37-year-old forward 4 wins from 2nd championship in 16th season after trade from Bruins
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Brad Marchand has nowhere to be.
He is sitting, feet up, curled into a locker in an empty Florida Panthers dressing room FaceTiming with his youngest, Rue, four days before Game 1 of his fourth Stanley Cup Final.
Fourteen years have passed since his first, years in which he has transitioned from brash rookie forward to seasoned veteran, a player constantly on the edge of suspension to a captain in the NHL to a hired gun after 1,000 games with one team.
That 2011 Final seems like a lifetime ago, with Marchand and Dallas Stars forward Tyler Seguin the only two still playing. But somehow it is also the one that most closely aligns with where he is in his 16th season, entering the final round of the playoffs unencumbered, free of responsibility, stress or expectations.
He was 23 years old then, with all the bravado and naivety in the world, an entire career ahead of him. Now he’s 37, most of his playing days behind him, treating this Final as potentially his last.
“I honestly feel less stressed now going into this Final than I did in the first round of the last five playoffs I was in,” Marchand said in a lengthy sit-down with NHL.com. “I’m just so excited for it. I’m not nervous about it at all. At the end of the day, however it plays out, it’s going to play out.
“Statistically, it’ll most likely be my last one; hopefully it’s not, but that’s just how this game works. I’m just going to enjoy every second of it.”
His first Final came at the end of his rookie season with the Boston Bruins, a magical time in which he vaulted from a fourth-line role to the top-six place he would occupy alongside Patrice Bergeron for the next 12 seasons.
He would win the Cup that season in an epic seven-game series against the Vancouver Canucks.
He’s still chasing a second championship.
The Bruins would reach the Cup Final two more times in that era, losing in six games to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and in seven to the St. Louis Blues in 2019. Marchand’s elation would be replaced with heartbreak, with the understanding of how lucky he had gotten, how hard it truly is.
He has another chance with the Panthers, who are set to face the Edmonton Oilers in the 2025 Stanley Cup Final. Game 1 of the best-of-7 series will take place at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).
FLA vs. EDM
FLA vs. CAR | EDM vs. DAL
FLA vs. TOR | CAR vs. WSH | DAL vs. WPG | EDM vs. VGK
OTT vs. TOR | FLA vs. TBL | MTL vs. WSH | NJD vs. CAR
STL vs. WPG | COL vs. DAL | MIN vs. VGK | EDM vs. LAK
Marchand, who was acquired by the Panthers on March 7 prior to the Trade Deadline, has been a fit beyond what they could have anticipated, not just for his on-ice production or the way he has elevated a line with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen, but for everything else.
“What I didn’t know (before he arrived) is what Gregory Campbell did, is his incredibly positive spirit,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said of its assistant general manager, who played with Marchand for five seasons in Boston. “Guys that are vocal and intense sometimes will get up and down your bench, screaming at your bench, they just get so wired in the game and he never does that. It’s always positive. It’s always stay in there, hang in there.
“So, we get these two, especially ‘Lundy,’ young guys playing (with someone) bordering on legendary status at this point and he’s pumping their tires and he’s just like, every day excited. It’s his personality that I didn’t know, but he’s moved into the Matthew Tkachuk hate them (realm) — that’s a horrible word, but it’s close — and then they get here and you go, ‘You’re the exact opposite person that I thought you were.’”
He’s also a person who understands where he’s been in this game, how difficult it is to get here, and the dwindling time he has left.
Which is why he’s grabbing onto this run with both hands.
“I’ve been on the best regular-season team to ever put skates on, and we didn’t accomplish anything,” Marchand said, referring to the 2022-23 Bruins, who set the NHL record for wins (65) and points (135) before being stunned by the Panthers in the Eastern Conference First Round. “You never know. You can be a great team on paper and do extremely incredible things in the regular season, but so many things have to go right to make the Final, to make a long run. It’s so hard to predict with any team.
“I hope it’s not [my last]. But realistically I have a few years left. Hopefully I can have another run, but if not, hopefully can take advantage of this one.”
* * *
It has been a roller coaster of a season for Marchand, starting with the three surgeries he had last summer, the season without a new contract, the 4 Nations Face-Off win with Canada, the divorce from the only NHL team he’d known and which he captained, the relocation to South Florida, the time spent away from his family.
“It was a lot,” he said. “It was a lot of stress.”
