt a little weird and didn’t think that was right,” Seguin said on Friday. “But I saw him earlier this morning. I know he’s happy to be here.”


Seguin relayed a story from last week, when the Bruins were in Dallas to face the Stars. Seguin’s Dallas teammates were looking at Bergeron’s faceoff numbers, where the center is second in the NHL to Montreal’s Manny Malhotra, at 58.9 percent.

They marveled at how he seems to get better, to refine those skills, to make himself shine through his teammates and the play of his team. Seguin knows this particularly well, having played alongside Bergeron, having watched the center every day, every game, every shift.

“With him, it’s his attitude,” Seguin said. “It’s not only the two-way player he is, but just how he approaches everything, the way he comes to the rink, his leadership qualities. He’s definitely someone I looked up to. Maybe we didn’t tell him very much, but I was always kind of watching what he did.”

So will he let Bergeron know that this weekend?

“I wouldn’t tell him to his face that I looked up to him,” Seguin said with a grin. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @amaliebenjamin.