Brad Marchand has a lot of memorable moments throughout the course of his career. Some of them are positive memories like winning the Stanley Cup in 2011 and playing in 1,000 games for the Boston Bruins. Others, meanwhile, are remembered because of his actions on the ice.
Appearing on the “What Chaos!” podcast recently, the Bruins captain was asked to recall his “dumbest moments.”
“I think we all have to agree, the dumbest moment of my career — there’s a few,” Marchand told hosts Pete Blackburn and DJ Bean. “A very blatant obvious one would probably be the (Ryan) Callahan one. Oh, the one on (Tristan) Jarry wasn’t very much either. Those are a couple bad ones.”
During the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs when the Bruins were playing the Tampa Bay Lightning, Marchand licked Callahan after a scrum. Callahan, understandably, wasn’t a fan of the incident and told reporters after the game that he hoped the league would take a look at it.
Marchand heard from the league, but didn’t receive a fine or suspension. He was warned, though, that if the antics continued then there would be punishment. After he was named the Bruins captain ahead of the 2023-24 season, the 35-year-old admitted that was a turning point in his career.
“My brother said something to me when I told him. He said something along the lines of, ‘four or five years ago, everybody hated you, and now you’re the captain of the team,’” Marchand said in September. “It’s been pretty incredible the way that things change. And, perhaps that incident with Callahan was kind of one of those moments where I realized that it kind of was getting away from me a little bit.”
The Jarry incident was more recent. In 2022, Marchand punched the Pittsburgh Penguins goalie that resulted in a six-game suspension. Marchand admitted his emotions got the best of him in that moment after Jarry allegedly said, “how about that (expletive) save?’”
Marchand has matured quite a bit in his career and has become a staple in the Bruins’ lineup between being the captain and being an elite scorer. He’ll enter the 2024-25 NHL season on the final year of his contract, and he told Blackburn and Bean that he’d love to continue his career in Boston. General manager Don Sweeney shared the same sentiment, saying this summer that Marchand will be a “lifelong Bruin.”
