Bruins interim HC Joe Sacco delivers 4-word response on whether Brad Marchand's OT omission was injury related

Joe Sacco offered a rather vague explanation for keeping Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand on the bench during overtime in their game against the Ottawa Senators. The Bruins lost 6-5 after a shootout as the Senators scored twice in the final two minutes of regulation to snatch a point away from a desperate Boston team.

Its captain Brad Marchand looked tired throughout the game. In 19:20 minutes of ice time, he had just one shot on goal. Defensively, he didn't turn up in the third period at all as he was slow getting to Josh Norris as he took the shot with 12 seconds to go for the game-tying goal.

There was speculation that the Bruins' top scorer in overtime goals in history with 21 was benched due to an injury. Joe Sacco, in the post-game interviews, gave a four-worded reaction:

"No, he wasn't hurt."

Sacco replied with a "Yeah" when asked whether it was entirely a coach's decision to bench Marchand.

This was not the first time this season that Marchand had it tough with the coach. Earlier, head coach Jim Montgomery was spotted yelling at the 36-year-old for a turnover during a game against the Utah Hockey Club. Marchand understated the whole incident and agreed with Montgomery's way of analyzing his play:

“If you make a mistake like that, you deserve to hear about it. I’m glad that he said something about it. If he didn’t, we would have a much bigger issue."

There has been no communication from Marchand so far about his benching against the Sens. Fans would hope that this doesn't prove to be yet another off-field distraction for a struggling Bruins side which also faced rumors of a locker room spat between Marchand and David Pastrnak that was quickly dismissed.

Trade chatter around Brad Marchand to heat up after benching

There have been enough speculations already that the Bruins, considering their state of affairs this season, will not shy away from trading even the stars on their team. Recently, Cam Neely, President of the Bruins, said at the Black and Gold Gala in Boston:

“We’d certainly like to improve. We’ve got to look at two paths. One that we’re buying. One that we may be retooling a little bit. We still feel like we’ve got a playoff team here. We certainly don’t want to jeopardize getting out of the playoffs because we made some moves that may be good for the future but not good for the present.”

This might be indicative that the team bids farewell to Brad Marchand who is in his last year of his eight-year, $49 million deal he signed in 2016.