Does Maple Leafs Tormenter Brad Marchand Actually Feel Bad For Toronto?

In a lot of ways, it has been an extremely weird and foreign spring for Brad Marchand, but the Florida Panthers winger felt right at home Sunday night.

Marchand picked the perfect time for his best game as a Panther, scoring a goal and adding two assists in Florida’s 6-1 rout of the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of their second-round series.

The victory was history-making for Marchand. Counting his time with the Bruins, the veteran forward is now 5-0 in Game 7 against Toronto. He is the first player in NHL history to win five winner-take-all games against a single franchise.

However, Marchand wasn’t about to take full credit for that.

“I don’t look at it that way. If you look at the past, I haven’t always played well in Game 7 against Toronto,” Marchand told reporters after the game. “No one player wins any — I just happen to be part of good teams that have had the upper hand. If you historically look at the games, I didn’t play well. It wasn’t me that beat them. It was our team. And our teams have always been really deep and good, and I was fortunate to be part of a really, really deep team here right now.”

In fact, the former Bruins captain sounded like he almost feels bad for the Maple Leafs after victimizing them once again.

“In those games, we got a couple of good bounces, and they were on the bad end of that,” he said. “If you look at the heat this team catches, it’s actually really unfortunate. They’ve been working at building something really big here for a while, and they were a different brand of hockey. They’re getting crucified, and I don’t think it’s justified. Just because they weren’t able to do it, we were a really good deep team, too. That’s how things go sometimes.”

Marchand also went deep on what he believes is the key to success in these situations. As he explained, playing in a lot of big games — he has played in two Stanley Cup Final Game 7s, for example — gives you the kind of experience to thrive when the games aren’t as big.

Toronto, in that regard, is a bit stuck because it just can’t seem to break through. Everyone knows the Leafs haven’t won a Cup since 1967, but they haven’t even reached the Eastern Conference finals since 2002.

“It’s invaluable experience when you’ve gone through moments like this and you’ve been through moments like this before,” Marchand explained. “A lot of guys (on this team) have won Cups, and when you win a Cup and play in some of the games this team played in last year, these are not high-pressure games. When you’re playing for a Cup and you give up a three-game lead and you’re in Game 7, that’s a high-pressure game.

“Game 7, second round, yeah, it’s a high-pressure game, but not compared to some of the other games guys have played. So when you actually look at that and when you see the pressure Toronto faces and everyone’s talking about the 20- or 30-year buildup, I don’t know what it is, but you see the fans and the way they’re talking — they just beat the pressure into his team.”

That pressure was evident Sunday night. The Leafs probably would have benefited more from playing on the road. Instead, they laid an egg in front of the Scotiabank Arena crowd, with nonplussed fans showering them with debris as the clock hit zero.

“It’s gotta be tough on those guys to walk to the rink every day and not feel that because you see the way the fans treat them at the end — how do you not feel that every single day?” Marchand said. “When you go through big games, you realize which are actually big games and which are just big moments.”

The moment gets bigger for Marchand and the Panthers on Tuesday when the Cats open the conference finals against another rival Marchand knows well: the Carolina Hurricanes.