Marchand, who was acquired by the Panthers on March 7 prior to the Trade Deadline, has been a fit beyond what they could have anticipated, not just for his on-ice production or the way he has elevated a line with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen, but for everything else.
“What I didn’t know (before he arrived) is what Gregory Campbell did, is his incredibly positive spirit,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said of its assistant general manager, who played with Marchand for five seasons in Boston. “Guys that are vocal and intense sometimes will get up and down your bench, screaming at your bench, they just get so wired in the game and he never does that. It’s always positive. It’s always stay in there, hang in there.
“So, we get these two, especially ‘Lundy,’ young guys playing (with someone) bordering on legendary status at this point and he’s pumping their tires and he’s just like, every day excited. It’s his personality that I didn’t know, but he’s moved into the Matthew Tkachuk hate them (realm) — that’s a horrible word, but it’s close — and then they get here and you go, ‘You’re the exact opposite person that I thought you were.’”
He’s also a person who understands where he’s been in this game, how difficult it is to get here, and the dwindling time he has left.
Which is why he’s grabbing onto this run with both hands.
“I’ve been on the best regular-season team to ever put skates on, and we didn’t accomplish anything,” Marchand said, referring to the 2022-23 Bruins, who set the NHL record for wins (65) and points (135) before being stunned by the Panthers in the Eastern Conference First Round. “You never know. You can be a great team on paper and do extremely incredible things in the regular season, but so many things have to go right to make the Final, to make a long run. It’s so hard to predict with any team.
“I hope it’s not [my last]. But realistically I have a few years left. Hopefully I can have another run, but if not, hopefully can take advantage of this one.”
* * *
It has been a roller coaster of a season for Marchand, starting with the three surgeries he had last summer, the season without a new contract, the 4 Nations Face-Off win with Canada, the divorce from the only NHL team he’d known and which he captained, the relocation to South Florida, the time spent away from his family.
“It was a lot,” he said. “It was a lot of stress.”
Last summer, Marchand knew he would have to have surgery at some point. No time was optimal, with the procedures putting the 4 Nations or the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics at risk, not to mention his status without a contract beyond the 2024-25 season.
“It was a tough summer,” Marchand said. “There were tough choices.”
He went for it then, with repairs to his elbow for a torn tendon, his groin to address a sports hernia and his abdominal area, also for a sports hernia. He started the season having taken three months off, knowing he had to play catch-up, with his conditioning, strength and power behind.
Still, the pressure was on from the outside for that contract.
“Your stats aren’t where they are and you’re not making the plays you normally make,” he said. “Yes, you know that. But there’s still a lot of noise that comes with that. I felt like I was trying to do the right thing, to be part of the group. There’s still a lot of heat that can come with that when your numbers and your game’s not where it’s supposed to be, where people expect it to be.”
It was all new to him. And, as he put it, it was something he “didn’t handle as good as I would have liked to.”
It still bothers him. Nothing more so than the contract situation.
“I didn’t really expect to have the contract negotiations that I had,” he said. “I thought that was going to go a lot different, which obviously I think impacted me mentally this year a lot. And I was frustrated by it. I never pictured even entering the season without a contract.”
He never pictured any of it.
“I didn’t really want to play contract years out because I never really wanted to have that stress. I always wanted the security of maybe take a little less and you get a deal done early and you have the security of it being done and you can just worry about playing hockey,” he said.
“I find when you go into a season playing (without a contract), things matter. Your stats matter more. So, it doesn’t just become about the team. When you’re on term and you’re on a contract, it can be all about the team and you can sacrifice whatever you need to to be part of the team. But in contract years, you can’t do that. You have to be a little bit selfish.”
It’s a weight, a different — and, for Marchand, unwelcome — lens through which to view his play amidst the play of the team he desperately wanted to succeed.
“You want to play through injuries, but you play through an injury and you’re not playing well and it affects contracts,” he said. “So, you’re trying to do all the right things, but it’s not always that easy.”
And had the season gone differently for the Bruins as a whole, Marchand believes he would likely would have remained in Boston. But after he didn’t sign at the start of free agency last season, after the contract negotiations with goalie Jeremy Swayman took up most of the oxygen all summer, after the Bruins started slowly and fired coach Jim Montgomery in November, after injuries and underperformance spiraled, after the Bruins decided to sell, his fate was sealed.
