Marchand’s leadership, production driving Bruins in Eastern 1st Round

TORONTO -- It was Friday night, 24 hours before the Boston Bruins would take on the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference First Round. They were leading the best-of-7 series 2-1, making this game pivotal, the difference between going home to Boston up 3-1 and tied 2-2.

They had gathered for a team dinner at Sotto Sotto, an Italian restaurant in the city that houses the team that Brad Marchand believes is the Bruins’ biggest rival.

The Bruins captain stood up.

He started talking.

"He stood up and explained the situation, how we wanted to go home being in the lead, not giving them any momentum back,” defenseman Brandon Carlo said. “He's really starting to find his voice, leadership-wise, for sure."

The words had been days in the making, days in which Marchand spoke to coach Jim Montgomery, to trusted teammates, some of the older leaders on the team. They had discussed things that had come up in Game 3 that they wanted to replicate for Game 4, ways in which they wanted to be prepared.

“The overall message [was] we’re really good at staying in the moment,” Marchand said. “Just focus on that, just worry about playing in the moment.”

Marchand, speaking to NHL.com, didn’t want to divulge too much about the speech, about the words he used to motivate his team for Game 4, a game that would go down as their best in the series, a 3-1 win that will, indeed, send them back to Boston with the chance to close out the Maple Leafs in Game 5 at TD Garden on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, NESN, SNP, SNO, SNE, TVAS, CBC).

But he talked, again, about the gratitude he has -- the gratitude they all should have -- and the desire to not let anything slip through their fingers. He has talked, in the past, about what happened to the Bruins last season, the historic regular season that went up in smoke with a first-round loss to the Florida Panthers after the team had gone up by the same 3-1 margin, admitting that the Bruins had looked at going on a long run, prepared for a long run, instead of going day to day, moment to moment, shift to shift.

Though this season isn’t that, it is clear that the past has informed the Bruins’ present. Marchand’s present.

“One thing that we’ve all learned is how grateful we need to be for this opportunity,” Marchand said. “It’s never given again. You can’t bank on it being given again. We just want to make sure that we stay in the moment, we’re prepared for what comes at us.

“But I just wanted to kind of reiterate the things that we’ve been through as a group, how we came together, and the things that we learned through the group, throughout the year, that have allowed us to have success. Kind of bring that to the game tonight.”

That started with him. Marchand scored for the second straight game against the Maple Leafs, also adding an assist to bring him to eight points (three goals, five assists) in four games. His power-play goal, which turned out to be the game-winner, was scored at 8:20 of the second period, perhaps the team’s best period of the series, from below the right face-off dot. It was Marchand’s 56th goal in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, passing Cam Neely for the franchise record.

That was important. Massive.

“I mean, ‘Marchy’s’ been dynamite these last two games,” Montgomery said.

But just as massive, perhaps, has been his influence in other areas, in steering a team that many thought wasn’t going to make the playoffs, let alone stand one win away from the second round. Lessons he has learned in three trips to the Stanley Cup Final, in one Stanley Cup ring, in a maturation process that has been bumpy at times, volcanic at others, but which has gotten him here.

“I’m obviously an emotional guy,” he said. “This time of year, so much is kind of run by adrenaline and emotion. I think that’s where the vocal part of it, in the room, on the bench, carries onto the ice. We have a lot of guys like that. Just simple reminders, I think that’s the biggest thing, is we’re learning as a group of new leaders, I guess you’d say, the more we communicate together, the better game we seem to put on the ice.”

There is a calm and a cool about Marchand in this series. Not on the ice, where he has been a dervish, upending Tyler Bertuzzi and scoring goals and throwing his weight all over the ice. But off it, where his voice carries and his leadership matters.

The day after Game 3, after Marchand had terrorized the Maple Leafs, scoring two goals to give the Bruins the lead and put Toronto away, he stood casually on Wellington Street here in front of a Tim Hortons. Half a dozen Maple Leafs fans came up to him, expressing their distaste for the impact he had had on their team the night before, asking for a selfie in return.

He obliged, each one.

“You just see it from his energy and his leadership,” Carlo said, of Marchand’s impact. “Before the game, the night before the game, he’s been very dialed in here. So we all are following his lead, as we should, and I’m very happy with the example that he’s setting and he’s definitely bringing that juice for us to come in each day and keep it positive, but also have that energy.”

It has taken him a good part of the season to get to this point, to find himself on a team that carries with it the burdens and benefits of the two captains and future Hockey Hall of Famers who came before him, in Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara, two voices he was trying to emulate. Until he wasn’t.

“I feel much more confident in the role now than I did early on,” he said. “It took me to the halfway point to realize that I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t and trying to lead a way that I hadn’t before, trying to be too much like ‘Bergy,’ too much like ‘Zee.’ I feel much more confident now, in the way I need to lead and how to do it. I’m not perfect by any means. I make mistakes. It’s just something you learn with time.

“You learn through making mistakes. But it helps with the amount of guys around me that have stepped up as well. It takes the pressure off. I’ve learned that I don’t need to do it by myself.”