Bruins Brad Marchand spoke with the media today about his suspension, the hit and responds to Vigneault's comments that the Bruins play stupid.
"I'm obviously a little disappointed, and I wasn’t expecting as many games as I got," said Marchand. "But, that's the decision, and now I just move on."
"We play a hard game – we have a lot of physical guys, a lot of tough guys on our team and it's tough for other teams to play against, and some teams might not like it," he said when asked if the Bruins reputation around the NHL was unfair. "But that's our style of hockey and we're not going to change because people wont like it."
Asked to recount why he had previously asked NHL Vice President of Player Safety Brendan Shanahan about the type hit he threw at Salo, Marchand said, "well I’m a small guy. I play low to the ice and that’s a way I’ve protected myself in the past – I just felt that it was better to be safe than sorry.
"I brought it up to him, and when I walked away from the conversation he told me to protect myself – that that's okay in that situation.
"When that situation [arose], I felt I was protecting myself and was allowed to do it and that's why I did it," he said.
"It's clear that I'm not allowed to do that and guys in the league aren't allowed to do that," said Marchand. "They [tried] to make that clear, and I'm going to have to do something else."
"I expect if there's any more hits like this, they'll be penalized the same way," said Marchand. "Otherwise...it will be a double standard."
"Until we see more hits like this, then we can't say that. So hopefully when hits like this arise from now on, they'll be penalized the same way."
"I'm still going to play hard – that's my game. I have to play hard and at the end of the day I still have to strive to protect myself and so does everybody in the league. It's not going to change the way I play," he said.
Asked about Vancouver Head Coach Alain Vigneault's comments about players taking things into their own hands with regard to Marchand, Brad said, "Yeah they are threatening, it sounds like it's a threat but -- whatever."
Queried if the comments coming from the Canucks after Vancouver jumped Shawn Thornton in front of the visitors bench on Saturday bothered him, Marchand said, "Yeah for sure, they had six, seven guys at one point and six guys jumped Thorty [Thornton].
"No one seemed to want to do anything after they got pulled off, so that shows their character."
And Marchand remained in character when asked about comments coming out of Vancouver about Boston's "stupid" play.
"Yeah we play stupid," said Marchand. "I guess smart enough to win a Cup."
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