Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on how things played out between Brad Marchand and the Boston Bruins that led to his trade to the Florida Panthers.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Ron MacLean: “And, yeah, I would say Elliotte, as much as (Mikko) Rantanen was the big name and the big deal, that was something.”
Friedman: “I still can’t believe it really. Like Katie Engleson who’s the sideline reporter, rinkside reporter for the Panthers. She sounded a tweet of a Brad Marchand stall in the Panthers dress room. I was like, This looks so wrong. I can’t believe I’m even seeing this.
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So just a few more things I wanted to go over from the Marchand situation. Number one, I think the Bruins and the player had agreed on term. Three years. But as Don Sweeney said yesterday, there was a gap. And there was a gap on AAV. And I don’t think he was being asked to take a pay cut or anything like that, but I do think it was a sizable gap that they obviously could not bridge.
Where I think this really went sideways was there was a point this week where Brad Marchand, who was currently injured and not in the lineup, asked for a face-to-face meeting with Bruins management. I don’t know exactly when it was. I don’t know exactly who was there. But it did happen, and in that meeting, Brad Marchand asked for a compromise. He said, I will compromise. I will bend on some of my ask. I’m asking the Bruins to bend on some of their stance, and we’ll find a way to get this deal done because he wanted to stay as a Bruin. And it just didn’t happen. The Bruins had gone as far as they were willing to go
And look, anybody out here watching hockey in the hockey world has watched Brad Marchand play, we know he’s going to the Hall of Fame for one major reason. He’s got an incredible amount of pride, and he puts everything on the line. I think he was really stung by that. And then all of a sudden, the Bruins started to look okay, we’re not going to go any farther. We’re going to start looking out there.
And I think one of the things that really happened in the last 24 to 48 hours before the deadline was that Marchand’s agent, and I was told by several teams, Wade Arnott, made it very clear that Marchand had a place he wanted to go, and obviously that was Florida. And then the last minutes, the Bruins acquiesced and made the deal.
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But so, that’s everything I understand there, and I think it really hurt Marchand that the face-to-face meeting couldn’t get a deal done.
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