By: Scott Wood | Follow me on Twitter @ScottHoHPodcast
The NHL has suspended Bruins’ Brad Marchand for six games, It was announced Wednesday evening, for an incident involving Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry.
With the Penguins leading 4-2 and the Bruins pressing, the whistle had blown the play dead after Marchand failed to pot a goal on a rebound with 24 seconds remaining. Marchand proceeded to take out his frustration on the Penguins netminder during the stoppage, skating up to Jarry from the side of the net and surprising him with a punch to the head.
The officials pulled Marchand away from conflict, but the Bruins winger was not finished expressing his displeasure with Jarry. Marchand skated back to the front of the net with a linesman attached at his hip and jabbed at Jarry’s mask with the blade of his stick as he skated past.
Marchand was given a match penalty on the play which automatically triggers a suspension.
There were tensions earlier in the game when Marchand prevented Jarry from flipping a puck to a Penguins fan who was visiting the Garden for the game. Shortly before the scoring chance, Jarry took a whack at a charging Charlie Coyle as he skated by to retrieve a puck headed to the corner in a move Jack Edwards called a “Billy Smith-like swipe.”
Bruce Cassidy remarked after the game that Marchand is “a leader on this team and he needs to control his emotions in that situation.”
Jarry, on the other hand, didn’t seem concerned, saying, “I think it was just the heat of the moment. Everyone was battling out there and he was just trying to get the puck to the net.”
This will be Marchand’s second suspension of 2021-22 after he was penalized three games for a slew foot on Canuck’s defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson at the end of November. It was his first since 2018 when he was assessed a five-game penalty for an elbow to the head of Marcus Johansson. Marchand was recently left off out of the All-Star Weekend in lieu of teammate Patrice Bergeron, despite leading the Bruins with 49 points in 39 games, the 12th overall highest point total in the NHL.
Between this suspension, an “upper-body” injury to captain Patrice Bergeron and the emotional impact of Tuukka Rask’s retirement announcement earlier in the day, it appears the next few games will be a considerably more significant challenge for the Bruins than previously anticipated.
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