IN FLORIDA, “A GOOD-LOOKING” MAN IS LEADING THE PANTHERS TO ANOTHER STANLEY CUP
Brad Marchand was traded by Boston in a monstrous deadline trade, and here he is in another Final, with six goals — two Saturday night — while leaving Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers in crisis
He was a hot flash, sweeping across center ice, gathering the puck and racing toward the net when other players were in slow motion. Who could blame them, after both teams had just flown 2,580 miles from South Florida to Edmonton? Brad Marchand is known as a rat, a Nose Face Killah, a Little Ball of Hate.
Consider him a mad amphetamine, too, lifting his first-period shot over goalie Calvin Pickard for his fifth goal of the Stanley Cup Final. That launched the Florida Panthers to a 5-2 victory that gives them a 3-2 series lead, though he added his sixth goal in the third period. If they win in back-to-back seasons, remember how Marchand melted the ice in Canada, where the Oilers might extend the lack of a championship up north to 33 years. Who cares about tariffs when seven teams have zero NHL relevance?
We have seen Marchand lick opponents on their faces and try to pulverize them with pestiness. But a trade from Boston has glorified him as the grimy leader of the Panthers — who already possess Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Aleksander Barkov and Sergei Bobrovsky. Want history? Marchand is the first player to score at least five Cup goals for multiple teams, with 13 for his career. In this postseason, he has 10 goals and 10 assists. Why did the Bruins trade him? Someone asked what he would have said years ago about his 2025 exploits?
“Man that guy's good-looking. That would probably be it,” Marchand said.
“What he can do under duress in a small area is world-class,” coach Paul Maurice said. “It’s as good as I’ve seen.”
Consider it another charm at the trade deadline for general manager Bill Zito, who had no idea Marchand would be moved to tears when he was introduced to the Panthers. “At the end of the day, I know the business is the business and everybody has a shelf life," Marchand said then. "I am grateful, beyond words, for everything (the Bruins) have done for me.” But quickly, he added, “I'm coming to the rink every day just having fun and trying to live in the moment, not taking anything too seriously. Being here, they talk about being in the moment, going day by day, taking time to reflect on things and to appreciate them.”
That’s what he is doing, in a series created for his curses. “It's a special time, special memories we're going to have forever,” Marchand said. “Not really nervous, just excited.”
“I mean, they’re both unbelievable,” Bennett said of Marchand’s goals. “But that second one? I don’t know how he did that. We’re going to have to watch that clip a couple times and ask him to teach me something.”
All you need to know about the joy of hockey, in the heat of mid-June, is that Corey Perry attempted to save the Oilers. Corey Perry, folks. He stared at teammates in the locker room Thursday night, as they began to botch the series, and said, “It wasn’t wisdom. It was just honesty. Had to realize where we were at the moment and just kind of look at ourselves in the mirror and how we were playing.”
Of all people, he inspired the Oilers to overcome a three-goal deficit and steal Game 4 in Florida. Imagine Perry saving a franchise when he barely saved himself. Last season, his career looked doomed when he was terminated by the Chicago Blackhawks. He sought help for substance abuse after an incident on the road with a team employee. At one point, he was accused online of trying to pick up a family member of a teammate.
The general manager, Kyle Davidson, denied those rumors as revolting. “Anything that suggests otherwise or anyone that suggests otherwise is wildly inaccurate and, frankly, it's disgusting,” he said before waiving the veteran.
Said Perry: “I am sickened by the impact this has had on others and I want to make it clear that in no way did this situation involve any of my teammates or their families most importantly, I want to directly apologize to those who have been negatively affected, and I am sorry for the additional impact to others that it has created. My behavior was inappropriate and wrong.”
At this point, a folk song — “Corey’s Speech in Sunrise” — will not happen unless the Oilers win two straight. This back-and-forth is not a triumph for TV ratings sniffers — TNT was averaging 2.41 million viewers through three games — but don’t be shocked if Oilers-Panthers is remembered well for its swerves. Out of nowhere, amid raucous commotion in the arena by the Everglades, Edmonton reversed the dynasty dreams of the Panthers. Yet now, Connor McDavid has only a limited chance to win a Cup and ultimately compare his legacy to Wayne Gretzky, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. He has one goal in the series. “We want to get off to better starts,” McDavid said before Game 5. “Can't be chasing games like we have been kinda all series long. I'd expect a good start.”
When will he win a Cup? Ever? “Obviously, it's not the way you draw it up,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “Chasing a game over and over against a team like this, it’s very difficult. We're never gonna quit on each other and we're always gonna try our hardest to get back in the game, but sometimes it's harder than other nights.”
Those accustomed to watching the NBA Finals might not be wowed by Oklahoma City and Indiana. You’ve seen the finality of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but you lack the thrills of Sunbelt America taking hits from Canada and then drilling in return. In the end, there was Gretzky, back in his original hometown, all but rooting for the Oilers. He is in pain alongside so many Canadians, even if he loves President Trump, and he needs to see a trophy one of these decades.
For now, Marchand simply has fun with the language. “Sometimes you get bounces, sometimes you don’t,” he said.
Bounces? Whatever he’s thinking, at 37, it’s working again in the sunshine of life.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.