Cheevers Pays High Hockey Compliment To Marchand With New Nickname
BOSTON (CBS) -- Brad Marchand's been called a lot of nicknames in his brief Bruins career, but former Bruins goaltender Gerry Cheevers offered a new one on Thursday.
Speaking at the Legends Lunch at Morton's, put on by 98.5 The Sports Hub, Cheevers, a member of the Cup-winning B's teams of 1970 and '72, discussed what it was like to watch the Bruins make their run at the Stanley Cup last spring.
He said he couldn't help but compare last year's bunch to his teams of 40 years ago.
"It brought back great memories for sure," Cheevers said. "The parallel I like, and I was mentioning it to Tony [Massarotti], is little Marchand to Johnny 'Pie' McKenzie. To me, they were the same on each team. They were little piss-heads, if I can say that. … Two little piss-heads."
"Piss-heads" might not be T-shirt-friendly around the Garden, but the parallel certainly exists. Marchand scored 11 goals and had eight assists for 19 points in last year's playoffs to go with his 40 penalty minutes. McKenzie had 17 points and an average of 36 penalty minutes in his two Cup runs with the B's. From a career standpoint, Marchand could do worse than to replicate McKenzie, who scored 369 goals and added 518 assists in 1,169 games between the NHL and WHA.
Cheevers, a Hockey Hall of Famer, said he saw a lot of similarities in the 2011 Bruins and the '72 B's.
"That's where I got the most kick out of was watching that game thinking how much of a parallel they might have been to our team in '72, and thinking what they would go through if they won," Cheevers said. "And I think it's all documented what they went through – they enjoyed it, they were a great bunch of characters, which I thought our team was. It was just fun to watch them. I cheered for them right from the get-go."
Cheevers, who posted 2.23 and 2.61 goals-against averages in his two Cup runs with the Bruins, also had high praise for Tim Thomas.
"I enjoyed watching Timmy Thomas play," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen a performance by a goaltender like he put out in that series last year. He was the most deserved recipient of the Smythe trophy as the MVP. It was really fun watching him.
"It was great seeing him and I really believe what we saw last year, we'll see again this year."
