It didn’t take long for Brad Marchand to return to TD Garden. Just four days after the Boston Bruins traded him to the Florida Panthers, Marchand was back in his old home Tuesday morning, joining his new team on the ice for the first time ahead of their Tuesday night meeting with his former team.
Marchand will not play in that game, which is probably good news for the Bruins and their fans. He continues to rehab an upper-body injury suffered on March 1. Panthers coach Paul Maurice told reporters that Marchand remains week-to-week, and that they hope he’ll be able to play games towards the end of the regular season next month.
Marchand did take part in morning skate, though, skating on Garden ice for the first time as a member of a visiting NHL team. He took part in drills during an optional session that lasted less than 15 minutes and featured no contact.
“That was the first time I put the jersey on,” Marchand said. “First time I get to go on the ice with the guys. It's been a little bit different in that sense, where I've been with the group, but they had a day off, then I couldn’t practice with them. We traveled, so it's good to spend some time with the guys on the plane. But that was the first time I got to go on the ice. So, it still felt weird and odd kind of being out there.”
After the skate, Marchand met with the Boston media for a half hour, significantly longer than any typical press conference or locker room scrum with a player. Here are four takeaways from that session:
Never say never on a possible return
Asked if he was completely closing the door on the Boston chapter of his career, Marchand declined to do so, saying he simply didn’t know what the future might hold.
“I don't know, I guess is how I would respond,” Marchand said. “I don't know what the future brings in terms of how it plays out in the summertime. I know it didn't come together now. Can things change down the road? Potentially, but that's to be seen. So, I'm sure we'll have a conversation down the road, but I don't know where that goes. I'll say I would still love… like it doesn't change my love for the city, and the will to want to be here has never changed. I don’t think it will ever change. It's just, can we have a meeting of the minds and kind of come together?”
Bruins general manager Don Sweeney also said on Friday that he would never close the door on a potential reunion. So, that door is at least cracked open. But let’s remember that Marchand and the Bruins had all season to reach an agreement on a new contract, and never did. If they couldn’t bridge the gap now, it’s hard to imagine they would be able to in the summer, unless Marchand just doesn’t find the kind of offer he wants elsewhere and decides to revisit the Bruins’ best offer.
We detailed where those negotiations broke down here, so we won’t rehash it all again, but the two sides were probably about $1 million apart in terms of average annual value.
His lengthy message to Bruins fans
Marchand was asked what his message would be to Bruins fans who were upset about the trade, and proceeded to give a five-and-a-half-minute answer that, by his own acknowledgment, began to ramble a bit.
We’re not going to transcribe the whole thing, but you can watch all 5:30 of it below. Biggest takeaway: While Marchand wishes the Bruins had won more than the one Stanley Cup during his 16 years in Boston, he appreciates – on a deep, emotional level – that the organization was always trying to win, and he has the business wherewithal to understand why the bill eventually came due after years and years of trading away picks and prospects to try to win now.
“I don’t have anything bad to say, because for a very long time, they’ve put our team in a position to contend and to win,” Marchand said. “That’s all you want as a player.”
It was also clear that Marchand still regrets how the 2022-23 season ended, with a stunning first-round loss to the Panthers after a record-setting regular season.
“We definitely dropped the ball on that one,” he said. “That was our year. They [Bruins management] went all-in years leading up to that, and that season. When you look at an opportunity like that, it doesn't come along very often. They did everything they could to put us in a position to succeed. And ultimately, it was on the players. We didn't do our jobs and didn't come through when we had to. We get through Florida in that round, I think that's our year, but it unfortunately didn't work out.”
He knew big changes were a possibility
Marchand didn’t sound surprised that Bruins management opted for a big shakeup at the trade deadline. Not only was he traded, but so was Charlie Coyle, Brandon Carlo, Trent Frederic and Justin Brazeau.
Marchand said players are well aware that change is likely coming when a team underperforms the way the Bruins have this season. He said they talked about it as a group, but could just never manage to pull themselves out of the tailspin.
“I mean, I'm not naïve,” Marchand said. “I think you can kind of see the way things are going. Any time you don't achieve what you're expected to or what you've set out to, they're going to make changes. … Unfortunately, when it's not going the way you want to, they're usually bigger. So yeah, I think we saw the potential for the change that was going to come. We talked about it. We tried to stop it. We just, we couldn't.
“It just seemed like every time we tried to do the right things and change course, it just wouldn't come together for us. Unfortunately, sometimes things like that happen. You try to control it. You try to do whatever you can. It just seemed like everything that could go against us would go against us. … And then when that happens, they have to make changes to try and make sure that it doesn't [happen again]. Because if you don't, then you could potentially go down the same course two years in a row, and that's a bigger problem.”
His thoughts on Pastrnak and McAvoy taking over
With not just Marchand gone, but Coyle and Carlo as well, the Bruins are now clearly David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy’s team, with the debate already beginning on sports radio and among fans about which one should be the next captain.
While Marchand wasn’t about to give his opinion on that decision, he did weigh in on how Pastrnak and McAvoy might do as Boston’s new leaders, comparing them to Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron in the process.
“They both lead in different ways,” Marchand said. “And I think, especially together, the way I look at that is like a Bergy-Zee type thing where they're co-leaders, where they have different things and different ways they can lead. But they've been around, they've seen it, the way that Zee and Bergy have built that culture, and what's expected every single day. So, complete faith in those guys to carry on that culture and legacy and continue to add to it – not just carry it, but you gotta leave it better than you found it.
“That's one thing that, especially with the term those guys are on and how young they are, I think they have a great opportunity ahead of them to kind of carve their own path and build a legacy that they're excited about, and lead the way that they want to. That's what Zee did when he came in, is he had an idea of how he wanted to lead, how he wanted to change things, and he put it in motion. And then Bergy came in and the two of them just took over and did their thing. So, those guys have that opportunity to do the same thing now.”