Brad Marchand took a high stick late in the second period in Los Angeles on October 6 and crashed awkwardly into the post. He stayed down, and in those seconds his mind went to the worst place available.
“I’ve never hurt my knee before. I didn’t really know what to think when I went down,” Marchand told reporters in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, per the Associated Press. “I thought it really could have a career-ending type deal or a season-ending thing.”
He is 38, in the third season of a career that has run 17 years, and the knee was new territory.
The diagnosis, when it arrived, came as relief rather than bad news.
“I’ve never been so happy to be out for this amount of time,” he said. “The injury could have been so much worse. When I found out it was going to be, whatever, a couple of months, I was pretty happy that that was the case.”
Brad Marchand’s season so far:
| Age | Injury date | Games played | Target return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 38 | October 6 | 2 | within six weeks |
When will Brad Marchand return?
He was back on the ice doing rehab work within a few weeks of the injury, and says the knee gets stronger daily. The target he gave on Thursday was six weeks from now, possibly a little less, which would put him in the lineup around the middle of December.
He hasn’t been doing it alone either. Marchand has been working out alongside captain Aleksander Barkov, who is also making his way back from a knee problem of his own, which has left the Florida Panthers missing two of their most important forwards for most of the autumn.
What the whole thing clarified for him was how he wants this to end.
Marchand has made clear he would rather decide when his career finishes than have an injury make the decision for him, which is why he has thrown himself at a rehab process that would frustrate most players his age. He signed a six-year contract worth $31.5 million with Florida in June 2025, after 16 seasons and a Stanley Cup with Boston, and won a second Cup in his first full season there. It runs until he is 43.
He had played two games this season before going down, having missed the opening two while recovering from offseason surgery. Florida have managed without him and Barkov well enough to sit in the mix in the Atlantic, and he intends to be back well before the new year.
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