Marchand worried older teams like Bruins will struggle if season resumes

Brad Marchand has a theory, but it's not one that would help the Boston Bruins if the NHL season resumes.

"I honestly think that the teams that are going to come back and look good are the really young teams, like [the Toronto Maple Leafs] or Tampa [Bay Lightning]. Really high-end skill teams," the Bruins forward said Thursday in a virtual town hall for Boston season ticket holders. "They're going to have the legs. They're going to be able to get it back quick. But older teams are really going to struggle."

The Bruins, led by captain Zdeno Chara, who turned 43 on March 18, have 12 primary players 28 or older. That could be problematic for Boston, which began this season as a contender to win the Stanley Cup after coming so close last season, when they lost Game 7 of the Final to the St. Louis Blues.

When the NHL season was paused March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, the Bruins (44-14-12) were leading the Atlantic Division, with the Lightning second and the Maple Leafs third. Boston's 100 points led the NHL and it was 16-4-0 in its final 20 games, rounding into form a month before the playoffs were scheduled to begin.

"It's not going to help any team that was playing well at that time," Marchand said. "Maybe a few days (off) might've, but when you take a month or two months or three months, or whatever it's going to be, it's going to hurt everyone. Especially the fact that we can't skate and we can't keep our conditioning level up, or our skills. It's going to hurt everybody in the League."

That, Marchand said, is frustrating.

"The toughest thing is it doesn't matter what you do off the ice," he said. "You can run, you can bike, but nothing really simulates the workout that you get on the ice. You can't duplicate it, you can't replicate it, so it doesn't matter who does what in this break. We're all going to feel awful coming back."

Marchand, who turns 32 on May 11, wants to have a chance to finish out this season, said he doesn't want to think about the idea that the Bruins wouldn't get a chance to compete for the Stanley Cup.

"It would be very upsetting to not be able to see how it would have played out," Marchand said. "We had a really good team and we had a good opportunity. The toughest part is that years like this don't come around very often. It's taken us a long time to build to where we are now and to be the team we are. We would have loved to have seen how that would have played out, the opportunity we had.

"But there's a lot of teams in that same position right now. There's a lot of good teams that were contenders right now. But on the flip side, there's much bigger things at stake here."