As they watched Brad Marchand take the Stanley Cup from Sergei Bobrovsky after the Panthers finished off the Oilers in Game 6 on Tuesday, hockey fans in New England absorbed the scene with a mixture of joy and regret.
The reasons for both were obvious.
Joy because a beloved former Bruin won the Stanley Cup that he so badly coveted. Regret because things have sunk badly enough in Boston that his celebration had to happen somewhere else.
For the better part of the past 20 years, Marchand embodied what it meant to be a Bruin. He’s played bigger and tougher than most players in his weight class. He thrived at both ends of the ice and was at his best in the biggest spots. He was a revered teammate and an incredibly loathsome opponent.
For most of his career, he was on a path to spend his entire career in Boston before the team eventually raised his No. 63 to the TD Garden rafters.
In 2023, when the Bruins ran away with the Presidents’ Trophy, it looked like Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, etc. would get a chance to win that second Stanley Cup in Boston or at least make a legit run at it. But Florida stunned them that year and, in the process, ripped away their status as the Atlantic Division’s best team going forward.
Meanwhile, Boston’s fade from contention happened fast, putting them in a spot where trading their aging captain at the deadline was their best move.
Marchand isn’t done. This postseason potentially earned him around $30 million when free agency hits next month and it probably helped his chances of making Team Canada for next year’s Olympics in Italy. But his priority was always about winning another Stanley Cup. Everything that follows will be epilogue in Marchand’s story.
Fourteen years after he lifted the trophy as a brash kid, Marchand raised it above his head again as a respected veteran. It’s a great story, but it ended in the wrong place.
But Tom Brady won a Super Bowl in Tampa as the Patriots crumbled behind him. Mookie Betts has won two championships with the Dodgers while the Red Sox are in disarray and now Marchand is celebrating in Florida in the same year that the Bruins finished last in the Atlantic Division.
It’s another sad reminder that the amazing run of titles that started this century in Boston is over.
While it’s been a popular narrative to compare this to Ray Bourque winning with the Colorado Avalanche in 2001, this is different.
Yes, Marchand, like Bourque, is an aging beloved former Bruins captain who was traded elsewhere for one more shot at a Stanley Cup. But unlike Bourque, Marchand didn’t ask or want to be moved. Marchand had won a Cup before and Bourque wasn’t traded to a team that Bruins fans hate.
This was more like if Larry Bird or Kevin McHale had ended up on the Bad Boys era Detroit Pistons.
Nationally, this playoff run for Marchand has been a true celebration of his evolution from controversial, line-straddling star/rat to a begrudgingly respected elder statesman bound for the Hall of Fame.
Marchand was terrific in the finals. He was very good and very under control. He had 10 goals, including two in overtime, and 10 assists in the playoffs, including six goals and no penalty minutes in the finals.
Now, Florida forever owns a piece of the Marchand story, which had long been a Boston exclusive. He’ll be loved in South Florida the way Mark Recchi or Orlando Cabrera are in Boston. If somebody made a Brad Marchand biopic, he’d be wearing a red Panthers jersey during the movie’s climactic final scene.
Some of the indelible images of Marchand’s career now are alongside Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennet, not just Patrice Bergeron. His signature Stanley Cup performance came this year, not in 2011.
For Bruins fans, that’s sad.
