‘As wired at breakfast as he is at game time’: What Brad Marchand has brought to the Panthers
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Greg Wyshynski
SUNRISE, Fla. — Brad Marchand has regrets.
He didn’t want to leave the Boston Bruins, the team that drafted him in 2006, won a Stanley Cup with him in 2011 and that he captained for the past two seasons after Patrice Bergeron retired. The team with whom he gained fame with 976 points in 1,090 games, as well as infamy as one of the NHL’s most accomplished agitators. He dreamed about being a one-team guy, one of the rarest accomplishments for veteran stars in a transient sport.
Marchand regrets not being able to say goodbye to Boston fans on his own terms before the NHL trade deadline.
“I got hurt before I got traded. The last game I’ll ever play in a Bruins jersey was not the last game I thought I was ever going to play in a Bruins jersey,” he said.
Marchand’s final home game in Boston was a loss to the New York Islanders on Feb. 27. His final game with the Bruins was March 3 in Pittsburgh. He was traded to the Florida Panthers on March 7, the result of a contract impasse with Boston management and the team’s pivot to a retool.
He fought back tears in his first public appearance as a Panther. “At the end of the day, I know the business is the business and everybody has a shelf life,” he said. “I am grateful, beyond words, for everything that organization has done for me.”
Marchand regrets not appreciating all the experiences he had in Boston.
“When you come to the rink, it can be stressful. You start overthinking things. There’s this pressure you sometimes put on yourself. You start stressing about things that you don’t need to stress about,” he said. “I know that there are moments that I missed out on or didn’t really appreciate because I was stressing about other things.”
For example, the Bruins had 135 points in 2022-23, becoming the most successful regular-season team in NHL history. The Panthers shocked the league — and began their nascent dynasty — with a seven-game upset in the first round of the playoffs that ended the series at a funeral-pitched TD Garden.
“We thought we were going to go to the finals that year. We thought we were going to win it all, and then we got pushed out in the first round,” Marchand said. “You start looking back at those moments and you realize you took all we did that season for granted because we were so worried about going to the finals. We weren’t living in the moment.”
Those are old regrets for the new Brad Marchand. The playoff disappointment, the breakup with the Bruins, the deadline trade … they were all shocks to his system that reoriented his thinking.
“I’m just not going to do that to myself this time around,” he said. “I’m coming to the rink every day just having fun and trying to live in the moment, not taking anything too seriously.”
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Marchand started to rethink his own mindfulness when he arrived in Florida.
“My family’s not here and I have a lot more time to sit home and think and go over things in my head than I normally do,” he said. “Being here, they talk about being in the moment. Just going day by day. About taking time to reflect on things and appreciate them.”
And so Marchand decided he was just going to enjoy himself during this run with the Panthers, which finds them back in the Stanley Cup Final, seeking a second straight championship against the Edmonton Oilers, whom they defeated in Game 7 for the Cup last season.
“I’m literally just trying to have fun out there and have fun in here,” he said, motioning to the dressing room.
“The Dairy Queen thing is a great example.”
THE “DAIRY QUEEN THING” sprang from an interview between Marchand and Sportsnet rinkside reporter Kyle Bukauskas. He asked Marchand about a run to Dairy Queen that the Panthers made during the Eastern Conference finals games in Raleigh, and then introduced a clip of Marchand eating something with a spoon in between periods of Florida’s Game 3 win. Bukauskas asked Marchand if he was “refueling with a Blizzard” in the locker room.
Marchand extolled the virtues of the chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard as “the best dessert in the world,” and made a pitch to DQ PR for a lifetime supply of the frozen treats for that endorsement.
“We had a little fun on the off day. There was a DQ by the hotel. We popped over and enjoyed our night,” Marchand explained.
This interview went viral, with many fans (and media) taking it as gospel that Marchand had been eating ice cream in between periods. His teammates were interviewed about it. Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice was asked about it during his news conferences.
Days later, Marchand was finally asked about eating ice cream in the locker room during a game.
“It wasn’t a Blizzard,” Marchand said, with a tone that rendered the accusation absurd. “I was not eating a Blizzard in the middle of a game.”
Marchand explained that he was referencing the Panthers’ trip to Dairy Queen during the Sportsnet interview. “I was referencing that. I was making a joke about our excursion a couple of nights before. Just kind of making a joke off of it and I think people took it seriously,” he said.
After the interview went viral, Marchand said his phone blew up with messages from people saying they were inspired by him to go to Dairy Queen.
“I appreciate the support,” he said. “I love a good Blizzard more than anybody, but it’s not something I’ve had in the middle of the game.”