Last summer, Marchand knew he would have to have surgery at some point. No time was optimal, with the procedures putting the 4 Nations or the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics at risk, not to mention his status without a contract beyond the 2024-25 season.
“It was a tough summer,” Marchand said. “There were tough choices.”
He went for it then, with repairs to his elbow for a torn tendon, his groin to address a sports hernia and his abdominal area, also for a sports hernia. He started the season having taken three months off, knowing he had to play catch-up, with his conditioning, strength and power behind.
Still, the pressure was on from the outside for that contract.
“Your stats aren’t where they are and you’re not making the plays you normally make,” he said. “Yes, you know that. But there’s still a lot of noise that comes with that. I felt like I was trying to do the right thing, to be part of the group. There’s still a lot of heat that can come with that when your numbers and your game’s not where it’s supposed to be, where people expect it to be.”
It was all new to him. And, as he put it, it was something he “didn’t handle as good as I would have liked to.”
It still bothers him. Nothing more so than the contract situation.
“I didn’t really expect to have the contract negotiations that I had,” he said. “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 the season without a contract.”
He never pictured any of it.
“I didn’t really want to play contract years out because I never really wanted to have that stress. 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,” he said.
“I find when you go into a season playing (without a contract), things matter. Your stats matter more. So, it doesn’t just become about the team. When you’re on term and you’re on a contract, it can be all about the team and you can sacrifice whatever you need to to be part of the team. But in contract years, you can’t do that. You have to be a little bit selfish.”
It’s a weight, a different — and, for Marchand, unwelcome — lens through which to view his play amidst the play of the team he desperately wanted to succeed.
“You want to play through injuries, but you play through an injury and you’re not playing well and it affects contracts,” he said. “So, you’re trying to do all the right things, but it’s not always that easy.”
And had the season gone differently for the Bruins as a whole, Marchand believes he would likely would have remained in Boston. But after he didn’t sign at the start of free agency last season, after the contract negotiations with goalie Jeremy Swayman took up most of the oxygen all summer, after the Bruins started slowly and fired coach Jim Montgomery in November, after injuries and underperformance spiraled, after the Bruins decided to sell, his fate was sealed.
Boston traded most of its assets, including its captain. Marchand did not have the power and/or force a trade to Florida, just an eight-team no-trade list. But the Panthers were the team that Marchand thought had the best chance to compete for the Cup.
He was right.
* * *
By the time Marchand is saying all this, as morning becomes afternoon at the Panthers’ practice facility, most of his teammates have vacated the premises. Many of them have families, kids, people to spend time with during the brief interregnum between the conference final and the start of the Cup Final.
Marchand doesn’t.
As a Trade Deadline acquisition, he is just here to play hockey. He has no outside responsibilities these days, a rarity for a man with three kids and a wife and a house and all that entails.
“My family’s not here, so literally the only thing I have to do here is to focus on hockey and to recover and to rest and to get my mind prepared for games,” he said. “And then, when I’m at the rink, the only thing I have to do is focus on me. I don’t have to try to manage everything else and worry about a whole team. I just worry about what I have to do to put my best game on the ice.”
It’s not what he’s used to at home, not with a teenager, an almost-8-year-old and a 3-year-old. When they’re up at night, outside of playoffs, he’s up and helping. When they’re up in the morning, so is he.
Here, he can sleep as much as he wants, bed at 10 p.m., wake up at 10 a.m. Naps, whenever.
It has been a boon for someone trying to make the most of the opportunity.
He will take the rest and the focus and the FaceTimes, will push all his energy into achieving what they all want, what he could sense they were headed toward even as an opponent earlier this season, and especially when he arrived in Florida. Marchand was acquired for a conditional NHL Draft pick that became a 2027 or 2028 first-round selection when Florida reached the conference final with Marchand playing at least 50 percent of its playoff games.
Marchand has been impressed by how the Panthers do things, the way they train and interact, the lack of cliques, the commitment and focus. It reminds him of his early days with the Bruins, but with a training staff beyond anything he’s seen.
“People undervalue how much that impacts a run,” Marchand said of how a team interacts off the ice. “There’s a reason that you hear that about every team that wins, like ‘Our group is so great.’ You want everyone to buy in, sacrifice, and be part of something, you need to have really good people on the same page, that care about each other.”
He had heard about it mostly from Campbell, a close friend. But seeing it was an eye-opener.
