It wasn’t Brad Marchand’s best season last year. It was his first as the captain of the Boston Bruins, but during the playoffs, he was forced to be sidelined for some games due to an injury.
He did, however, play all 82 games during the regular season, but his 67 points were the lowest for him since the 2015-16 season. But last week, it was revealed that Marchand struggled with injuries throughout last season, which eventually forced him to be sidelined during some of the team’s most important games during the post-season.
Marchand has undergone three(!) different surgeries since the Bruins were eliminated from the 2023/24 playoffs, including repairing a torn tendon in his elbow. He also repaired two sports hernias, one in his groin and another in his abdominal area. It was actually nothing but incredible that Marchand managed to play through the injuries during the regular season, and now, he’s looking to go into the new season in about a month and be fully healthy.
Brad Marchand is back on the ice again, working hard to be ready for the new season, and as he took the ice for the captain’s practice, he didn’t look 100 percent, per the NHL Network’s Mike Johnson.
”I don’t want to read too much into the captain’s practice footage, but he wasn’t moving completely free out there just yet,” said Johnson.
Johnson wasn’t surprised, though, as that’s expected from someone his age.
”At 36, is it hard to start to play catch up at this 11th hour of the season? Absolutely, the further you get in your career, whether you’re 29 or 36 or whatever it might be, it takes a little longer to heal, to recover, to get in shape, and to find your best game than it did when you were 24. That’s just the reality of sports and the age curve we all deal with.”
But with the season Marchand had last year and three surgeries during the summer in mind, is there a need to worry about the Bruins’ captain? Absolutely not, claims Johnson, who believes Marchand can improve during the upcoming season.
”But I will say this, Brad Marchand is still a very good player, and he had a down year offensively last year. He went through a prolonged goal drought towards the end of the season, but that’s going to happen when you have a bad elbow the entire season, and then you’re dealing with the groin hernia stuff as well. He could be in line, once he gets right, to have a real bounce-back season.”
