A few faint red flags were raised in captain’s practices when Brad Marchand revealed that he’d undergone elbow surgery at the end of April.
The 27-year-old Bruins winger was grinding his way through discomfort in the right arm for over a year and still led the Bruins last season with 24 goals, despite battling instances when he didn’t have the proper grip strength to securely hold his stick. Surely it impacted everything from his one-on-one battles for pucks to a real strength in shooting the puck. That’s why he opted for the surgery to tighten up the tendons in his troublesome elbow.
Marchand seemed reasonably sure he’d be okay for training camp while talking about the surgery in early September and he looked good in his preseason debut Thursday night in a win over the Rangers while scoring a goal in the shootout.
“Yeah a little bit,” admitted Marchand, when asked if he was anxious to test out the elbow in preseason game-level intensity. “But it...I mean we’ve been battling a bit the last month, month and a half, so I wasn’t overly concerned about it. I’m more concerned about how it feels [the next day] than right now. Sometimes I wake up and it’s a little achy, but for the most part it felt pretty good.”
Marchand squeezed off seven shot attempts in 20:22 of ice time against the Rangers and it certainly didn’t seem like there was any discomfort in shooting the puck. Marchand is just happy he won’t be missing practice time – or be forced to cut short shifts early after aggravating the injury by overextending while reaching with his right arm – and that he’s well on his way to being fully cleared for the regular season.
“[The recovery] took a lot longer than I thought it would, and it affected my training. But I’m happy I got it done, and if I had to go back I would do it again,” said Marchand. “Anything I had to grip, whether it was gripping or picking up anything. Even if I was just picking up a ball, [it was a problem] with anything I had to grip. It made it really difficult shooting or passing...some days. But then other days it wouldn’t really bother me.
“It really wasn’t so much when guys were pushing on me, but [it would crop up] if I had to pull something. That’s where I would kind of hurt.”
Boston Bruins
Now, Marchand is feeling 100 percent with the repaired elbow and getting a jump on surgery it appears to be one of the few benefits of the Bruins experiencing their longest offseason in a long, long time.