“He would compare it to our ’11 team with how close the guys were and how they interacted with each other and joked around, but then also worked really hard,” Marchand said. “That’s what I love about it — when you have a team that works really hard, it allows you to have way more fun because you know everyone’s doing their job.”
Including him.
“I’m just showing up, having fun, enjoying being with the guys and enjoying this moment in time,” he said. “Just worrying about me and my game, what I have to do to be the best version of myself on the ice.”
* * *
It took until the Panthers’ second game of the playoffs against the Tampa Bay Lightning for Marchand to feel himself again, back to the player he knew he could be.
There had been those offseason surgeries, then the injury on March 1 in Pittsburgh that sidelined him four weeks and ended the Bruins portion of his career. He arrived in Florida, still rehabbing and returning his body to health, all while learning to play a system unlike any he’d ever played in both the defensive and neutral zones.
Once he came back, he played every game he could down the stretch, searching for his legs and a grasp of the system, even while the Panthers had so many injuries they were a shell of what it would be when playoffs arrived.
But they have since become the Panthers again. And Marchand found his stride.
Alongside Lundell and Luostarinen, Marchand slid in perfectly on a third line that at times in these playoffs has been the Panthers’ best. He has 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) and is plus-11 in 17 games. His overtime goal in Game 3 against the Toronto Maple Leafs gave Florida a 5-4 victory and prevented a 3-0 series deficit in the second round.
“Sometimes you just connect with guys really well,” Marchand said. “I had that with ‘Bergy.’ Day 1, Bergy and I connected really well. And that’s how I felt with (Lundell and Luostarinen). … Once practice hit, when we had our full lineup, like instantly in practice we were clicking and we were making plays. We could tell that we gelled really well. Sometimes you just find that great fit.”
TOR@FLA, Gm3: Marchand lights the lamp in overtime
Their games aligned.
“It’s been fun to watch,” Maurice said. “They’ve been good from the minute they got together. What we had hoped is that, especially with Brad’s style, that we get these two younger players, especially Anton, thinking about the game a different way than just the solid kind of shutdown game.
“He’s learned to play the game the right way. So, it’s the perfect complement for those two young men that have killed penalties before with us, they have a defensive background. But we’re always kind of wondering, how much offense do they have? Is there more there?”
There was. Marchand helped unlock it.
Luostarinen, 26, is one point behind Marchand, with 13 (four goals, nine assists); Lundell, 23, has 12 points (five goals, seven assists).
“He’s been incredible,” Tkachuk said of Marchand earlier this postseason. “Him and their whole line has been incredible. … It’s crazy. He’s the oldest guy [on the team]. He’s full of energy and you would not think that by the way he’s playing right now.
“Super impressed to see what he’s doing, super lucky to have him on our side.”
* * *
Marchand thinks about the future “every now and again,” as he put it.
But he tries to bring himself back to this moment, to what is happening here with the Panthers. There will be time for that after the Cup is awarded and free agency looms.
“It’s going to come very fast and decisions are going to have to be made very quickly, but you don’t know what those decisions are yet, so you really can’t — there’s not a whole lot to think about,” he said. “It’s just, theoretically, ‘Here’s what could happen.’”
Asked if the door is closed back in Boston, the place where Marchand and his family will live after his career eventually ends, he said, softly, “I have no idea.”
He doesn’t want to look past now, past the fun he is having and the chance ahead.
“I don’t think going into last summer I ever expected to be on a different team, to be going into the Finals with the Florida Panthers, but everything happens for a reason,” Marchand said. “Every time one door shuts another one opens, and you’ve just got to take advantage of each opportunity.
“I think that’s one of the things that I took away from this year, is that you have to really be grateful for each day. I never thought the last game that I played was going to be in Pittsburgh in February with the Bruins.”
There is still a bit of hurt in his voice as he recounts what happened, even as he takes joy in where he is now.
He is devastated. He is grateful. He is confused. He is hungry.
His future beyond the next seven games is opaque, where once he believed it was so clear.
But for now, Marchand is savoring these days, knowing how rarely they come and how precious they are. Four more wins and he will be a Stanley Cup champion again.
“I try to keep it all in perspective, how fortunate we are to be in it and to have this opportunity to chase a Cup,” he said. “I think it just hits me more knowing it’ll be over sooner rather than later.”
