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Maximum Marchand - Aug. 18, 2019 - By Ken Campbell
LIKE ANY GOOD YARN, this one has alternate endings, depending on which guy is telling the story, but Brad Marchand and Blake Gallagher can at least agree on the time and place. It was just before Christmas of 2008 at Newark Liberty International Airport. Gallagher, a junior at Cornell University, and Marchand, a rookie with the AHL’s Providence Bruins, were waiting for a connecting flight to take them home to Halifax, N.S., for the holidays and had a chance meeting at the airport. They had played with or against each other for years growing up, and here they were, Marchand pulling down 62,500 large with an $85,000 signing bonus and Gallagher playing hockey and getting a higher education at a prestigious Ivy League school.
This is where the accounts start to veer from one another. According to Gallagher, they had some time to kill between flights, and he suggested grabbing lunch. But Marchand had lost his wallet, and his phone was broken as well, so Gallagher ended up getting stuck with the bill. “I was the poor college student, and he was playing pro hockey and making money, and I ended up buying him lunch,” Gallagher said. “You’d think it would be on him, with him making the money, but he didn’t have a whole lot with him.”
Marchand’s version is a bit different, though neither ending has him coming out looking great. The way he remembers it, he attempted to pay for lunch, three times in fact. But all three credit cards he tried to use were declined because they’d been maxed out. Hey, he was 20 years old at the time, just a young Little Ball of Hate™ still with so much to learn. Gallagher the struggling student was out $30, but he has since wrung more mileage out of that story than he could have ever imagined, even though Marchand has paid him back tenfold. “Oh yeah, I still give him the gears about that,” Gallagher said.
So much has changed since that day in Newark. Gallagher is back home in Halifax, running a business that connects merchants to the major credit-card companies. Irony, eh? Marchand, meanwhile, is one of the best players in the world, a Stanley Cup champion, a three-time Cup finalist, a father of two kids, and a player who, at the age of 31, just put up 100 points for the first time in his career. He led the playoffs in scoring, despite the Bruins’ top players, including Marchand, going dry in 5-on-5 play during the Stanley Cup final. He’s part of the best line in the world, and if he’s not embroiled in some manner of controversy, it’s usually within walking distance. And here’s the thing, Marchand is actually improving as a player. He’s slowly beginning to amass a string of accomplishments that is coming close to rivalling his rap sheet, one that includes six suspensions totalling 19 games for slew-footing, spearing, clipping, low-bridge hitting and elbowing and five fines for slew-footing, roughing, tripping, diving and cross-checking. He’s getting almost as much notoriety for his offensive prowess as his reputation for being the hockey equivalent of that kid you don’t want to invite to birthday parties. And there’s one more thing. “Got a higher (credit) limit now,” Marchand said.
Marchand will never again have to worry about having a case of the shorts when the bill shows up. The eight-year, $49-million contract extension he signed with the Bruins in 2016 will take care of that quite nicely. And despite the team’s disappointing loss in the final, Boston’s window for another Stanley Cup hasn’t closed yet. This version of the Bruins could very well win another championship, which would put Marchand and the others who won in 2011 in the same rarefied air in Boston, from a team perspective, as the likes of Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito and Gerry Cheevers.
Like any successful team, the Bruins have identified their core players and locked them up to long-term deals. Unlike a lot of teams, they’ve done so at good prices. Consider that Marchand is under contract for six more years at $6.1 million, Patrice Bergeron is committed to three more at $6.9 million, David Pastrnak is there for another four at $6.7 million and goalie Tuukka Rask has two more years at $7 million. That’s four elite players at an incredible bargain of $26.7 million. “If guys want to be part of this group, they’re going to be expected to buy in, and if you have guys like ‘Bergy’ and ‘Z’ (Zdeno Chara) taking discounts, that’s expected around here,” Marchand said. “If you want to try to make every dollar you can, then unfortunately that’s not going to be with this group. We want guys who want to be here, who want to win and you’ve got to sacrifice some things. At the end of the day, you lift the Stanley Cup, and if you take a bit less money, it’s worth it every time.”
