Bruins forward knows eyes are on him for physicality vs. Panthers
BEDFORD — After Sam Bennett took out Bruins captain Brad Marchand for Game 4 and potentially Game 5, many looked to Pat Maroon as someone who might settle the score with the Panthers forward.
The forward was looking for someone to drop the gloves with, even challenging the Panthers bench in Boston’s ultimate Game 4 loss. Maroon knew that eyes would be on him, given his history of not being afraid to fight, but nothing ever came of his challenges.
“I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I’m sure everyone’s wondering why I haven’t done anything,” Maroon said Monday. “I’ll sit here and say it’s not like I haven’t tried or I don’t want to do anything. I love my captain, I love the guys. Trust me, it’s a tough business and everyone’s looking at me to do something. Fortunately, I tried. I am trying. We can’t really focus on that. It’s over, it’s done with. We got to focus on winning a hockey game now.
“It’s frustrating that you guys are trying to do a narrative right now for (expletive) nothing, to be honest. Like, we gotta win a (expletive) hockey game. That’s what it comes down to. We have to turn the page. We got to find a way,” he added. “You can sit here and say I’m not doing my job. But like I said before, I’m damned if I do, I’m damned if I don’t. I don’t want to put my team in jeopardy. I don’t want to take a suspension. I don’t want to put my team on a penalty kill. I’m doing everything I can. So, we can sit here and say I’m not. Maybe I’m not. But I talked to my captain, I talked to the guys in that locker room. They know and they know that I care. That’s the most important thing.”
The Bruins fly to Florida with their backs against the wall in Game 5. Maroon said Boston has to “get back to the basics” if the team wants to win hockey games.
“We had a 2-0 lead. We didn’t give ourselves an opportunity and we didn’t play good. … That’s not good enough right now,” he said. “We can’t sit there and make excuses on who’s to blame. It’s the 25 guys in our locker room right now. And we’ve got to figure it out.”
“… Bruins hockey is simple,” Maroon added. “… I think we need to put more stress on them in the D zone. We haven’t done a good enough job of that. … We gotta execute better. … Offensively, I think we need to put them under a little more stress.”
