Brad Marchand's ‘will to win' played key role in Panthers' second title run

Miami Herald

5 hours ago

'Ultimately, we chase the Stanley Cup. You want a chance at playing for that every single year. To be able to be part of a team that has that opportunity again this year, I'm very grateful for that. You never know how long you have in this league. You never know when your last day is going to be. You want to make the most of it.'
Brad Marchand said these words March 10, three days after the Florida Panthers acquired him in a trade deadline deal with the Boston Bruins. The emotions wrapped around him. He never thought he would leave Boston, not after spending all 16 seasons of his career to that point with the Bruins.
But hockey is a business, and decisions had to be made. So with the Bruins out of contention, Marchand in a contract year and an impasse reached on a potential extension, it was time to move on.
Boston honored his wishes.
He went to Florida, with the Panthers sending back what ultimately became a first-round draft pick.
Marchand chased — and won — his second Stanley Cup.
The 37-year-old forward — a veteran in the hockey world but a newbie on this Panthers team — became a driving force on Florida's run to a second consecutive championship, which was secured Tuesday with a 5-1 win against the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final. He scored 10 goals, six of which came in the Cup Final.
'It feels completely different,' said Marchand, who won the Stanley Cup with the Bruins in 2011 as a rookie. 'I have so much more respect and appreciation for how difficult it was to get here, how hard it is and the amount of things that need to go right to win.'
Marchand fit in seamlessly with the group, with his blend of intense work ethic and tenacity mixed with a youthful demeanor and ability to chirp his teammates on command making him a perfect addition to an already tight dressing room. Teammates flung rubber rats at him after home games. He led frequent trips to Dairy Queen over the final two rounds of the playoffs.
'He was almost born to be a Florida Panther,' star Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk said.
Considering the battles Marchand and the Panthers had over the past few years before the trade, the irony of that comment isn't lost on anyone.
But hockey is a strange sport sometimes. The path doesn't always play out as expected.
For Marchand, it worked for the better.
'Everything has to line up perfectly,' Marchand said. 'My situation's a perfect example of that. Like, I shouldn't have been here. But it worked out, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it.'
Enjoying it enough to stay? That's the next big question. Marchand came to the Panthers as a rental, set to be a free agent on July 1. After spending his entire career in Boston before this, this will be his first — and possibly only — time testing the open market. He'll likely command a hefty salary by some suitors.
But would he consider staying with the Panthers, who only have $19 million in cap space to work with and about a half-dozen spots to fill — not to mention other big-name players in Sam Bennett and Aaron Ekblad potentially to work out deals with, too?
'We'll see what happens here soon,' Marchand said.
'He's been wanting this'
What happens in the future might be up in the air, but what happened during Marchand's time during the season with Florida was pretty remarkable.
He joined the team while dealing with an upper-body injury he sustained a few days earlier. He wouldn't play his first game for Florida until March 28, three weeks after being acquired.
But in that stretch, he did what he could to get acclimated to his new team.
It didn't take him long to realize the possibility of what could happen this season.
'I've been on a lot of teams throughout the years, and you know when you have something special,' Marchand said. 'You know when you walk into a special room. That's what they have here.'
Marchand helped amplify that.
He elevated Florida's third line as the right wing with center Anton Lundell and left wing Eetu Luostarinen, bringing out a new level of offense in a young duo known as defense-first forwards.
He brought a veteran presence into a dressing room that was already loaded with experience.
He came in with a desire to push Florida over the top. Marchand had been to the Cup Final three times in his career with Boston but only won in 2011 as a rookie. The Bruins lost in 2013 and 2019.
'When you get a guy like that, a personality like that coming into the room, that can produce at this time of year, does time and time out again, and you add the motivation that he has, I think that's the biggest thing we've seen. He's been wanting this,' Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. 'He's been waiting for this opportunity for a while. And he's taking advantage of the moment. When you can add a guy like that into a locker room like this, it's only positive.'
And it was felt from the start. Immediately after being traded and added to the team's group chat, the chirps started flying.
