When Brad Marchand was traded to the Panthers, who could have imagined this? The Lil Ball O' Hate wins another Stanley Cup.
The only page left blank, or perhaps wrinkled and stained, in Marchand's storybook 2025 Cup run was his not being elected the Conn Smythe winner. He was indeed the postseason MVP. Instead, that slice of hockey immortality went to Bennett, Marchand's once-bitter opponent turned fellow hardware monger the moment the wise-cracking former Bruin swashbuckled into town asking which way to the beach after his 1,090 games with that Spoked-B on his chest.
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Bennett, 28, finished as the postseason's leading goal-scorer (15). He was indeed a worthy Smythe pick, based on scoring acumen and his heavy, menacing, oft-over-the-line compete factor that has defined his career.
Thirty years gone by, Bennett joined Claude Lemieux, then with the Devils for their '95 Cup win, atop the list of the Smythe's orneriest winners.
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Marchand, brought to Florida mainly as a confidence-booster for a team that won the 2024 Cup less than 12 months earlier, delivered far more than the Panthers expected. No doubt, the ever-confident Marchand only would be surprised that anyone ever would have thought otherwise.
Close your eyes, and you can hear him chirp, 'Really, bud? OK, you do you.'
Marchand finished 10-10–20 for these playoffs, only a tick below the career-best 9-14–23 he posted with the Bruins in their one-win-short Cup run in 2019. With the Panthers at the doorstep of falling into a 2-0 series deficit against the Oilers, it was Marchand, Marchand, Marchand (hat tip to Dave Goucher's 'Bergeron! Bergeron! Bergeron!') who knocked home the double-OT game-winner (88:05) that squared the series.
As compromised as the Oilers proved to be — perpetually self-immolating in their own end of the ice — they surely had enough to turn what would have been a 2-0 series into Canada's first Stanley Cup since 1993.
O Canada, you can blame Marchand, your spitfire son of the Maritimes (Halifax, N.S.), for at least one more season of those therapy bills.
He rose to the moment throughout the four rounds — wins over Tampa, Toronto, Carolina, and Edmonton — but his biggest moment, in his team's greatest time of need, was that OT jawbreaker.
After that double overtime game-winner, the Panthers never trailed again in the series.
'It's incredible,' Marchand said, interviewed on the ice by TNT moments after clinching the Cup, finding it hard to express himself, his voice quaking. 'Words can't put this into reality, how great it feels — such an incredible group.'
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Marchand then lapsed into standard underdog speak, saying 'everybody wrote us off from the start of the playoffs. They had everybody beating us in every round.'
Of course, not true, largely because much of hockey's pundit cognoscenti figured Marchand's acquisition in March — for a first-round pick the Bruins will harvest in 2027 — made the Panthers bulletproof.
Now, in the final round, the pick here was Oilers in six, figuring Connor McDavid's otherworldly talent would win out. My bet: a crushed McDavid in '24, the Smythe winner in that failed Cup run, would be too much for anyone to mute a year later. He would absolutely will them to victory.
Instead, McDavid finished with one goal (1-6–7) in the SCF, while Marchand scored a half-dozen times (6-0–0) across the six games. Again, none of those six strikes was bigger than the Game 2 closer.
Marchand went 14 years between his Cup wins. In league history, only two players have spaced the title more far apart: Chris Chelios (16 years) and Mark Recchi (15). Recchi's final Cup win, his third, came with Marchand and the Bruins in 2011.
During his first press conference in Boston after the March trade, following his first practice with the Panthers, Marchand jokingly referred to a then '82 years old' Recchi as providing inspiration to a then 21-year-old Marchand in 2011. Marchand had been holding a slice of pizza one day, he recalled, when he spotted Recchi, actually 43 at the time, 'running sprints on a treadmill' after a game.
'And I'm like, 'Wow!,'' said Marchand, recalling that he thought, 'I might need to change a few things here.'
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No telling where Brad Marchand, two-time Cup winner, goes from here. As of July 1, he is free to sign with any team. Wherever he ends up, he'll be on the invite list when the Panthers visit the White House.
Fourteen years ago, Marchand, who played in only 97 regular-season games prior to the Cup win in 2011, visited 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the Cup-winning Bruins. Barack Obama was commander in chief of Cup celebrations. Marchand stood on the far left wing of the team gathered around Obama.
'Brad Marchand started the season on the fourth line,' noted Obama, reading somewhat quizzically from his prepared speech. 'But the Little Ball of Hate shook off the rookie jitters ... and … uh.'
With Marchand's teammates laughing aloud, along with the assembled press corps, Obama turned from his speech and began looking for the L'Bo'H. Team CEO Charlie Jacobs, standing behind Obama, pointed over to Marchand, the TV cameras finally spotting the modest kid from Halifax as he dipped his head.
'What's up with that nickname, man?' said Obama, before continuing 'He scored five goals in the last five games of the final series.'
The numbers surprised us then, right? Now, we all but take them for granted. All the stats and all the success, the unremitting compete factor that defines him, and now the two Cups and the sure (we think) path to the Hockey Hall of Fame have been baked into a 5-foot-9, 180-pound body of work ... and more work … and work to the final whistle.
The Panthers delightfully got more than they bargained for in Brad Marchand. Which is to say, same ol' Marchand. Fooled 'em again.
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Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at
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