Pastrnak, Cassidy give candid takes on Hathaway’s hit on Marchand originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Brad Marchand has been the Boston Bruins‘ best and most valuable player during the 2021-22 NHL season, but they might be forced to play without him for a bit.
Marchand was drilled from behind along the boards by Washington Capitals forward Garnet Hathaway during the second period of Thursday night’s game at TD Garden.
Hathaway was just given a two-minute penalty for interference. Marchand took one more short shift, then exited the game and didn’t return.
Here’s a look at the hit in question:
Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy didn’t have much of an update after Boston’s 4-3 win over the Capitals. He noted Marchand has an upper body injury and didn’t speculate if the veteran forward would miss any games.
Marchand had trouble raising his right arm after the hit:
Cassidy did offer his take on the hit, and he’s clearly upset about it.
“The March one I didn’t like at all,” he explained. “The officials right there in front of it didn’t call it. The trail officials called it. I’m not sure why the guy watching it didn’t. He hit the guy in the numbers in a vulnerable spot. We’ve seen that from that player in the past, too. So I didn’t like that one at all. I guess the league may or may not look at it. When it comes to Marchy, sometimes they kind of move on. But in this particular case it seemed like a vulnerable spot against the boards. At the end of the day, we were able to overcome it and other guys got an opportunity to step up.”
Bruins forward David Pastrnak took issue with Hathaway’s hit as well.
“I thought it was a plan,” Pastrnak told reporters. “You can see he didn’t totally have focus on the puck, he went straight at Marchand. Obviously, he’s that kind of player. We saw him a bunch (last season). So I didn’t like it. It’s one of our best players and he took a run like that on him. I think it was a little dirty.”
Marchand leads the Bruins with 20 goals, 23 assists and 43 points. He’s been particularly effective of late, tallying 16 points (nine goals, seven assists) in 11 games during January.
Losing him for any amount of time would be a large setback to the Bruins’ offense and overall depth.