Brad Marchand is repentant, even if you don’t believe him

Brad Marchand made headlines for all the wrong reasons for the Boston Bruins this offseason, and, though you may not believe him, he’s genuinely sorry about it.

Bounced from the postseason by the Tampa Bay Lightning in five games, the Boston Bruins are looking ahead to the offseason. That included the players’ final day of media availability on Wednesday as they cleaned out their lockers in Brighton and shifted their thoughts from the Stanley Cup to filling their time in the months ahead — an offseason that came too soon.

Unsurprisingly, after a postseason filled with headlines about his on-the-ice antics — licking other players chief among them — it was left wing and self-appointed pest Brad Marchand who had the most interesting things to say during the players’ dressing-room self-examination.

“I had no idea it was going to get this big, and that was not my intention,” Marchand told the media. “I didn’t really pay attention to it a ton at the time. I never thought for a second it was going to get that big.”

Marchand’s contrition will be waved off by some (most?), who have already given him his requisite “Boy who cried ‘sorry'” chances and found his follow-up wanting.

But that doesn’t make his regret any less true, and not simply because Marchand was finally informed by the league in the series against Tampa Bay that he would be subject to supplemental discipline for continued licking, kissing and the like.

To get inside Marchand’s head and figure out just what exactly is going on in there, the easiest thing to do is go straight to the source.

Marchand penned an eye-opening piece for The Players’ Tribune this spring in which he sketched out a history of his childhood — no surprise, he writes, “my mom likes to say that I came out of the womb ‘mischievous'” — and the impetus behind his pesky play with the Bruins.

The most telling line in Marchand’s piece is this one: “Obviously, you want people to be able to separate who you are on the ice versus the real person off it.”

Alternate captain Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak rave about their linemate. So does the leader of the pack, Zdeno Chara. All together, they just might be the most deadly top line in hockey — elite players capable of bringing another Stanley Cup to Boston and frustrated that they keep coming up short.

The game is about winning, and that, more than anything — more than being liked, certainly — is what drives Marchand.

“I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like it, and I will be the first to tell you that it’s a fine line,” Marchand writes about playing the pest role.

“I have done things that have stepped over that line, and I’ve paid the price for it. But you know what? There’s a lot of people out there in the hockey world who love to say, ‘Winning is everything. It’s the only thing.'”

"“I will be the first to tell you that it’s a fine line.”"

Marchand knows that toeing the line of what’s considered acceptable conduct in the NHL — admittedly a more buttoned-up league than others, one that prizes professionalism and sportsmanlike conduct — can give his team a winning advantage.

In his Players’ Tribune piece, he cites a game where his team had almost no chance of winning, and his goading another player into a slashing penalty earned the team a power play opportunity and, as a result, the winning goal.

“If I played the game any other way, you absolutely would not know my name,” Marchand wrote. “You wouldn’t care enough to hate me, because I wouldn’t be in the NHL.”

But the licking sent Marchand down a slippery slope, for lack of a better word. He even frustrated some of his own fans who didn’t see a correlation between the antics earning their team negative coverage in the media and Marchand’s own performance.

Marchand finished his postseason with four goals and 13 assists in 12 games played, and a plus-minus of four — by no means scrub numbers, but a far cry from the 11 goals and eight assists with a plus minus of 12 — TWELVE! — that helped lead his team to a Stanley Cup in the 2011 postseason.

The entire experience is forcing Marchand to do some self-reflection, never a bad thing for an NHL baddie whose methods aren’t leading to wins.

“I think the biggest thing for me now is to really take a pretty hard look in the mirror and, you know, realize the actions, some of the things that I’m doing have much bigger consequences than I may ever think or really believe would come out of it,” Marchand said Wednesday.

“I’m really a pretty easygoing guy, and there’s not a whole lot that fazes me at all. The last thing I ever want to do is bring the embarrassment on my teammates and organization that I did.”

You don’t have to believe Marchand, and you can absolutely hold him to his word next season. In all truth, even though the licking may stop, Marchand has appointed himself this team’s pest and he’s going to continue to toe that line. Sometimes he’ll cross it.

But it’s important to be able to separate a player’s actions on the ice from drawing definitive conclusions to who he is off it. Because above all else, Marchand, like all hockey players, just wants to win.

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