Marchand lets chirps fall where they may
The game has changed, right? Brad Marchand, tell me how the game has changed.
“There’s no chirping anymore,” said the 29-year-old Boston Bruins star before he recorded one assist, one near-goal in overtime and no shenanigans in Toronto’s slogging 3-2 OT win Friday night. “It’s unbelievable. Nobody chirps anymore. You’re not allowed to say — you can’t say anything. Everybody’s worried about what they’re going to say, there’s mics everywhere, and I think that’s part of the reason refs are cracking down: s--- gets picked up on mics.”
Of course, across the room David Pastrnak was telling reporters that the one thing he has learned from Marchand was trash talk, and that he had a couple lines in his back pocket for his good friend William Nylander. A few lockers down, centre Patrice Bergeron allowed that “I still hear Brad once or twice, he’s still out there. But he doesn’t get carried away with it. He doesn’t lose his cool. He stays in the game, you know? He’s so funny, though. He’s so quick.”
Still, Marchand insisted: Nobody really trash-talks in hockey anymore. But isn’t there a place for slightly more family-acceptable chirping? Is that possible?
“Family-acceptable chirping?” asked Marchand. “What’s the point of that? Why am I going to chirp a guy, like, ‘You stink’? That’s not going to do anything.”
Marchand could tell other players they stink, but they can’t reply in kind. He entered Friday with 99 points in his previous 92 games, since the start of last season: In that span, among healthy players, only Nikita Kucherov, Connor McDavid, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby were ahead in points per game. He played for Team Canada at the World Cup, on the top line. Marchand started out as a low-bridging, crap-talking, edge-hitting, stop-hitting-yourself agitator. He was fast, sure, had skill. But that was overshadowed by the ... er ... antics. Now? He has grown most of the way up, and in the process has become one barometer of how hockey has evolved, in leaps and glides. Chirping? That’s one. Skating? Marchand used to take a month or more off if the Bruins went out early. Then he saw how Zdeno Chara only took a week off before skating again, and Marchand joined him. He started training with Crosby. He had one lax summer four or five years ago, and waited until the end of July to get back on the ice. He says it took him until Christmas to catch up.
“It’s not about how much you can lift anymore and how much you can run,” said Marchand. “It’s all about guys that can skate. There’s no way to compete with these young guys who are coming up with their skill and skating ability if you’re not doing what they’re doing, or doing more.”
What about agitating? That, too, has waned. As Marchand put it, “I’m trying to get away from the s--- a little bit, and I have, just because they crack down on it so easily now and I can’t afford to get suspended . . . There are very few guys on any team that even get into anything. These kids that come up now, they’re all skill players, they don’t get into it. There’s no fighters anymore.”
The game was boring enough to prove him right. He sounds old, right? That marvellous little bastard got old. He mentions that Toronto’s Nazem Kadri and Leo Komarov run around some, like he used to, but that Kadri has been calmed down by Mike Babcock. He’s a little wistful.
“Yeah, (agitating) is fun, it is,” said Marchand. “My first year, I was playing with (Shawn) Thornton and (Gregory) Campbell, and every single whistle we were getting into it, and we had a lot of fun at first. But it’s just not there anymore. The times.”
Now, in fairness, he’s not a whole new person. He’s not a nun. Marchand trash-talked the Russians in the World Cup last year. There’s a Bruins TV show from 2015 where he’s blabbering in a game with Vancouver and Chara pulls him aside and says, “We don’t need that.” Marchand says, “I’ll be good.” In the very next clip he says to Dan Hamhuis, “Nice chin, Dan.”
But he’s calmer. He’s a power-play guy, a sniper. Bergeron was his polar opposite — the picture of serene hockey class, versus the little guy who liked to start parking-lot fights. They’re more alike than they used to be.
“I agree,” says Bergeron, gesturing at Marchand. “This type is a little bit more entertaining, though.
“He always impressed me with how he just wanted to have an impact,” added Bergeron. “He didn’t care how he was going to make that team, but he was going to make it. And in his way, he was going to make sure you weren’t going to take his spot. That’s the attitude I liked from him from day one. And he still has that same mentality. Come and grab it from him.”
He is not letting the kids take the game from him, not yet. Marchand, for his part, is asked: How did you change? “I think I’ve had some good help along the way,” said Marchand. “Management, coaches, they’ve always really worked with me to change, and — I probably wouldn’t if I didn’t have that push to continue to change, and to be a player and not an agitator.”
He thought about it for a second. Wait.
“Would I have changed? Yeah, I probably would have changed, because I think I have a longer career ahead of me if I play this way instead of the other way. Guys like that can be replaced, but if you can find your niche and do something that other guys can’t do, and that’s the way I was pushed, to be more like Bergy. Playing with him, he holds guys to a certain standard. You want to pull your weight.”
He is pulling his weight. And still, when the mood strikes, someone’s chain. Sometimes, we all need to feel young again.