And while Marchand will have a few familiar faces in the stands on Tuesday, including his family, his in-laws and friends from the area, it is the rest of them, the rest of the people who watched him night after night after night, who made his experience with the Bruins what it was, in so many ways.
“All the way down, they bleed black and gold,” Marchand said. “It’s part of why I think there’s so much pressure on the team to have success and why they focus on it so much is you can’t slip. … You don’t have the ability to slip in the city or you’re going to hear about it. We wanted to produce and be good for the fans and live up to that reputation. So it makes it special to play here.”
Even if he’s wearing a Panthers sweater.
“I’m sure it’s going to be tough. Some people, they won’t be able to cheer because I know they don’t like the Panthers very much, but maybe they’ll like me enough to give a little ‘Yay’ out there or something,” Marchand said. “But yeah, I think that there will be a little bit of love there, maybe if I do something good. If I do something bad, they’ll probably boo me pretty quick.
“But they’re pretty passionate here, so they might have forgot already and treat me like any other Panther player.”
But it hasn’t always been an easy or a simple relationship. Those same fans have questioned Marchand, have criticized him, made his life difficult at points. He once took it personally.
As he got older, though, he began to get them, to find a commonality with them.
“There’s a responsibility that comes with this team, with playing with this team, and that’s what I grew to understand,” Marchand said. “It’s not because they don’t like you. It’s because when you sign up to play here, you sign up to carry the burden of understanding that you need to have success here, and if you don’t, you’re going to hear about it. You better shut up and just take it because you know that when you sign up.
“You go to all these places around the League where people don’t show up and don’t care and they don’t say anything and you don’t hear about hockey when you leave the rink, but this is a real sports city. So when you leave, they care about it. They’ll take it home and wear it to work the next day, just like you do. They don’t just turn the TV off and forget about it. So when you have a fanbase that’s passionate like that, you’ve got to embrace it and appreciate it.”
He will do that on Tuesday, when he gets his coffee and when he arrives at the rink, when he sees the security guards and the fans that have watched him walk out onto the ice for nearly two decades. When he faces those that have loved him for so long.
“I’m just excited about it,” Marchand said. “It’ll be fun to be back here, it’ll be fun to play the Bruins, it’ll be fun to play against teammates, have friends and family in the building again. These are things that, down the road, I think I’ll really appreciate. There’s been enough moments that I kind of went through and I didn’t take it in enough or I didn’t really appreciate it and this is one that I will make sure that I do.”