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It’s not often that a player’s trajectory goes up after 30, but there’s a lot to like about Marchand’s game at this point in his career and how he has made it work with his linemates, Bergeron and Pastrnak. There was a time when Marchand had a shoot-first mentality, but his game is far more textured now, to the point where, as the only left-handed shot on the unit, he’s looking for the open sticks of his linemates on their forehands and finding them with uncanny regularity. The sideshow part of Marchand’s persona has been so prominent for so long that it has overshadowed him sneaking up on everyone to become an elite NHL player. “If you asked me when I first came into the league whether he was going to be a 100-point player, I’d have probably said no,” said Bruins defenseman Torey Krug. “I could see him being a point per game, but 100 points? His hunger and his desire for greatness are second to none, and he’s not willing to accept that he’s not the hardest-working guy in the room.”
It’s hard to be the hardest-working player on the Bruins. First they have Chara, the tallest freestanding structure in the game, the 42-year-old son of a Greco-Roman wrestling coach who, just for spits and giggles, has spent some of his off-seasons in the past doing each leg of the Tour de France one day before the competitors, then watching each stage before setting off again. He’s also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Then there’s Bergeron, a French-Canadian cyborg whose attention to detail and work ethic have made him one of the best two-way players the game has ever seen. The Hall of Fame awaits them both. None of the three – Chara, Bergeron nor Marchand – was regarded highly enough to be a first-round pick in his draft year, but each has rounded into the kind of player who must make scouts pound their heads on their desks sometimes. If you redo the 2006 draft, Marchand finds himself in the top five after Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom and Claude Giroux, battling for fourth overall with Phil Kessel. Irony again, eh? All three Bruins stars had to work their way to greatness, and they continue to do so to stay there.
For Marchand, much of that work comes in the summer months when he returns home to Halifax to reconnect with family and train with Brad Crossley, a local skills coach who is legendary for his hardcore workouts and having practices so intense that his players sometimes come to blows. For the better part of the past decade, Marchand, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon have made sure to sync their off-season schedules to be home at the same time so that they can work out together with Crossley. They rent out the BMO Centre, a four-pad rink in the Halifax suburbs, two or three times a week starting in mid-July and do their thing for a couple weeks. They go for 60 minutes and each of the 3,600 seconds is intense. For a good part of the session, they’re doing small-area drills in confined spaces. Cutbacks, corner play, 1-on-1 competitions and small-area games that are intense and in your face. “Those three feed off each other,” Crossley said. “They don’t want to compete, they want to be the best. I’ve got to tell you, it’s intense to the point sometimes where you sit back and say, ‘Holy moly, is this in-season or off-season, you know?’ They take it to another level. They’re competing as hard as you saw Brad compete in the playoffs.”
Ah, yes, the compete level. Marchand knows no other way than to play the game the way he does. Teammates insist he has toned down, but a career-high in penalty minutes and a gratuitous punch to the head of Scott Harrington of the Columbus Blue Jackets in the second round of the playoffs suggest otherwise. Even Charles Barkley wants to punch him in the face. On the other hand, Marchand hasn’t licked anyone lately and hasn’t been suspended since January 2018, when he sucked up five games for a vicious elbow to the head of Marcus Johansson, a guy who became a teammate when the Bruins acquired him at the 2019 trade deadline. Talk about awkward. “Some guys take it a little more to heart than others, especially since he had a pretty tough recovery,” Marchand said. “He buried me in practice (during the final), so we joked about him finally getting his revenge. Good dude, though.”
