Brad Marchand isn’t the most popular guy in the league. During his years in the NHL, he’s been ranked as the No. 1 rat by players and coaches, and he earned more suspensions than any other player in league history.
In February last year, Marchand earned his 8th individual suspension; with that, he passed Chris Pronger for the most. It was a new low for Marchand, but since, he looked calmer and the ice and has stayed away from trouble.
The Boston Bruins have absolutely dominated the NHL this campaign, and with that, Brad Marchand seems to have finally found some inner peace.
Marchand is having a great season in a Bruins team firing on all cylinders, and the headlines about Marchand have all been about his performances on the ice rather than nasty and ratty things against opponents.
But Thursday saw a great preview of what playoff hockey in Seattle may look like in the Kraken matchup against the Boston Bruins. The game saw eleven goals in a 6-5 game for Bruins, but it was also testy, with emotions running high between the two teams. In the third period, tensions ran over, and that’s when Brad Marchand decided to become Brad Marchand again.
After a whistle, Marchand started arguing with Kraken’s Oliver Bjorkstrand and first delivered some stick jabs at his opponent. When they started to wrestle, Marchand delivered a slew foot that swung Bjorkstrand to the ice.
Oliver Bjorkstrand and Brad Marchand got handed a two-minute minor each, but on social media, fans are calling for the NHL to suspend Marchand.
”I’ll be the first Boston fan to say, yeah, he deserves a game for that. Whatever. Get the suspension over against Vancouver, we don’t need him for that anyways,” one said.
”Its such a weird looking takedown probably because of all the gear but ya no place in the league for stuff like that,” another said.
”That’s a textbook slewfoot,” a third added.
In Nov. 2021, Marchand got a three-game suspension after slew-footing Oliver Ekman Larsson. Let’s see what the Department of Player Safety thinks of this one.