The Boston Bruins have had quite a lot of points this season, having already gone by a training change and now discovering themselves teetering on the Japanese Convention playoff bubble.
One other potential situation surfaced on Friday when a report from WEEI’s Wealthy Keefe suggested that there was a major issue in the Bruins locker room between star forwards David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand, with Pastrnak — in keeping with the report — not desirous to play on a line with Marchand.
Marchand wasted no time in firing again when requested in regards to the report and emphatically denied any rift between the 2 stars.
He additionally had extraordinarily harsh phrases for Keefe in an prolonged rant about his credibility and trustworthiness as a reporter.
“I do know reporters have a job to do and that job is to report on the workforce,” Marchand said. “Normally, you attempt to be fact-based. However when there’s simply blatant lies advised within the media, that’s the place there’s an issue. The actual fact this man has a platform and is simply making this up is embarrassing. There’s zero fact to something he mentioned. That is the way you lose a job in a short time. The truth that he’s gonna have a job after that is insane.”
Marchand went on to say that Pastrnak is likely one of the most beloved gamers within the locker room and that there’s zero fact to him being an issue.
He completed by saying this:
“It’s very irritating as a result of that is what occurs — we now have not pulled our weight this 12 months,” Marchand continued. “We’ve got not had the season we need to have. However I’m not gonna let some random man come within the media and spit absolute nonsense. From this level ahead, this man has zero credibility.”
That’s about as emphatic as a dismissal as you may get from a participant concerning some type of locker room turmoil.
This all comes a day after the Bruins have been on the shedding finish of a 4-1 resolution in opposition to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night time to increase their shedding streak to 6 consecutive video games. They’ve additionally misplaced seven of their previous eight video games and discover themselves within the backside half of the league standings. Their total factors proportion is twenty second within the NHL and though they’re holding a Wild Card spot within the Japanese Convention, that’s principally as a result of they’ve performed extra video games than a lot of the different groups they’re competing with. By factors proportion there would at present be 4 groups forward of them for a playoff spot.
Pastrnak and Marchand don’t all the time play on the identical line however have spent intensive time alongside each other over the previous six years. Once they have performed collectively they’re usually some of the productive duos within the league, as each have top-line offensive expertise and Marchand performs an amazing two-way recreation.
They haven’t been nearly as good this season as a duo or individually. However no person in Boston has performed as much as expectations this season. When the workforce struggles, that’s when rumors and hypothesis begin.
Whether or not there truly is a few type of situation inside the locker room is secondary to the very fact the workforce simply is not so good as it was once. They by no means adequately changed high facilities Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci following their retirements, they don’t rating sufficient targets as a workforce, and beginning goalie Jeremy Swayman has not performed as much as expectations (or his contract) in his first 12 months as a full-time starter. These are considerably greater points the Bruins want to fret about fixing.
