Boston Bruins winger Brad Marchand has established himself as a legitimate NHL star, but long before he was producing at an 80-point clip, he made a name for himself as one of the league’s biggest pests.
The Halifax native didn’t grow into an agitator, he was born that way.
“My mom likes to say that I came out of the womb ‘mischievous,'” Marchand wrote in an article on The Players’ Tribune. “I just liked the feeling of messing with other kids. I liked getting under their skin and making them react.
“What can I say? I was a little animal. But it wasn’t just me. It was my brother and all my cousins, too. There was like eight of us who all lived on the same street, and we’d be tearing up the neighbourhood every day.”
Likely saved on the NHL Department of Player Safety’s speed dial, Marchand has been suspended and fined a bevy of times over his nine-year career, constantly flirting with going over the edge due to his style of play. While members and fans of opposing teams tend to hold plenty of disdain for the 29-year-old, Marchand insists he had to play that way to make it to the NHL.
[blockquote] “I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like it, and I will be the first to tell you that it’s a fine line. I have done things that have stepped over that line, and I’ve paid the price for it. But you know what? There’s a lot of people out there in the hockey world who love to say, ‘Winning is everything. It’s the only thing.’
But do they really mean it? How far are they willing to go? Maybe it was my size, or just the way I was born, but I’ve always felt like you have to be willing to do anything — literally anything — in order to win. Even if that means being hated. Even if it means carrying around some baggage.
If I played the game any other way, you absolutely would not know my name. You wouldn’t care enough to hate me, because I wouldn’t be in the NHL. The way I played the game got me noticed by junior teams, and it got me drafted by the Boston Bruins at 5’9”.[/blockquote]
Marchand also writes about being embraced by the city of Boston, the Bruins’ success in 2017-18, a legendary Stanley Cup bender in 2011 and much more. Read the full article here.
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