Brad Marchand never envisioned scoring 1,000 points. He doesn't plan to slow down
The net was empty and the clock running out. The Florida Panthers knew the situation and the circumstance. The game was already decided. They were going to beat the Washington Capitals to start their five-game homestand.
But there was still business to take care of over this final minute-plus of action at Amerant Bank Arena.
“We talked about it before the game,” defenseman Seth Jones said. “We’ve got to go out there for him.”
After a battle on the boards in the Panthers’ zone, Anton Lundell flicked the puck up to Brad Marchand.
Marchand then sent the puck to Eetu Luostarinen, who fired the puck the length of the ice.
The puck sailed into the empty net.
And then the Panthers’ bench promptly emptied.
Marchand just joined a distinguished club.
Marchand’s assist on Luostarinen’s empty-net goal was the 1,000th point of his NHL career — a mark reached by just 102 players in league history and a mark held by just a dozen active players.
“You don’t get to be part of things like this very often,” Marchand said after the 6-3 win that kicked off a five-game homestand and a run of 11 games out of 12 on home ice.
It’s a milestone Marchand never thought he would hit.
Undersized, doubted and hoping to just make a career out of playing hockey after being a third-round pick by the Boston Bruins in 2006, Marchand remembers having a conversation with a Bruins front-office member early in his career.
The message: “If you could get to 400 games, that’s a good NHL career. It’s one to be proud of.”
“That was my marker,” Marchand said. “That was what I was chasing for so long.”
He has done so much more than that. He’s in the early stages of his 17th season. He had just played his 1,116th regular-season game. He was a captain for the Bruins. He has won two Stanley Cups — one with the Bruins as a rookie in 2011 and one with the Panthers last season.
And at 37 and in the first season of a six-year contract extension he signed with the Panthers following that championship, he’s showing no signs of slowing down as he reaches his latest milestone.
“It’s exciting,” Marchand said. “It’s something I’m definitely proud of. Hopefully there’s many more.”
There probably will be with the way he’s playing.
Even on a night when Marchand wasn’t particularly his best, he still logged two points — the primary assist on Jones’ power-play goal with 9:47 left to play to push Florida’s lead to 5-2 and the assist on Luostarinen’s empty-net goal to cap scoring and secure his 1,000th point.
“He’s got a really good handle on his game,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said after the Washington game. “There are guys that play in this league who don’t think they ever make a mistake, and he knows exactly his good nights and then his tougher nights. Tonight, the puck wasn’t his friend at times, so he only got two points right? That must be nice. We’ll have no idea how that feels.”
Marchand enters Florida’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday on a nine-game point streak, with 14 points (eight goals, six assists) in that span. He leads the Panthers with 11 goals and 20 points in 16 games played — the fastest he has gotten to both marks in his 17-season career.
During a streaky start to the season as Florida attempts to win a third consecutive Stanley Cup — the Panthers haven’t had a winning streak longer than three games this season — Marchand has been the model of consistency.
“It’s been necessary,” Maurice said. “We’ve needed it. He’s driving the bus in that department, and we need that.”
Added forward Carter Verhaeghe: “He’s unstoppable. I don’t know how he does it every game, to have that kind of motor and be going every night. Everything he shoots [is going in]. It’s amazing.”
His efforts have been noticed., but it goes beyond the goals and the milestones and the on-ice efforts.
After being acquired by the Panthers at the trade deadline in March, leaving a Boston team with whom he had spent his entire career, Marchand fit in almost instantly with his new squad. He fired off chirps in the group chat. He became a mentor for young linemates in Lundell and Luostarinen — his “Finnish Females” (a nickname that came after Lundell thought Marchand was calling them “females” when he was actually calling them “phenoms”). That line was one of the best in the playoffs last season and a major reason Marchand had 10 goals and 20 points in the postseason.
His off-ice veteran presence has been needed even more by Florida this season with captain Aleksander Barkov and star winger Matthew Tkachuk — plus fellow forwards Tomas Nosek and Jonah Gadjovich along with defenseman Dmitry Kulikov — sidelined long-term with injury.
“Obviously, his play has been great for us — last year in the playoffs and this year so far — but I think off the ice, he just brings so much energy to our room,” said Jones, whose power play goal that got Marchand his 999th point was also the 100th goal of his NHL career. “He’s a vocal leader. He leads by example every single day. And he just brings life and energy. In a long season that’s necessary, and he’s always there for that.”
And his teammates are always there for him. Marchand stressed that individual milestones are a group effort. That was on display Thursday. After the win, with Marchand’s family in the dressing room with him, they doused him with water and continued the celebration a little bit longer.
A milestone night in the books.
“We’re all as happy for the next guy to have success, and we all celebrate together,” Marchand said. “It feels pretty incredible to be a part of a group that enjoys each other as much as we do and as close as we are. That’s what makes these moments so much more special.”
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