When the Panthers acquired Brad Marchand at the trade deadline, it kind of felt like putting a hat on a hat. Or a rat on a rat. This was a team already known and feared and hated for the way they relentlessly antagonized their opponents, and the division-leading defending champs had returned their top eight players by points from the previous campaign. It was unclear if Marchand, who'd just suffered an injury, would make all that much of a difference in his first stop outside of Boston. But even if he didn't, Florida could taunt the rest of the league with just his presence. Oh, you called us dirty before? What will you think when we join up with the Mad Licker Of The West End?
As a regular-season Panther, Marchand did indeed contribute little of note, getting two meaningless goals in the last three games before the playoffs. But in the postseason, the 37-year-old has proven a nuisance, a playmaker, and a devastating scorer. Across what might turn out to be the most important stretch of the Stanley Cup Final, from the end of Game 2 to the start of Game 3, Marchand seized the spotlight.
If the Rat King brought anything at all to Florida, it was postseason experience. Even on a squad that'd been well-seasoned by back-to-back Final runs, Marchand's track record stands out. He won the Cup with the Bruins in his very first playoffs, back in 2011, and proceeded to feature in them nearly every year, to the tune of 157 total games. Along the way, he established himself as one of the game's premier all-around talents, able to make his teammates better and opposing skaters worse. A skilled defender on the wing, he augmented his legal options for disrupting the enemy with extrajudicial methods like elbows, spears, punches, slew-foots, more elbows, and tonguing.
Marchand seems like a decent guy, as hockey players go, when he's off the ice. But in both the Toronto series and the Carolina series, he was usually at the center of a commotion, racking up more penalty minutes than anyone else in the postseason. At the same time, his production has been ageless, including an OT winner that sent the Maple Leafs down the road to ruin. Of all the hockey rinks of all the NHL teams on the continent, he had to torment Toronto at least one more time.
But the Leafs are ancient history. The Canadian team now in Marchand's crosshairs is the Oilers, and after such a promising start to the Final, they're fighting for their lives. In Game 2, after Corey Perry (another pest preserved in amber) tied things late for the Edmontonians, the Panthers gritted their teeth through an overtime and a half until Marchand broke through for a breakaway and a little poke past the goalie. The actual soundtrack in my apartment as this happened: "Oh, no. Oh, no! Oh NO!" It's not even that I'm in the pocket of Big Oil; it's just Marchand, specifically, coming through in these moments feels like a complete refutation of how karma is supposed to work.
If someone wearing blue and orange scores that goal, the Panthers go back to Sunrise in an 0-2 hole. But because their mid-season pick-up earned it for himself, they had the momentum and the home-ice advantage entering Game 3.
Marchand gave the Oilers no time to regroup once the setting moved to his new home building. Forcing a faceoff by hustling toward Stuart Skinner just behind the puck in the opening minute, Marchand then deposited himself in the slot, collected possession from a free-for-all stick joust, and sent a shot in the right direction. That goal held up for most of the first period, then Carter Verhaeghe doubled it, and the Sams put it out of reach in the second. By the end of Game 3, the on-ice action was an out-of-control disaster. And it was Marchand who initially started the fire.
At first it seems impossible that Brad Marchand now holds the record for the oldest player ever to score in the first three games of a Final. But then you say to yourself, Of course it's that guy.
It's only a 2-1 series, but it's staggering how the Panthers can just seem to drain the life out of all the teams that have lined up across from them. The Oilers, for all they did right in Game 1, still needed to scrounge together a comeback to win in OT. Game 2 was a gut punch. And Game 3 devolved into anti-hockey. The next one, on Thursday, will have to look completely different. The Oilers will be desperate for a change. And these Panthers, with their new elder statesman, feed on desperation.
