What led to the Bruins and Brad Marchand break up
One of the most surprising trades from Friday’s trade deadline was seeing the Boston Bruins trade captain Brad Marchand to the Florida Panthers for a conditional second-round pick. Marchand had been a Bruin for his entire career, so seeing him wearing any other team’s colours is going to be very strange.
But why did this deal happen? Frank Seravalli broke down whether the Bruins moved on from Marchand because he wanted a chance to win, or if it was because they couldn’t come to an agreement on a contract extension, on Daily Faceoff Live.
Frank Seravalli: I think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. The real breakdown here was in talks for an extension. [When the two parties were] talking about a three-year deal, the Bruins were just not willing to pay a number that the Marchand camp felt like was in range of market value.
And so they end up in a spot where I think Boston also went to Brad Marchand and said, “you’ve got an opportunity to go somewhere if you want to win, and at the same time, we’re going in a different direction as an organization. We’ve traded Brandon Carlo, we’ve traded Charlie Coyle, we’ve traded Trent Frederic, we’ve traded Justin Brazeau. That’s a lot of guys out the door. You would be essentially a corner of the team, plus being the heartbeat of the team.”
They decided to change things up. And I don’t think you can call it a full rebuild, because any team that has a starting point of one of the best wingers in the game in David Pastrnak, one of the best defensemen in the game in Charlie McAvoy, and one of the best goalies in the game in Jeremy Swayman, you’re never really going to be truly rebuilding, but retooling more specifically.
And so the other part that the Bruins were asking themselves is “if we’re going through this retool process, as valuable as Brad Marchand is to us, at age 37 and beyond, signing him to a multi-year deal, how does he fit with what we’re trying to turn the page on moving forward, and what’s the limit that we’re willing to pay?” I think in the end, they didn’t really get close, and that leads to the conversation of “do you want to stay here and (obviously he’s hurt) play it out, or would you like to go somewhere and have a chance to win?”
His choice was Florida, and that didn’t leave them with much leverage to extract a return from the Panthers. It’s a conditional second, which becomes a first-round pick in 2028 (as far away as that sounds, it feels like another planet from now), and he has to play 50% of the games, and the Panthers must win at least two rounds to get it, so they have to get to the Conference Finals or it doesn’t become a first. So not a ton of leverage for the Bruins, but they send him to a place that he wanted to go to, and they make good on that.
And I just think in the end, the most surprising part to me is not just that Brad Marchand is standing at a podium on Monday wearing another team’s colours, as weird as that looked. It was also just that there wasn’t common ground to find, that you would think that the gap wouldn’t be that big, that you couldn’t find a way to bridge it and that part is surprising to me.
You can watch the full episode here…