Boston traded most of its assets, including its captain. Marchand did not have the power and/or force a trade to Florida, just an eight-team no-trade list. But the Panthers were the team that Marchand thought had the best chance to compete for the Cup.
He was right.
* * *
By the time Marchand is saying all this, as morning becomes afternoon at the Panthers’ practice facility, most of his teammates have vacated the premises. Many of them have families, kids, people to spend time with during the brief interregnum between the conference final and the start of the Cup Final.
Marchand doesn’t.
As a Trade Deadline acquisition, he is just here to play hockey. He has no outside responsibilities these days, a rarity for a man with three kids and a wife and a house and all that entails.
“My family’s not here, so literally the only thing I have to do here is to focus on hockey and to recover and to rest and to get my mind prepared for games,” he said. “And then, when I’m at the rink, the only thing I have to do is focus on me. I don’t have to try to manage everything else and worry about a whole team. I just worry about what I have to do to put my best game on the ice.”
It’s not what he’s used to at home, not with a teenager, an almost-8-year-old and a 3-year-old. When they’re up at night, outside of playoffs, he’s up and helping. When they’re up in the morning, so is he.
Here, he can sleep as much as he wants, bed at 10 p.m., wake up at 10 a.m. Naps, whenever.
It has been a boon for someone trying to make the most of the opportunity.
He will take the rest and the focus and the FaceTimes, will push all his energy into achieving what they all want, what he could sense they were headed toward even as an opponent earlier this season, and especially when he arrived in Florida. Marchand was acquired for a conditional NHL Draft pick that became a 2027 or 2028 first-round selection when Florida reached the conference final with Marchand playing at least 50 percent of its playoff games.
Marchand has been impressed by how the Panthers do things, the way they train and interact, the lack of cliques, the commitment and focus. It reminds him of his early days with the Bruins, but with a training staff beyond anything he’s seen.
“People undervalue how much that impacts a run,” Marchand said of how a team interacts off the ice. “There’s a reason that you hear that about every team that wins, like ‘Our group is so great.’ You want everyone to buy in, sacrifice, and be part of something, you need to have really good people on the same page, that care about each other.”
He had heard about it mostly from Campbell, a close friend. But seeing it was an eye-opener.
“He would compare it to our ’11 team with how close the guys were and how they interacted with each other and joked around, but then also worked really hard,” Marchand said. “That’s what I love about it — when you have a team that works really hard, it allows you to have way more fun because you know everyone’s doing their job.”
Including him.
“I’m just showing up, having fun, enjoying being with the guys and enjoying this moment in time,” he said. “Just worrying about me and my game, what I have to do to be the best version of myself on the ice.”
* * *
It took until the Panthers’ second game of the playoffs against the Tampa Bay Lightning for Marchand to feel himself again, back to the player he knew he could be.
There had been those offseason surgeries, then the injury on March 1 in Pittsburgh that sidelined him four weeks and ended the Bruins portion of his career. He arrived in Florida, still rehabbing and returning his body to health, all while learning to play a system unlike any he’d ever played in both the defensive and neutral zones.
Once he came back, he played every game he could down the stretch, searching for his legs and a grasp of the system, even while the Panthers had so many injuries they were a shell of what it would be when playoffs arrived.
But they have since become the Panthers again. And Marchand found his stride.
Alongside Lundell and Luostarinen, Marchand slid in perfectly on a third line that at times in these playoffs has been the Panthers’ best. He has 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) and is plus-11 in 17 games. His overtime goal in Game 3 against the Toronto Maple Leafs gave Florida a 5-4 victory and prevented a 3-0 series deficit in the second round.
“Sometimes you just connect with guys really well,” Marchand said. “I had that with ‘Bergy.’ Day 1, Bergy and I connected really well. And that’s how I felt with (Lundell and Luostarinen). … Once practice hit, when we had our full lineup, like instantly in practice we were clicking and we were making plays. We could tell that we gelled really well. Sometimes you just find that great fit.”
