Brad Marchand is on injured reserve with the Panthers, but his trash talk is fully healthy. A BarDown podcaster just found that out.
The Florida winger fired back on X heading into tonight's home date with Seattle, after a take on players with no-movement clauses demanding trades.
“Such a bad take,” Marchand wrote, before asking how a player forcing his way out differs from a team signing someone long term and trading him wherever it wants.
Then came the kicker. “Stick to PlayStation big fella.”
The original segment argued that someone needs to send a message to the players, because demanding a trade isn't how the league works. Marchand wasn't buying any of it.
An hour later, the 38-year-old came back with the line that stung: “Funny how you never see guys want to leave the s****y city teams when teams are good.”
His real target was management. Players only want out, he wrote, “when teams are poorly managed and too cheap to spend to the cap to try and win.”
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Panthers winger puts the blame on cheap NHL front offices
A no-movement clause gets negotiated at the table. Teams agree to it willingly, usually because they wanted the player badly enough to pay for it.
Griping about it later is like a landlord signing a ten-year lease, then getting angry when the tenant actually reads the fine print.
Marchand is right on this one. Fans in struggling markets know exactly which front offices he's describing, and nobody is lining up to escape a contender.
The irony? He's firing off these replies from the sidelines. The veteran is on injured reserve with a leg injury, expected out until at least Nov. 21.
He's dressed for just two games this season, scoring once. That's a $5,250,000 cap hit stuck on the shelf for another month.
And he isn't alone. Aleksander Barkov is also on injured reserve with a lower-body injury, expected to miss time until at least Nov. 27.
Without both, Florida has still scraped together a 4-2-2 record and back-to-back wins, including a 7-3 road rout in Columbus.
Brady Tkachuk has carried a big piece of the load with six goals. Matthew Tkachuk leads the club with 11 points, five of them assists on the power play.
The margins are thin, though. Florida has scored 22 goals and allowed 22, good for fourth in the division.
Tonight's opponent won't care about anybody's replies on X. The Kraken arrive at 5-2-1, riding a blue line and attack that has outscored opponents by nine.
GMs read the internet too. The next time a star with a no-movement clause asks out of a bad situation, Marchand's words will be sitting right there in the replies.
Is Brad Marchand right that players only ask out of poorly run, cheap NHL teams?
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Dylan Larkin to Montreal in mock trade costing Dach, Zharovsky, Pickford and a 2027 1st