The powder keg is never too far away from Marchand, as evidenced by him mocking Patrick Maroon during the final when the Blues winger was talking to an official. But teammates claim there’s a direct correlation between Marchand toning down the circus act and becoming more dangerous offensively. “He’s becoming more focused as a hockey player than a shenanigan leader,” said teammate David Backes. “When he’s focused, he’s the best Brad Marchand and NHL player we could ask for. When he’s distracted and looking for other stuff, he can stop playing hockey for a while, and that’s what you want as an opponent. I’ve told him many times, maybe over a couple of cold beverages, ‘Brad, if I’m against you, I want you playing as little hockey as possible against me. I want you thinking about sticking me or whacking me or doing something else to me.’ He took it well, and now he’s having success.”
HIS HUNGER AND HIS DESIRE FOR GREATNESS ARE SECOND TO NONE, AND HE’S NOT WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT HE’S NOT THE HARDEST-WORKING GUY IN THE ROOM–Torey Krug
Krug was the talk of the Cup final in Game 1 when, after having his helmet ripped off his head in front of the Bruins net by David Perron, Krug skated the length of the ice with his hair flowing and threw a pile-driver of a bodycheck at Blues rookie Robert Thomas, who didn’t return for the rest of the series. The running joke in the Bruins’ dressing room was that Krug was channelling his inner Marchand after taking his teammate’s T-shirt and wearing it for a couple games. “Figuratively and literally, he gave me the shirt off his back,” Krug said. “But that’s the type of guy he is, and that’s the type of guy he wants to be. You can go to him for anything.”
Including abuse. He and Krug have had an ongoing feud for years in which they one-up each other with gags about being vertically challenged. Both are listed at 5-foot-9, but Marchand claims there is no doubt about which of them is more squat. “He’s just a little fella,” said Marchand of Krug. “He’s 5-foot-7 on his tippy-toes.”
Don’t you ever change, Brad Marchand.
• • •
This story also takes place during a layover. Kevin Marchand was at the airport in Toronto awaiting a connection to take him to St. Louis for Games 3 and 4 of the final to watch his son play. There were five women standing behind him, and they asked if he was going to the hockey game. One offered her opinion on how much they hated the Bruins in general and that Marchand guy in particular. “I just put my head down and smiled and thought, ‘Well, what do I say now?’” Kevin said. “I just looked at her and held out my hand and said, ‘I’m Kevin Marchand. Pleased to meet you.’ She laughed and backed up all embarrassed and said, ‘I’ve put both feet in my mouth!’ By the time we finished the conversation, all five of them were Brad fans and Bruin fans. One of them even had Brad in her hockey pool.”
To truly determine what makes Brad Marchand the person and player he is, you have to go about 650 miles northeast by sea to Hammonds Plains, N.S., the suburb of Halifax where he grew up. The lineage goes through Kevin, but it can be traced back to Raymond Marchand, who worked his way up to Master Warrant Officer in the Canadian Air Force before retiring in 1983 after 28 years of service. He finished work on a Friday and the next Monday started a company called Marchand Homes, which has become a leading homebuilder and land developer in Halifax. Raymond died in 2006, four months before the Bruins chose his grandson in the third round. Kevin took over the family business and Brad’s brother, Jeff, is now president. His mother Lynn and sister Rebecca handle the office administration and marketing. When Brad was 11, he spent much of the summer spreading hay over newly developed land for a subdivision the family business was building, not only to give him some extra spending money, but to teach him the value of honest work. Kevin said his son gets much of his competitive side from his mother’s Irish background and his combativeness from him and Brad’s grandfather. “We were always brought up with an eye-for-an-eye type of thing,” Kevin said. “If someone gives it to you, you give it back to him twice as hard. That philosophy is what my dad taught us, and he would never back down from anybody no matter how big. He was about 5-foot-7, but a stocky, strong man and very physically inclined.”
Kevin played hockey as well, spending four years in Jr. A with the Dartmouth Arrows before making the varsity team at St. Mary’s University in his final year. When he was 16, Kevin broke his hand on an opponent’s face during a meaningless fight and was bumped from the top line down to the third. By the time he got back into the lineup, another player had taken his spot, and he went from being a first-liner to a depth player for the rest of his career.
However, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it came to his son’s style of play. Brad was something of a wrecking ball throughout his minor-hockey career, right up to the time he played minor midget for the Dartmouth Subways, two years after Crosby. That team had five future NHL draft picks, including Marchand’s linemate James Sheppard, who was taken ninth overall by the Minnesota Wild in 2006, 62 spots ahead of Marchand.
From 1986 through 2014, Hockey Canada held 23 World Under-17 Hockey Challenges and three Canada Winter Games where teams made up of the most elite 16-year-olds from Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada and the Pacific region would compete. In those 26 tournaments, Atlantic Canada won just one bronze medal, in the 2005 World Under-17 Challenge when Marchand led the team with five goals and 11 points in six games, one behind the tournament’s top scorer, Jonathan Toews. Marchand was already in his rookie season in the QMJHL and had proven he could take care of himself in tiny Atlantic Canada, but it was in that tournament where he took his game to another level. “The toughest and most aggressive I’ve ever seen him play was the under-17 tournament when he was 16 years old,” Kevin said. “It was consistently across the line, more in a tournament than I’ve ever experienced. That’s probably when he learned about playing on that edge. It was war on ice. And then Brad’s under-18 tryout was just a bash show out there. There was hardly any skill displayed on the ice. It was all crashing and banging and who could survive on the ice.”
Another epiphany came for Marchand in international competition when he starred on a line with Crosby in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. He led the tournament in goals with five and finished second only to Crosby in points. Since then, Marchand has scored 109 of his 262 career goals and 270 of his 559 career points. “Before I played there, I’d get up against guys like (Ryan) Getzlaf and (Corey) Perry and Sid and defensemen like (Brent) Burns and (Drew) Doughty and be like, ‘I’m good, but those guys are great,’” Marchand said. “And then I got on that team and realized I’m right there with those guys. I can play with them.”
• • •
More than once, Marchand has stopped at a lemonade stand operated by a kid and handed the youngster a $100 bill. Gallagher has seen him do it back home in Halifax a couple times during the off-season. “I think I did it a couple of weeks ago, too,” Marchand said. “I like a good glass of lemonade.”
Of course, there’s more to it than that. So often in hockey, the persona a player projects on the ice and the person he is away from the arena are diametrically opposed. Look at tough guys. They think nothing of punching each other in the face for other peoples’ amusement, but they’re often the most generous, compassionate and giving people away from the rink. When it comes to Marchand, the player you see infuriating opponents and fans alike is not the same person away from the rink. Most people understand that, some don’t. “He’s got a big heart,” Gallagher said. “As much as everybody thinks it’s black, he’s got a big heart.”
Prior to the 2019 Stanley Cup final, former Chicago Blackhawk Patrick Sharp, now an analyst for NBC, was telling a story of something that happened during the 2013 final between Chicago and Boston. At one point, Marchand tried to get Sharp off his game by telling him his kids were ugly. Then at Media Day prior to the start of this year’s final, Marchand pulled Sharp aside and offered a heartfelt apology for saying what he said, telling him he never would have said that to him now because he has children of his own, a nine-year-old stepson, Sloan, and a two-year-old daughter, Sawyer. “You realize how much you care about your own kids,” said Marchand as his eyes welled up. “That was probably one of the only lines I crossed in my career that I would change. Being a parent, you don’t realize how special it is, and it truly is a gift. So to put someone else down who is a parent, yeah, I feel bad about that.”
