The Boston Bruins have had loads of points this season, having already gone by means of a training change and now discovering themselves teetering on the Jap Convention playoff bubble.
One other potential concern surfaced on Friday when a report from WEEI’s Wealthy Keefe urged that there was a serious concern within the Bruins locker room between star forwards David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand, with Pastrnak — in accordance with the report — now 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 crew,” Marchand mentioned. “Normally, you attempt to be fact-based. However when there’s simply blatant lies instructed 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 reality 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 without doubt one of the most beloved gamers within the locker room and that there’s zero reality to him being an issue.
He completed by saying this:
“It’s very irritating as a result of that is what occurs — we’ve got not pulled our weight this 12 months,” Marchand continued. “We’ve not had the season we wish 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 will get from a participant concerning some type of locker room turmoil.
This all comes a day after the Bruins had been on the shedding finish of a 4-1 determination in opposition to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday evening 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 regardless that they’re holding a Wild Card spot within the Jap 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 presently be 4 groups forward of them for a playoff spot.
Pastrnak and Marchand don’t at all times play on the identical line however have spent in depth time alongside each other over the previous six years. Once they have performed collectively they’re sometimes probably the most productive duos within the league, as each have top-line offensive abilities and Marchand performs an excellent two-way recreation.
They haven’t been pretty much as good this season as a duo or individually. However no person in Boston has performed as much as expectations this season. When the crew struggles, that’s when rumors and hypothesis begin.
Whether or not there really is a few type of concern throughout the locker room is secondary to the very fact the crew simply is inferior to 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 crew, 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 larger points the Bruins want to fret about fixing.
