Marchand ‘same old pain in the butt’ with Panthers entering playoffs

When Brad Marchand got down to Florida, set to join the Florida Panthers for the first time, he expected some awkward moments. After all, the Panthers had been one of the two biggest rivals of the Boston Bruins over the past handful of seasons, and the teams had met in each of the past two Stanley Cup Playoffs.

One of the first players he saw was defenseman Aaron Ekblad, a staple of those Panthers teams.

They shook hands. They paused.

“He goes, ‘This is so weird,’ then he just walked away,” Marchand said.

Marchand laughed as he told the story over the phone this week, understanding exactly why Ekblad did what he did, the strangeness of seeing him as a teammate instead of a foe, especially with all the “bad blood” that had developed over all those playoff clashes.

“I think we were at a get-together shortly after that and he said that to me like three times that day,” Marchand said.

It’s all still a work in progress, even as Marchand and the Panthers get ready to face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference First Round, with Game 1 set for Tuesday at Amalie Arena (8:30 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, SCRIPPS, ESPN, TVAS2, SN360), even as it’s been more than a month since Marchand was sent from Boston to Florida on March 7, at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline. Marchand still peppers his speech with both “they” and “we,” sometimes in the same sentence, sometimes about the Panthers, sometimes about the Bruins.

It’s a hard habit to break.

It’s still strange to walk to his new locker, to pick up a jersey emblazoned with red and navy, to slip it over his head. But as he continues to adjust, as he finally understands just what all those teammates have gone through when they have switched teams midseason, something he has never had to do at any point, he is getting used to the Panthers, getting used to new systems and new approaches, to new lingo and new friendships.

“It’s getting less and less of a surprise,” he said.

And once the puck drops on the playoffs?

It will be the old Marchand, just in new clothes.

“I think for me, biggest thing is just not trying to be anyone different from who I’ve been,” Marchand said. “Which is hard for me to do anyway. I get into the games and I’m just me. I can’t turn it off.

“I’m vocal in the room, I try to lead that way, I’m vocal on the bench. I’m intense. So I’m just going to try to do what I’ve always done and not change. I think that’s where you get into trouble when you come into new teams, trying to change to play a different way and that’s the mistake that I do not want to make is trying to change to be any different than who I’ve been. So that’s what I’m going to try to do, just be me.”

He paused.

“Same old pain in the butt,” he said.

It’s exactly what they want from him in the playoffs.

“He has been there every year in his career and is someone you talk about being built for this time of year,” forward Sam Reinhart said. “Everyone hates to play against him, but he is someone everyone would want to have.”

Since Marchand arrived, he has played 10 games, with two goals and two assists, adding to the 47 points (21 goals, 26 assists) in 61 games he recorded with the Bruins. In each game, as he has come back from the upper-body injury sustained on March 1 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, he has felt more at home, more himself, more ready.

As Marchand enters the playoffs for the 13th time in a career that has seen the Stanley Cup Final three times, winning the Cup once, he is feeling lighter than he has in a long time. He has worn a letter for the past seven seasons, five with an “A” before succeeding Patrice Bergeron as the captain ahead of the 2023-24 season.

He no longer wears a letter, no longer is considered part of leadership.

It has been freeing.

“There’s not nearly as much responsibility in the day to day,” Marchand said. “I don’t feel as much stress and pressure as I did when I was a captain or a leader of the group. There were so many things that I was trying to be aware of or focused on or was dealing with, away from just playing the game. That’s one of the first things that was said to me, was like, ‘just come, play, have fun, just enjoy the process, enjoy the opportunity,’ and that is all I’m trying to do now.”

He took a backseat when he first arrived, trying to watch and learn, to take the temperature of the room, something that was made more difficult by his injured status. He took the ice for the first time as a member of the Panthers on March 28, coming back earlier than he might have otherwise, in order to acclimate.

He had played 1,090 games in the NHL to that point, plus another 157 in the playoffs, every single one of them for the Bruins.

“It’s been 13, 14 years [since] I’ve just come to the rink just to play and just enjoy it rather than try to lead a locker room a certain way,” Marchand said. “I’m still trying to do that, I’m playing with a couple young guys, I’m trying to communicate a lot with them. But not the same way that I felt like I had to control the room or the environment every single day coming to the rink, which is a much different thing.

“I feel a lot of weight lifted off my shoulders.”

One of the most heartening things that Marchand has learned in the last month is how closely these Panthers resemble some of the best of what he saw in Boston, a team that was among the League’s best for more than a decade.

It starts with coach Paul Maurice and the message that he relays, the ways in which it aligns in the regular season and the postseason, the way “to a T” it was how they beat the Bruins in the playoffs. It continues with the off-ice training, with preparation, with recovery, with professionalism.

He recognized it all.

“When I saw that, I was like, this is not an accident that they are the team they are,” Marchand said. “That’s how I felt about the Bruins for a long time is we were on another level with our training and our conditioning, then when I got here, I was like, OK, this team, these guys are on another level right now with the way they’re doing things. I was really impressed. … There’s a complete buy in from the group.”

They, too, have been impressed.

“His experience, his style of play in the postseason, is what you want,” Reinhart said. “A lot of what he does is off the ice. And, with his personality, it did not take long for him to fit right in. He was with one organization for almost 20 years, and him fitting in here was never going to be an issue.”

Marchand has been waiting a long time to lift the Stanley Cup once again. He won it with the Bruins back in 2011, after the first full season of his NHL career, before falling short in the Final in 2013 and 2019.

Now, maybe there’s another chance?

This Panthers team, after all, was the one that Marchand pointed to earlier this season as the best the Bruins had faced, a team that comes in waves and overwhelms.

“I do think it’s a team that can make a long run,” Marchand said. “There’s a lot of teams that have the potential to make a long run in playoffs this year. But some of those teams are going to get bounced in the first round. To make a long run, you need everything to go right. You need all the right calls, all the right bounces, and you need all the right guys to step up at different times and be heroes and play well and make the saves.

“So, yes, the team is built to make a long run. How it plays out? Obviously, I don’t know. … But yeah, we have an incredible group and very deep. When you look at our lines, we are deep all the way through. But you need everything to go right, so I hope it does.”

NHL.com independent correspondent George Richards contributed to this report.