Bennett, who knocked Marchand out of a couple games of the playoffs last year with a controversial hit, was the first victim.
Marchand had brought up with the media learning about Bennett's 'strong right hook' and joked that Bennett's 'still a scumbag.'
But Bennett and Marchand are cut from the same cloth. Both are physical, get-under-your-skin players on the ice that players love to have on their team and hate to go up against. Tkachuk is in that same boat, too.
Marchand's personality and the human side of him, something players don't fully get to see unless they're teammates and interacting daily, won them over in addition to what they knew they would get when the puck dropped.
'What he's meant to this team ... I truly don't think we win a Stanley Cup without him,' said Bennett, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as Stanley Cup playoff MVP. 'His leadership, his will to win, it's inspiring. I was telling him before every game, 'We're going to follow you.' And we did. He was a dog every night. ... He's a better player and person than I ever knew, and I'm grateful that I got to play with him.'
A shining example of how quickly Marchand assimilated into the group: the team's postgame celebration once he joined the lineup.
Fans throw rubber rats onto the ice after home wins, an homage to the 'Year of the Rat' season in 1995-96, lore that stems from Scott Mellanby killing a rat in the team's dressing room.
After Florida's first win with Marchand in a game, on March 28 against Utah, Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues (who has known Marchand and skated with him during the offseason in Boston for close to a decade) decided to fire off one of those rubber rats at Marchand, who has (affectionately or otherwise) been referred to as a rat throughout his career for his knack to stir things up on the ice.
'They just see all my family out there on the ice and want us to be together,' Marchand quipped.
Soon, Barkov and Tkachuk joined in.
As the team progressed further into the playoffs, the shots started getting harder.
Naturally, as Marchand did his lap with the Stanley Cup on Tuesday night, Sam Reinhart fired a rubber rat at him.
'Yeah a couple guys I think they're looking for blood out there,' Marchand said. 'But you've got to embrace the grind, and you've got to enjoy it. It's special to be here, you wouldn't want it any other way, and that's why this trophy is so hard to win. It's so difficult on the mind, on the body, what you have to grind through, so you've got to appreciate it.'
'More special than I could have imagined'
The Panthers are appreciative for Marchand, too, even though acquiring him came down to the very end at the trade deadline.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice was getting ready to leave the team's practice facility about a half hour before the deadline on March 7. He went to thank president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito and his team for the good work they had done — they had already acquired defenseman Seth Jones, fourth-line forward Nico Sturm and backup goaltender Vitek Vanecek over the past couple days.
'And Bill came out and said, 'What about Brad Marchand?'' Maurice recalled. 'If he had asked that a year and a half ago, I would've thought he was joking. But he's been able to find these players that we didn't think were possible and he's been able to get these deals done. When he fired that out, I think there was a bit of a pause, his face was serious, everybody nodded and that's it.'
And so the Panthers added a veteran with 1,090 NHL games of experience (1,247 if you include the playoffs) and 976 career points (1,014 if you include the playoffs) to his name.
'The thing about players when they come in is you have a really strong idea, right?' Maurice said. 'You do all your prescout, you get it, and then you get on the ice with them in practice, and that's when you learn. I had said this right from the start. Clearly, he's closing in on 1,000 points. He's got good hands, but I didn't fully appreciate the small area things that he does, and that's the most difficult to do. It's not the rink-wide pass on the tape that you get excited about, but what he can do under duress in a small area is world class. It's as good as I've seen.'
To Zito, Marchand's on-ice talent was a given. It was the other intangibles Marchand brought to the team that added so much more to the Panthers.
'Getting to know him a little bit more as a human, he's more special than I could have imagined on that front,' Zito said. 'As a teammate and as a character human. From that standpoint, it's like frosting on the cake.'
It led to a successful business exchange for both parties. The Panthers repeated as Stanley Cup champions. Marchand won again for the first time in 14 years.
It wasn't the path he thought he would take this late in his career, but it's one he's grateful happened.
'It still felt heavy, that's for sure,' Marchand said of the Cup. 'It's pretty incredible to do it here at home. It's so many people here that I love and that had been a huge impact on being part of this, so it's an incredible feeling.'