Look, you've read the title, and you know what this article is going to be about. But I want to give you a bit of context about myself first to better explain my feelings on this.
You obviously know that I'm a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan. I grew up in Northwest Indiana, and my dad is from Hyde Park in Chicago. He has been a fan all of his life and naturally I followed suit. However, my mom is from Warren Massachusetts. A beautiful little mountain town in the central part of the state. People there, as well as in Hyde Park, are gritty, tough and strong. They are solid people who work very hard.
Because of my mom growing up in Massachusetts, I have a huge soft spot for her Bruins. And thus, I have always loved Brad Marchand. Where others hate him, and some love to hate him, I just love him. Where others see a pest, a nuisance or a rat, I see a really great hockey player. More importantly, I see a really great hockey player that is exactly what this young Chicago Blackhawks team needs.
Brad Marchand is everything that you want in a leader on the ice. He has high end skill, high end competitiveness, a gritty and hard-nosed playstyle., borderline dirty tendencies that rile up the other team and get them off their game, and most crucially, he will do anything that is asked of him on the ice. Leaders lead from the front, and if players like Frank Nazar and Connor Bedard and Oliver Moore see what lengths Brad Marchand is willing to go to to drag his team to victory, I think that will rub off on them.
Marchand is 37 years old as of writing this article. However, as you may have noticed if you are watching the Stanley Cup Finals, he remains a profoundly impactful player. In 20 playoff games this postseason, Marchand has 8 goals, 10 assists for 18 points and is a +15 when he's on the ice... Unbelievable.
Here's the thing... To convince a 37 year old to come to a rebuilding team that likely won't make the postseason isn't going to be easy. But if Marchand wins another cup with Florida, maybe just maybe, he will turn towards another aspect of hockey that has eluded him throughout his career.
Brad Marchand has been criminally underpaid for years. He signed an 8 year $6,125,000 contract with Boston back in 2017, and since then his value on the ice far exceeded his cap hit. It was a terrific bet that Boston made back then, and the time has come for Marchand to cash in on his long and masterful career.
The Blackhawks should move heaven and earth to sign Brad Marchand this summer
The Blackhawks have nothing but blank checks to write this offseason as they will have $30,000,000 worth of cap space to work with this offseason, and they will again need to spend some money to get to the cap floor. Therefore, offering Marchand a mega contract for one or two years makes a lot of sense for the Hawks. I'm thinking something in the neighborhood of two years, and $10,000,000 per year.
While it is possible that Marchand doesn't perform as well as he has with Florida over the course of that two year contract, I still think that the investment will be well worth it intangibly for the young guys on the team. It also seems likely that Marchand will either just resign with Florida or go back to Boston this summer, but The Hawks can simply offer more money than either of those teams are willing to offer.
Getting Marchand to play with Bedard would also just be plain old fun! It would be so incredibly entertaining to watch those two guys work together. And let's be honest, Bedard gets pretty badly mistreated by the refs, and no one can teach him how to work around the rules of the game of Hockey better than Brad Marchand. So Kyle Davidson, even if it's unlikely, even if it's difficult, you have a duty to try to get a deal done with at least one big name free agent... Why not the rat king?
