"He's our leader, he's someone who embodies what it is to be a Bruin in the right way."
Brad Marchand is no stranger to scoring slumps.
The pugnacious winger once went 15 straight games without a tally in 2015, with several other droughts stretching over multiple weeks.
Given both his tenure in the NHL (16 seasons) and stat line (401 career goals entering Saturday night), the Bruins’ captain is not one to fret over nights where the puck isn’t sailing into twine.
“I’ve been through many different stretches in my career, good and bad, and you gotta stay even-keeled,” Marchand acknowledged. “I wasn’t getting too caught up in it.”
But the 36-year-old winger quickly relented.
“But it is nice to get that one out of the way,” he noted.
After failing to light the lamp through Boston’s first eight games of the 2024-25 season, Marchand finally got off the schneid on Saturday against the Maple Leafs — securing the overtime winner in Boston’s 4-3 victory over Toronto.
It might have been a welcome sight for Marchand to see the fluttering puck sail past Anthony Stolarz. But it meant far more for a reeling Bruins team that was in desperate need of a bounce-back performance on home ice.
“It was nice for the group to get rewarded, playing the right way,” Marchand said of Boston’s win — the team’s first since Oct. 16. “Sometimes, you do it for a period or two and it doesn’t go the way that you want it to, and you start switching up and get back into bad habits.
“And we didn’t do that tonight. Even when they scored late, we just continued to play the right way, and it paid off.”
Despite Saturday’s dramatic finish, Boston submitted arguably its best effort in weeks for a majority of its latest bout with its Original Six foe.
The Bruins’ bottom-six grouping once again buried a pair of 5-on-5 goals via Justin Brazeau and Mark Kastelic, while Boston’s PK rebounded with a 3-for-3 effort.
Boston controlled play for a majority of Saturday’s matchup, holding a 34-23 edge in shots on goal. The Bruins finished with 10 high-danger scoring chances at 5-on-5 play, with most of the third period featuring a tenacious Boston roster orchestrating a professional closeout win.
That sentiment did dissipate in a hurry, with a brutal breakdown in communication between Charlie McAvoy and Johnny Beecher leading to an equalizing netfront tally from Auston Matthews with just 1:17 left in regulation.
To further twist the knife, Boston potentially let a strong, team-wide performance (and two points in the standings) slip away after Marchand failed to bury an empty-net goal shortly before Matthews’ tally.
But Marchand and the Bruins bounced back in the extra frame. After a costly turnover by Matthews allowed David Pastrnak to pluck the puck near the blue line, Marchand jammed home the feed from his teammate — eventually jostling the biscuit past Stolarz to hand Boston a much-needed victory.
“I was hoping [he] was going to have it on the empty-netter. I got to be honest,” Jim Montgomery said of Marchand’s OT goal. “But you could tell how happy the bench was when he scored that goal. He’s our leader, he’s someone who embodies what it is to be a Bruin in the right way — the way he carries himself, on the ice, off the ice, everything. And he’s our captain.”
Marchand might have dismissed the concerns about his goal-scoring struggles out of the gate. But that same sentiment wasn’t echoed when assessing the bigger picture of a Bruins team in desperate need of positive results.
Be it the team’s barren offensive production, penalty woes, and the added pressure weighing on the shoulders of Montgomery amid lackluster results, Saturday’s win came at a critical time.
And given his decades-long reputation as Boston’s on-ice dose of epinephrine, it should come as little surprise that Marchand was the one to give the Bruins that jolt.
“It’s one game, you know, it’s not going to completely turn things around, but it’s a great way for us to realize that when we play the right way, we’re a good team,” Marchand acknowledged. “That’s a great group over there, very offensive. And, it’s a great way to start building our foundation and understanding the way that we need to play that success and something to build on.”