WE WERE ALWAYS BROUGHT UP WITH AN EYE-FOR-AN-EYE TYPE OF THING. IF SOMEONE GIVES IT TO YOU, YOU GIVE IT BACK TO HIM TWICE AS HARD
–Kevin Marchand, Brad’s father, on his upbringing
Another thing you might not know about Marchand is that he’s been playing the guitar. He can even play Wonderwall by Oasis and a few other tunes. At the 2016 World Championship in Helsinki, Canadian teammate Ryan O’Reilly brought his guitar along and started giving Marchand free lessons. Irony again, eh? Since then, Marchand has been trying to develop some consistency. Surprisingly, his goal isn’t to join a death-metal band and scream unintelligible lyrics. “I want to be able to play around the campfire in the summertime,” he said. “Maybe break it out every now and then on the plane for the boys. But I’ve got a little work to do.”
Yes, he does. There is no linear path to redemption. Case in point came in the second round of the playoffs. The Bruins were playing the Blue Jackets, and in the overtime of Game 1 Marchand stepped on Cam Atkinson’s stick and broke it. He later joked that Atkinson was trying to dull his skate blade. In a pre-game interview prior to Game 2, Kyle Bukauskas of Hockey Night in Canada jokingly asked Marchand if he had to have his skates sharpened after the previous game. Marchand responded by skating away. He then drew an avalanche of criticism after punching Harrington in the back of the head late in that Game 2. After the Bruins won 3-0 in Game 6 to advance to the Eastern Conference final, Marchand agreed to be interviewed by Bukauskas again but gave answers totalling 10 words to three questions. The next day in a media scrum, he was asked 19 questions and responded with a total of 33 words.
I DON’T NEED TO SHOW ANYONE RESPECT IF THEY AREN’T SHOWING RESPECT BACK–Brad Marchand,on shunning the media during Round 2 of the playoffs
Remember what Marchand’s father said about an eye for an eye? Well, that’s exactly what his son was doing. He was upset, not at Bukauskas specifically, but at how he felt he was being singled out while other players got a free pass. “I understand that people didn’t like that I punched Harrington in the back of the head,” Marchand said. “But they didn’t say anything (in the first round) when (San Jose’s Evander) Kane sucker-punched (Vegas’ Colin) Miller. Kane punched Miller harder than I punched Harrington and could have broken his jaw. No one said anything about that, and nobody said how (Carolina’s Justin) Williams jumped on (David) Backes’ back and punched him in the head. Now (NHL commissioner Gary) Bettman is commenting on mine, and I get a call from (NHL department of player safety’s) George Parros saying that everyone is calling for a suspension.”
Marchand was just getting started.
“Why should I give these guys the time of day when they’re being completely biased?” he said. “It’s going to cost me money if they want to make these bulls--- calls and point the finger at me when other guys are doing the same thing. It’s going to cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars if I get suspended, when nobody says anything about this (other stuff). I have no problem with people being critical as long as they’re critical when other players make mistakes, too. I don’t need to show anyone respect if they aren’t showing respect back.”
• • •
One of the enduring images from the Stanley Cup final was of Marchand after Game 7, looking down the ice at the Blues players celebrating, with tears streaming down his face. Social media, being what it is, had a field day with that one. Marchand didn’t play well during the final, in part because he injured his hand in a scrimmage the Bruins held during their 10-day layoff before the series. It culminated in Game 7 when Marchand went off for an ill-advised line change thinking Jaden Schwartz of the Blues was entering the Bruins’ zone alone. He wasn’t, and the Blues scored to make it 2-0. That effectively buried the Bruins.
Marchand told reporters after the game that he would never get over this, that the loss hurt more than in 2013 when the Bruins were a minute from taking the Cup final to Game 7, only to give up two goals in 17 seconds on home ice late in the game. “You never know when you’ll get the chance again,” said Marchand after the game. “It could be the last one for all of us.”
Or not. Going into the final, the Bruins were the only team in the playoffs that had not fallen victim to an upset. They should be serious Stanley Cup contenders for at least the next couple seasons. That won’t dull the pain now but, if Marchand can find a path to redemption and become a regular 100-point player and stay that way for a while, you never know will happen.
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