Brad Marchand Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The NHL Playoffs Attention Meter
It’s that time again. When the loudest and most obnoxious guy in the bar tells you it’s the best time in sports, the NHL Playoffs. There will be a few tweets coming across your timeline that say something that has some combination of puking and snorting coke together, and they’re likely about watchi...

Wanna raise a future NHL star? Name him Connor
Connor McDavid has recently surpassed his career high for points in a season and has continued to climb, with over 140 points (60+ goals, 80+ assists) on the season. Many in the hockey world already regard the 26-year-old center as one of the best to ever play the game. He is explosive, deceptive wi...

Fighting in hockey is taking its last breath
The debate about fighting in hockey has always been overly loud for what was actually being debated, if debate ever even took place. One side of it always tended to be pretty shrill. The natural evolution of the game to a speed and skill one has lessened fighting to a rarer and rarer occurrence on i...

What does Jack Edwards have to be so smug about anyway?
The idea of a particular villain, a true public enemy, still exists for most hockey fanbases. More than any other sport, one player can send an opposing arena into hysterics by merely hopping over the boards. Rivalry as an idea in sports has calmed down over the years, given player movement and othe...

We’ll never be rid of the Bruins
The Boston Bruins will never be considered anything close to a dynasty. It’s probably sobering for Bruins fans how close they are to being one, if anything can actually be sobering for Bruins fans. Had Zdeno Chara hit the other side of the post in Game 1 against the Hawks in 2013, and if Brad Marcha...

Looks like that’s it for the Boston Bruins, the dynasty that almost was
In every sport now, it seems one of the most fascinating things to watch is when an organization decides a particular roster has run its course. Thanks to salary caps everywhere (or just the totally not but really is a cap in baseball) there always comes a time when you have to pull that trigger as ...

I feel great about not trusting the Hurricanes again
The problem with upping the degree of difficulty on your playoff run is that no matter how good you are, eventually you’ll push yourself off the cliff. The NHL playoffs are hard enough as is without trying to navigate them like they were a bar bet. The Hurricanes didn’t bother to win a road game in ...

Leafs and Lightning are playing the strangest series
In a playoff series, especially one between two very good teams which the Lightning and Maple Leafs are, you expect some swings. No one expected a short series, which means twists and turns as teams exchange wins. Momentum generally swings on the performance level of your goalie the next night, but ...

At least know why you’re voting for Patrice Bergeron for Selke
It’s an unwritten law in the NHL. If Patrice Bergeron is upright, averagely ambulatory, and plays more than 50 games, he’s going to win the Selke Trophy for the league’s best defensive forward. And it’s not easy to argue against this, as Bergeron has been the league’s smartest player for a decade or...

We are too broken and hopeless to deserve a Maple Leafs-Panthers series
At least for one night, I didn’t manage to motherfuck something. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers put on a hockey game dressed as Calvinball last night, with the Cats getting a 7-6 win in OT. It wasn’t even that simple, if a 7-6 game can ever be simple....

Hate Tom Wilson all you want but he deserves to be an NHL All-Star
There are few names that drum up hockey fans at large with such visceral rage as Tom Wilson. His introduction to the league has been well-documented as a young, tough, ultra-physical, trash-talking specimen Capitals’ fans adore. The rest of the league’s fans, not so much. Especially in Boston and Ne...

Can Tuukka Rask play center?
It is cute, if not delicious, that Tuukka Rask’s imminent return to the Boston Bruins is being greeted as something of the cavalry arriving. Because Bruins fans (and media) have never hesitated to throw whatever available cutlery was around at Tuke Nuke ‘Em every spring because he wasn’t Tim Thomas,...

Suns keep rising, maybe now you’ll notice
So, you look up one day, and the Phoenix Suns have won 16 straight games....

NHLers are returning to the Olympics... let’s build some rosters
The Olympics have always felt like the pinnacle for several sports around the world. Only the best sprinters in the world can win gold at the 100-meter dash. Only the fastest swimmers can rise above everyone else in the 200-meter freestyle. Yet, for other sports, the Olympics hasn’t felt like the to...

Seems like old times, eh Leafs?
By now you know the key points. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, haven’t been to the Final since then either, haven’t beaten the Canadiens in a series since their ’67 title clash, won their first division title since 2000 this season (thanks to being in the all-Canadia...

The obvious case for Connor McDavid as unanimous MVP
The Stanley Cup playoffs started on Saturday, which is weird because the NHL regular season continued on Saturday, as the Canucks handed the Oilers a 4-1 loss that was notable only because Connor McDavid picked up his league-best 72nd assist, which also wrapped up the scoring title for the presumpti...

I know better, but I’m falling for the Canes again
One of the ripple effects of Moneyball, at least one that isn’t primed to destroy a sport from the inside, is that a lot of fans have that one team — the team whose games you watch most outside your own team’s on whatever streaming service you have. The team you’re convinced is doing things in a mor...

It’s time the NHL did a better job protecting its players
Don’t worry, the NHL can still find a way to show its ass even with the NBA having a showcase event. On the same day that Tom Wilson was suspended for braining Boston’s Brandon Carlo into the boards with a cheap shot, Brad Marchand couldn’t be upstaged. And this is the same Brad Marchand who openly ...

Ah, Damn, Brad Marchand Actually Did A Frickin' Cool Thing
It’s easy to lose sight of this fact amid the rabbit punches and cup checks and compulsive licking and stick-breaking and general dickishness, but veteran Bruins winger Brad Marchand is really freaking good at hockey. He showed that in part by getting a couple of assists in Boston’s afternoon win ag...

What The Hell Was Brad Marchand Doing On The Game-Winning Goal?
Brad Marchand does a lot of stupid shit, but usually not like this. Sure, he’s constantly trash-talking, poking, licking his opponents, trying to get a rise out of them through the simplest and pettiest ways possible. But Marchand’s dumb moment in Game 7 didn’t serve any larger purpose for himself o...