Kalman: Brad Marchand Must Crush Alter Ego, Play Like Himself Every Night
WILMINGTON (CBS) -- At least one player on the Bruins has an alter ego.
Let's call that alternate personality Mad Barchand.
Mad Barchand thinks every time he touches the puck, the ensuing play should land him a starring role on SportsCenter (or SportsCentre for the TSN crowd). Mad Barchand thinks that he's going to turn every opposing goaltender into 2011 Stanley Cup Final Roberto Luongo. Mad Barchand also, ironically, isn't mad. He doesn't have the same rambunctious nature as his alter ego, and he's just a guy that thinks he'll earn points for style rather than doing whatever it takes to get the puck into the back of the net.
Luckily for the Bruins, sometimes Brad Marchand emerges and pushes Mad Barchand out of the way. Mad Barchand comes back sometimes, but hopefully for the Bruins, he stays away long enough for Marchand's stats to rise and the Bruins to reap the rewards of those benefits.
The third period and overtime of the Bruins' victory in Buffalo on Thursday night finally were a stage for Marchand to be himself. He scored the game-tying goal in the third on a drive to the net. He scored the game-winning goal in overtime on a no-nonsense shot from the high slot after hard work by him and his linemates to pin the Sabres in their own end.
After the game, Bruins coach Claude Julien commended Marchand and talked about how well Marchand fares "when he decides to play the way he can." That's when it finally occurred to me that there must be two sides to Brad Marchand, because why would he want to play any other way than the way he did in the final 20-plus minutes against Buffalo, the way he did when he scored 28 goals in 2011-12, the way he did when he scored 11 goals in the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs?
"I don't know, sometimes I'm just a little overconfident with the puck and I think I can do a little more than I can. Maybe I'm a little too cocky with it," Marchand said after practice Friday at Ristuccia Arena. "But I don't really know why I get like that. I think maybe sometimes if I do something, then I get a little overconfident with it and I think I can do more and more instead of just keeping it simple and play that game. That's all I've got."
Keeping the proper perspective in terms of Marchand's late-game performance and the Bruins' lowly opponents (the Sabres have now won just twice in 11 games), the win in Buffalo could be a turning point for Marchand. Not only did he produce his second and third goals of the season (in 12 games), miracle of miracles he stayed out of the penalty box. It was only the fourth time this season he went an entire game without a penalty. Whereas Brad Marchand is a pest who plays physical and talks trash and typically takes an opponent with him when he gets sent to the sin bin, Mad Barchand takes stupid penalties 150 feet from his own net. Sometimes those penalties come because he's so frustrated by his fancy moves resulting in giveaways and missed shots rather than goals.
Marchand sometimes lets his alter ego, which is obviously also a bit of a spoiled teenager, talk about how his reputation is causing those penalties to be called. But then Marchand interrupts and acknowledges that he needs to do a better job of not retaliating (retaliators always get caught) and continuing to keep his nose clean in scrums and after whistles.
"I've been trying to skate away, trying to change my game a bit. But it's not helping very much," Marchand said. "But hopefully if you continue doing that, they'll see that I'm trying to play within the rules and the system and they lay off me a little bit."
Marchand had a change of scenery against the Sabres because he was on a line with Carl Soderberg and Loui Eriksson. Practice on Friday featured a reunion of Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and Reilly Smith. Julien wouldn't make any commitments about line combinations for the game Saturday against Ottawa or beyond. The coach said he's going game-to-game or maybe even period-to-period in terms of his lines. Should Marchand, Bergeron and Smith get back together, it'll be a huge boost to the Bruins because the rest of the lineup balances better when that trio is grouped.
After taking his offseason workouts extra seriously and then burning down the house in the exhibition season (he had two goals and two assists in four games), Marchand's slow start and demotion to another line were a bit of a shock. But now we know that sometimes success is a little too much for Marchand to take. He got hot against Pittsburgh in the conference finals two years ago but then flopped without a goal against Chicago in the Cup finals. After seemingly righting himself late in the regular season last year, he was a bust in the playoffs without a goal for two rounds.
The common thread is that when the going starts going good, that's when the alter ego shows up and creates adversity and usually failure. One fancy goal makes him think that every goal has to be beautiful. But that's not how he got to the NHL and it's not what's going to keep him among the league's best two-way forwards (when he's at his best).
Marchand has to start to value quantity over quality. He's a seventh-year pro who probably should've already learned his lesson about maximizing his talents without messing around with the fancy stuff. Still, at 26, he may just be a slow learner and sometimes it's all right for a player to continually test the farthest reaches of his ability to find out what he can get away with. You never want a player to be complacent, and you want to encourage creativity, but there are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
This has to be the last time Marchand goes through a prolonged slump while trying to be the prettiest player in the league. The ugly goals count as much as the ones that result from dekes and spins. It's just easier to accumulate the ones that deflect off your body or are the result of a rebound and a battle in front of the net.
It's time for the alter ego to go and for Brad Marchand to accept who he is and what he means to the Bruins.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
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