For many, this was never really about whether Marchand was wolfing down ice cream in his dressing room stall. It was essentially a tribute to the mercurial nature of the star winger that he reasonably could have been the guy eating Dairy Queen between periods. There’s something indelible about the most agitating player on the ice celebrating his wickedness with spoonfuls of cookie dough ice cream during intermission.
But it wasn’t ice cream or cookie dough or peanut butter. Marchand eventually revealed he was caught consuming “something healthy” on camera.
“It was honey. I was having honey. It was a spoonful of honey.”
Because he’s sweet?
“Because I’m a bear,” he responded.
Marchand said he has always had an affinity for honey.
“Actually, when I was growing up, I loved Winnie the Pooh. So I used to have a Winnie the Pooh [doll] and I used to feed the bear honey. So it was covered with honey and would get rock hard,” he said. “I don’t think [my parents] enjoyed cleaning up the mess. But I had fun.”
Marchand paused for effect.
“It’s what we do in Halifax. We feed teddy bears honey.”
Everyone laughed.
IT’S STILL SURREAL to think about where Marchand started in his NHL career to where he has ended up.
When the Bruins won the Cup in 2011, Marchand was a brash 23-year-old winger whose burgeoning offensive game was secondary to his extracurricular activities on the ice. Like when he used Vancouver Canucks winger Daniel Sedin as a punching bag in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, delivering around six shots to his face without the on-ice officials stepping in.
When asked why he kept punching Sedin, Marchand responded, “Because I felt like it.”
He was the guy who got a misspelled tattoo after the Bruins won the Cup.
“Let me clear something up. After we won, a bunch of us got tattoos here in the dressing room of the Garden. Mine originally was misspelled,” he said in an ESPN player diary. “Instead of saying Stanley Cup Champions it said ‘Stanley Cup Champians.’ I don’t even know how that happened.”
(It was fixed before the next season.)
He was the player who was suspended six times by the NHL between 2011 and 2018 for illegal hits, and was given a six-game suspension as recently as 2022. He was a player known as much for his goading as his goal scoring.
But in 2025? Marchand was “an elder statesman” for Team Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off, according to coach Jon Cooper.
“Love him. I can’t say enough great things about him, his energy and passion. He seems to find the fountain of youth any time he comes into one of these tournaments. He’s one of the guys everybody turns to when everything’s under fire,” Cooper said. “The loudest guy on the bench, pumping everybody up, is Brad Marchand. For somebody that’s been around as long as he has, he doesn’t have to do that.”
That energy is one of the things Maurice likes best about Marchand.
“He is such a unique guy. He’s as wired at breakfast as he is at game time,” he said.
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Maurice remembered when GM Bill Zito told him that the Panthers would be acquiring Matthew Tkachuk in 2022 and not believing he’d be able to pull it off. He had a similar reaction when Zito told him last summer that Chicago defenseman Seth Jones might be available. When Zito told him about Marchand, he knew it was real. “If he says it, then it could happen,” Maurice said.
Truth be told, Maurice didn’t believe the Panthers had “a huge hole” in their lineup for Marchand to fill. He was also concerned about how the 37-year-old would fit on a roster that was largely the same as the one that captured the Stanley Cup last season.
Two of Marchand’s former Bruins teammates are Panthers executives: Shawn Thornton, chief revenue officer, and Gregory Campbell, assistant general manager. They assured Maurice that Marchand would be an ideal Panther.
“There’s just many stories about bringing them high-end guys toward the end of their career and it doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit. But they were sure,” the coach recalled.
When Marchand arrived with the Panthers, Maurice soon understood the fit — on the ice and off the ice.
“His personality took some pressure off the rest of the guys. I actually have more quiet guys than we have loud guys. You all know that [Aleksander] Barkov is not doing a podcast when he’s done [playing],” Maurice said. “They’re like, ‘OK, Marchy’s here, he can do all the talking and we can just relax.'”
The Panthers had some talkers last season in forward Ryan Lomberg and defenseman Brandon Montour, who both left via free agency.
“Some of these guys start talking in their car and don’t stop until they left the rink. They just go on all the time,” Maurice said. “It was nice to have that element again that we kind of lost a little bit of it. He’s brought it back.”
Marchand has also learned through years when to hold his tongue with the media. Like when Carolina defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere intentionally shot the puck at Marchand in Game 1 of the conference finals, which led to Marchand getting a misconduct penalty. When Marchand was asked about his thoughts, he replied: “Yeah, I’m not much of a thinker.”
Maurice nodded to that moment in his news conference later that day.
