Panthers LW Brad Marchand Gets Emotional Talking About His Career With The Bruins

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Few things have made me more upset as a sports fan this year than the Boston Bruins trading Brad Marchand.

I knew it makes sense from a business standpoint. The guy will be 37 soon and the Bruins - thanks to incompetent management - put themselves in a position where they needed to jumpstart a rebuild. That meant Marchand had to go so that Boston could get some return for him, even though he was a franchise mainstay. He played in over 1000 games and scored nearly 1,000 points in 16 years as a Bruin, and delivered some of the most memorable goals in Boston history.

I’m getting teary-eyed just watching it. Why, oh why, did we have to move on from this guy?

The worst part is which team he went to. I could have stomached it if he went to 30 of the 31 other teams in the league. But he went to the one - the most despicable one - instead.

Marchand went to the Florida Panthers, the biggest collaboration of scumbags in the modern NHL era. He’ll join forces with Matthew Tkachuck and Sam Bennet. Few teams in all of sports evoke as much disgust for me as those guys in Sunrise, FL. They’ve eliminated Boston in the playoffs for the past two years and have been classless jerks in the process.

Today, he had his first introductory press conference as Panther (gosh I wanted to barf writing that). Naturally, reporters asked him about how he felt leaving the city he called home for nearly two decades.

Marchand got choked up recounting his journey.

"I’m very proud of how things went there," he started before getting choked up.

Man, that cuts like a knife. You can tell he didn’t want to go.

On top of these remarks, Marchand wrote a statement that was published as a full-page ad in The Boston Globe on Monday.

Now what am I going to do? One of the best players in franchise history is on my least favorite team. Do I root against him and hope the Panthers lose? Or will I be happy if he wins a title with the new Stanley Cup favorites?

I choose neither. I just want him to come back.

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John Simmons graduated from Liberty University hoping to become a sports journalist. He’s lived his dream while working for the Media Research Center and can’t wait to do more in this field with Outkick. He could bore you to death with his knowledge of professional ultimate frisbee, and his one life goal is to find Middle Earth and start a homestead in the Shire. He’s still working on how to make that happen.