At the 2025 NHL trade deadline, the Boston Bruins shocked the hockey world when they traded franchise legend Brad Marchand to the team that knocked them out of the playoffs in back-to-back years, the Florida Panthers. The hope was that the Bruins and Marchand would get a contract extension done, but it just did not come to fruition.

Now, Marchand is enjoying his time with the Panthers big time, as he is back in the Stanley Cup Final. No. 63 has been excellent for the Panthers this post-season, too, as he has four goals, 14 points, and a plus-11 rating in 17 playoff games thus far. 

Now, with the Stanley Cup Final just a few days away, Marchand opened up about his contract negotiations with the Bruins and how he hoped he would have had a new deal with the Original Six club before the season started. 

"I didn't really expect to have the contract negotiations that I had," Marchand said to NHL.com's Amalie Benjamin. "I thought that was going to go a lot different, which obviously I think impacted me mentally this year a lot, and I was frustrated by it. I never pictured even entering this season without a contract." 

Marchand then dove into the pressure of playing in a contract year and why he would have preferred to have his next contract with the Bruins before the campaign began.

"I didn’t really want to play contract years out because I never really wanted to have that stress," Marchand said. "I always wanted the security of maybe take a little less and you get a deal done early and you have the security of it being done and you can just worry about playing hockey."

Unfortunately, Marchand and the Bruins were never able to get a contract extension done, and he is a Panther because of it. It is certainly a shame that things ended in the fashion that they did, but Marchand now has the opportunity to try to win the Stanley Cup again in Florida, so he clearly ended up in a good spot for himself.

Marchand was still one of the Bruins' top players before being traded to Florida, so it was certainly surprising that the team could not find a way to keep him around. This is especially so with how much success Marchand had during his 16-year tenure as a Bruin. 

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