“He’s a great interview. He’s very, very bright, even though I hear he is a man of very few thoughts,” he said, drawing laughs. “That’s a good line. I’m stealing it.”
ON THE ICE, Marchand has been primarily paired with center Anton Lundell, 23, and winger Eetu Luostarinen, 26, during the Panthers’ run to the Final, forming one of the most effective lines in the postseason. In 17 games together, the line has had 55% of the shot attempts when on the ice, 56% of the expected goals, has 4.2 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 and just 0.82 goals against per 60 minutes.
Maurice raved about what Marchand “has done with those two young players” on Florida’s third line. “The way they’ve expanded, the way they play … part of it is playing off him,” he said.
Marchand has 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) in the playoffs. Luostarinen has 13 points (four goals, nine assists) while Lundell has 12 points (five goals, seven assists).
Marchand had high praise for Luostarinen.
“He plays a man’s game. He plays through bodies. He’s hard on pucks, wins a lot of battles,” Marchand said. “He’s very, very skilled. He’s great with the puck. He doesn’t force plays. He’s very smart in the way that he plays.”
Marchand then bestowed the greatest accolade he could muster onto Luostarinen: He reminds Marchand of Bergeron, his six-time Selke Trophy-winning teammate with the Bruins.
“He’s so defensively good with the stick. It reminds me a lot of Bergy, where he leads with the stick a lot, kills a lot of plays that way and creates offense from that,” Marchand said.
Marchand said he enjoys playing with his Panthers linemates because they have similar “simple, direct” games.
“We just complement each other all over the ice because we read the game pretty well on both sides of it. We support each other pretty well, all the way up and down the ice and then in the corner,” he said. “So I think we just because of that, we’re able to create offense out, little scrums, stuff like that.”
He said skating with Lundell and Luostarinen has been revitalizing.
“They play fast and they play hard and they’re young, energetic guys. It keeps me feeling young,” Marchand said. “I’m lying to myself. I feel 25 again. I feel rejuvenated and part of that comes to playing with some younger guys and part of a really good group of guys in here.”
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Marchand didn’t always feel they were good guys. Not when Matthew Tkachuk was terrorizing his Bruins in the playoffs in 2023 and 2024.
“He’s a competitor. He’s there to win. His reputation proceeds him,” Marchand said of Tkachuk. “One of the most gifted players in the league around the net. He brings an element to the group that brings guys swagger.”
Someone asked what opponents think about having Marchand and Tkachuk — two legendary provocateurs — on the ice for Florida.
“I mostly feel sorry for the guys in our room. Not too many guys are going to get a break here now,” Marchand said of him and Tkachuk. “It’s nice to be on his team rather than going against him, for sure.”
Then there’s Sam Bennett, who appeared to sucker punch Marchand during the Panthers’ playoff series win over the Bruins in 2024. It knocked Marchand out of the series for two games and didn’t result in further discipline for Bennett. At the trade deadline in 2025, they became teammates.
“I didn’t hold a grudge. Again, I know how this game’s played. I played a similar way,” Marchand said. “It’s something that we joke about. I can laugh it off. I joke about it all the time. I joke about it more than he does, but I definitely joke about it.”
Maurice said there’s a reason that hockey players who were the fiercest rivals can become teammates without much acrimony.
“I think you find out when a player walks in the room, even if he’s had his great battles, they’re so happy that it’s over. They don’t have to fight you anymore. They don’t have to hack and whack in the corner for 60 minutes,” Maurice said. “Brad Marchand and Sam Bennett are best friends now. A year ago, you would’ve never thought that could happen.”
A year ago, Brad Marchand becoming a Florida Panther wasn’t something many believed could happen, although it makes perfect sense now: The Rat King, joining the franchise that celebrates wins by throwing plastic rats on the ice.
In fact, Marchand has become a new part of that tradition. After Florida wins, if there are rats on the ice, his teammates have taken to shooting the faux rodents at Marchand as they’re leaving for the dressing room.
“They see my family on the ice and want us to be together,” Marchand deadpanned.
As the playoffs have progressed, “they’re shooting to hurt now,” according to Marchand. “Matthew Tkachuk caught me with one last game that I actually really felt there,” he said.
Marchand is feeling a lot these days. The sting of the trade dissipates a little more with every playoff win. He’s having more fun and stressing less, among teammates with whom he has quickly bonded. And he’s a few wins from another Stanley Cup, in the third Final he has reached since winning his first ring 14 years ago.
“It’s exciting. You hope that you get to this point. Obviously, we have a great team and we played well so far. We got to the point where we want to be, but we haven’t accomplished anything yet,” Marchand said.
