Bruins' feisty forward Brad Marchand beat out stiff competition to take home the inaugural Mr. TNT Award for "simultaneously being the most valuable to your team and the TNT broadcast" on Wednesday.
"I was ecstatic when I got the news that I was going to be awarded this trophy," Marchand told the TNT broadcast team. "We're in Montreal, and I had to bring it with me to show it off to everybody."
The first thing Marchand noticed about the trophy was how it compared to the Stanley Cup.
"This is obviously a little bit bigger, a little bit heavier than the Cup," Marchand chirped at Keith Yandle, Paul Bissonnette, Anson Carter, and Liam McHugh. "I'm pretty excited about it."
The finalists were Toronto Maple Leafs' Mitch Marner, Buffalo Sabres' Tage Thompson, Florida Panthers' Matthew Tkachuk and Minnesota Wild's Ryan Reaves.
"I have to thank my competitors," Marchand said when asked for his acceptance speech. "... They're all great guys, all guys I'm scared of. So I have to thank them for not trying to hurt me."
When the panel asked Marchand about his high-level trash-talking, he said it started when he was just a kid.
"You know, you start roasting each other, and they came at me for my nose pretty hard when I was a kid," Marchand said. "So you develop a thick skin and get used to it."
Marchand added that when he first came into the league, times were different because there weren't as many microphones as there are nowadays.
"You didn't want to line up at the faceoff dot by the bench because there was going to be like 30 guys roasting you from the other bench," Marchand said. "... It was an art back then. Guys did their homework on each other, and it got pretty gutty."
Marchand added that winning the one trophy that Wayne Gretzky never has and never will win is "pretty incredible."
Marchand is hoping he and his Bruins teammates will be hoisting the Stanley Cup at the end of the playoffs this year but is happy to have the title of Mr. TNT on his resume.
The Bruins will complete their regular season on Thursday night when they face off against the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre, and that same night, the Black and Gold will find out who they will face in the first round of the playoffs when the Wild Card race in the East is finally decided.
If the Florida Panthers defeat the Carolina Hurricanes in their final game of the season, the Bruins will host the New York Islander, but if Carolina wins, Boston will host Florida.
