Brad Marchand delivered when it mattered most for the Florida Panthers, scoring twice in Friday’s Game 2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers. His double-overtime winner tied the Stanley Cup Final at one game apiece.
The 37-year-old forward earned high praise from teammates after the clutch performance.
“He just finds a way,” defenseman Nate Schmidt said following the Panthers’ series-tying victory, according to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski. “I don’t think the moment ever gets too big for him.”
Marchand leads all active players with 10 career goals in the Stanley Cup Final. He’s got three through two games this postseason.
His Friday heroics came exactly 14 years after he scored his first Cup Final goal in Game 3 of the 2011 Final against the Vancouver Canucks.
Roberto Luongo, who was Vancouver’s goaltender in that 2011 series and now works as a special advisor in Florida’s front office, had strong words for Marchand. Luongo posted on X after the game that Marchand is his “favorite player of all time.”
The Panthers acquired Marchand from the Boston Bruins before the trade deadline. The move ended his 16-year run with Boston.
Matthew Tkachuk thinks the veteran shows no signs of slowing down.
“He could play until he’s 47 the way he’s going,” Tkachuk said, according to NHL.com’s Nicholas J. Cotsonika. “Unreal player, unreal competitor, and he’s scored, when you think about it, two of our biggest goals in the playoffs so far, so hopefully he can keep it going.”
Tkachuk pointed to Marchand’s hockey sense as his biggest strength.
“Playoffs aside, I think his best strength as a player, like he’s really skilled, hard on pucks, wants the puck, but his anticipation and his just being in the right spots and his hockey sense, it’s unbelievable,” Tkachuk said, according to The Athletic.
“You see it tonight, two breakaway goals, just seeing a play, seeing it go to a player, and he’s gone and gets an unbelievable chance. I saw that a ton from him in Boston, and it’s way better seeing it here.”
The Panthers kept things loose in the locker room despite Edmonton’s last-minute equalizer in the third period.
“It was the opposite of what you guys probably thought was going on in the locker room,” Tkachuk said, per Cotsonika. “We were upbeat, joking around, picking guys who we thought were going to score. We were having some fun.”
Game 3 shifts to Edmonton with the series tied 1-1.