“I may never get back this late in the playoffs ever again in my career. These are memories and moments that you want to embrace.”
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Greg Wyshynski
The Minnesota Wild handed out the largest contract in NHL history on Tuesday to star winger Kirill Kaprizov, as the 28-year-old will earn $136 million on an eight-year term through the 2033-34 season.
It’s a deal worth more in total money that the one Alex Ovechkin signed with the Washington Capitals ($124 million) in 2008, and carries a higher average annual value (AAV) than the one signed by Leon Draisaitl with the Edmonton Oilers ($14 million) last September.
It’s a contract that has sent shockwaves through the NHL. Some will benefit from its repercussions. Some will not. Here are the winners and losers of the Kaprizov contract, as we see them:
Winner: Bill Guerin
It was Guerin that finally got Kaprizov to leave the KHL for the NHL in 2021, succeeding where two previous Wild GMs had failed. Now he’s the guy that’s helped convinced Kaprizov to stay in Minnesota.
Guerin faced some enormous challenges in getting this done. One of them was the lure of unrestricted free agency under a rising salary cap, as Kaprizov wouldn’t have suffered from a lack of suitors. Some of those suitors might have been more appealing than the Wild: As one NHL agent told ESPN, the Wild’s status as a mid-tier Stanley Cup contender and Minnesota not being “a destination” for stars worked against them. Kaprizov had the hammer in negotiations, as was evidenced by the windfall he eventually received.
But Guerin also had some advantages here. His team could give Kaprizov the eighth contract year that the player reportedly wanted out of his next deal. He also had the financial backing of ownership to offer the richest contract in NHL history — $128 million earlier in September — and then increase that offer when Kaprizov didn’t sign.
Guerin also benefitted from having Kaprizov’s contract come up before a major change in the CBA rules. His contract pays out $128 million of his money in annual signing bonuses. That’s 94% of its value. Starting in Sept. 2026, contracts will only be able to offer signing bonuses worth 60% of the “aggregate compensation payable under the contract.”
Guerin landed the plane at time when many felt Kaprizov’s initial rejection of a record contract was his rejection of the franchise. Whether you agree with the compensation or not, give credit where it’s due: He got it done.
Loser: Kevin Cheveldayoff
Since 2021-22, Kyle Connor has scored just five fewer goals (153) than Kaprizov (158), having played 44 more games than the Minnesota winger. That’s on a 14.2% shooting percentage. Simply put, the 28-year-old Jet winger is as elite a goal-scorer as you’ll find on the wing — and as an unrestricted free agent next summer, should be compensated as such.
The question is whether that’ll happen in Winnipeg, where he’s entering his 10th season, or elsewhere.
If Connor was waiting for a salary domino to fall, this one landed with a sonic boom. Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff just watched Kaprizov reset the market for a player that scored 41 goals and had 56 assists for a career best 97 points in 82 games.
Cheveldayoff has done a masterful job retaining other stars like goalie Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele, both at $8.5 million AAV over seven seasons. Market conditions were more favorable to the Jets when they re-upped in 2023. They aren’t now, thanks in part to Kaprizov.
The conundrum for Cheveldayoff and the Jets: Is Connor worth that money?
“He scores goals, but gives a lot back,” one NHL executive said.
Winner: Paul Theofanous
Wild owner Craig Leipold told The Athletic on Tuesday that the team was still convinced Kaprizov wanted to re-sign even after he didn’t agree to an eight-year, $128 million contract extension offer on Sept. 9.
“He never raised the money issue. That was always the agent,” Leipold said. “So, I mean, I think we always thought that we’re going to get this thing done, and we thought, at least in the last week or so, 17 was the number.”
Theofanous, Kaprizov’s agent, is a legendarily tough negotiator. He not only managed to get another $8 million added to an offer that would have already set a new NHL contract value record, but he negotiated a contract structure that pays Kaprizov $128 million in “buyout-proof” bonus money. Theofanous dug his heels in and won huge, despite the Wild’s belief that Kaprizov wouldn’t take this to free agency.
Loser: Player movement
The era of player retention continues.
The upper limit of the NHL salary cap this season is $95.5 million. It’s been estimated that the ceiling will be at least $104 million in 2026-27, the first time the NHL’s salary cap will have crested over the century mark. Some predicted this inflation would lead to a spike in player movement, as teams had more to spend on acquiring talent.
On the contrary, the rising cap has seen teams retain their players throughout the offseason, no longer sweating out the pressure points that the cap created. Kaprizov is the latest name to stay where his stuff is, and he’s likely not the last.
