The 2024-25 season continues to be a rollercoaster ride for the Boston Bruins. After stringing together their longest winning streak of the season (four), they’ve dropped two games in a row, losing 8-1 against the Winnipeg Jets and 5-1 against the Seattle Kraken. Both were important games for the team to try and show if the changes and steps forward they took in their winning streak were for real or not. The result? This is still a middling team that will beat teams with a record worse than them, and lose to teams with a better record.
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Still, the promotion of Joe Sacco to head coach has had some positive impacts on players. Whether it’s his coaching style or the reality check of having a head coach fired remains to be seen. Nevertheless, several players, particularly the team’s star players who had a pretty rough start across the board, have gotten it together in recent weeks. One of those players is team captain Brad Marchand.
A Rough Start to 2024-25
It was not an easy offseason for the 36-year-old captain. Marchand had three surgeries this past offseason to address a torn tendon in his elbow, a sports hernia in his groin, and another sports hernia in his abdominal area. This limited him significantly, and didn’t really start training full-out until two weeks prior to training camp starting. As a result, he was very limited in training camp, only becoming a full participant at the end of September. Additionally, he only appeared in two preseason games, one of which he left early due to illness.
With all of these factors and his age, it wasn’t exactly surprising that he had a slow start to the season. He looked rusty and like his age was finally starting to show. It took him nine games to score his first goal of the season (coming against the Toronto Maple Leafs of course). Additionally, after spending almost the entirety of his career as a plus player in terms of plus/minus, Marchand was consistently finishing games with a negative number in that section of his stat line.
Through the first 11 games, Marchand averaged .48 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, the worst in his career. Additionally, like the rest of the roster, he was playing undisciplined, taking a number of bad penalties.
Turning It Around
In the last few weeks, Marchand has turned it around from his rough start and is…
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