Winner: Getting locked in early
Hart Levine of the salary cap site Puck Pedia believes that hockey fans just have to accept that this is the new normal under the salary cap.
“It’s a big number, but we just have to get used to living in a world where the cap is going up each year. It’s going up 9% from this year to next year,” he told me.
It’s all about context. Heck, even Kaprizov’s deal might look like a bargain in the next few seasons.
Take Draisaitl’s contract that he signed last September. Levine says that under next year’s salary cap, Draisaitl’s contract would have been worth $15.25 million against the cap. Conversely, if you took Kaprizov’s contract and put into current cap dollars, the AAV would be around $15.6 million.
One NHL executive likened the rise in the salary cap to a “tidal wave” that’ll just keep adding more and more large contracts as it grows. Which means the key for teams is locking players in before that wave crests.
When discussing good cap management with some NHL sources, one team that came up multiple times was the Carolina Hurricanes.
Their front office, now led by GM Eric Tulsky, has locked up several players to long-term deals ahead of the dramatic salary cap increase: Forwards Sebastian Aho ($9.75 million through 2031-32), Seth Jarvis ($7,420,087 through 2031-32) and Logan Stankoven ($6 million through 2033-34), as well as newly acquired defenseman K’Andre Miller ($7.5 million through 2032-33) and forward Nikolaj Ehlers ($8.5 million through 2030-31).
The Canes have their core locked up long-term at a reasonable rate, and the flexibility to still go after big players via trades as they’ve done the last two seasons with Jake Guentzel and Mikko Rantanen.
Speaking of which …
Losers: Mitch Marner and Mikko Rantanen
Kaprizov’s contract will no doubt continue the dialogue about NHL cities with high income taxes and NHL cities that don’t have income taxes, a.k.a. the teams that happen to be winning Stanley Cups with some frequency lately.
According to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, Minnesota has the fifth-highest top income tax rate in the U.S., at 9.85%. There’s no question that’s a factor in Kaprizov getting $136 million over eight seasons, because he wouldn’t have gotten that same number in a no-tax state. Jeff Marek of Daily Faceoff spoke with one player agent who said Kaprizov’s average annual value in a place like Florida would have been around $14 million.
If that’s the case, then Kaprizov still would have made more annually than Mitch Marner of the Vegas Golden Knights and Mikko Rantanen of the Dallas Stars, who both signed mega-contracts in the last year worth $12 million against the cap through 2032-33.
Marner’s points-per-game average of the last three seasons was equal to Kaprizov’s (1.24) while Rantanen’s was right behind them (1.22). If either of them had the power of clairvoyance and could see what Kaprizov just earned, what would those contracts have looked like?
Winner: Kirill Kaprizov
We must obviously shout out the man himself, who set a new standard for NHL contracts in both overall value and average annual value. From a production standpoint, he’s among the best offensive hockey players in the world: He plays to a 50-goal pace, is a dynamic playmaker and shown to be a more committed defensive player than one might assume given his gaudy stats.
But there’s one number that’s never added up for Kaprizov, and that’s games played. The winger has played over 80 games once in his NHL career, back in 2021-22 when finished seventh in the MVP voting. Last season saw him limited to 41 games. He’s 28 years old, turning 29 next April.
Again, it’s a credit to Kaprizov that he has still managed to post astounding numbers despite those injuries. But for this level of investment, the Wild need him on the ice and not in the press box. Minnesota was 63-41-12 with Kaprizov in the lineup over the last two seasons and 21-23-4 without him. He’s a difference-maker.
The most complicated contract decision in the NHL just got a little more complicated.
McDavid is entering the final year of his contract with the Oilers. As we’ve written previously, everything is on the table for his future — from taking a shorter-term deal to remain in Edmonton to leaving for what would unquestionably become the richest free-agent contract the NHL has ever seen.
The latest speculation around the league: If McDavid does decide to remain with the Oilers beyond this season, it wouldn’t be for a max contract, with the idea being that McDavid would want fair compensation while giving Edmonton GM Stan Bowman flexibility to improve the team in pursuit of McDavid’s elusive Stanley Cup ring.
Yet there are also those who believe that McDavid should secure the bag even if he stays in Edmonton — after all, why should he pay for the team’s cap-management missteps?
McDavid is the best hockey player in the world. Whatever he wants on a new contract in Edmonton, they’re going to give him. It’s the “whatever he wants” that’s now a thornier issue, as the bar has been raised from Draisaitl’s $14 million to Kaprizov’s $17 million. Will McDavid choose to reset that bar whenever — or wherever — he signs his new deal?
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