Brad Marchand responds to talk of a trade out of Boston.

The Boston Bruins suffered an early first round exit in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs and, now with this past season behind us, all eyes are on what the lies ahead for one of the National Hockey League's most iconic franchises.

There are a lot of questions regarding what will come next for the Bruins, with the most notable questions surrounding the future of Boston Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron, but one of the things that had not come up until now was the status of notorious Bruins forward Brad Marchand.

Recently Ian McLaren of the Locked on Bruins podcast made a Tweet in which he suggested the Bruins should seriously give thought to the possibility of trading Marchand, with the caveat being that the team should only do it in the event that Bergeron decided to end his career in the NHL and retire. 

From McLaren:

Medium hot take: If Patrice Bergeron retires, the Bruins should absolutely explore the trade market for Brad Marchand. This isn't a salary dump for picks and prospects. This would have to be a hockey deal with high end players coming back. Chara, Krug, Krejci, Bergeron could all be gone with zero to show for it. Marchand could help fuel the next wave.

To be fair to McLaren here I think he is being sincere and genuinely believes that the best long term path forward for the team in the event of a Bergeron retirement would be to build a new core around the likes of Charlie McAvoy, Jeremy Swayman and David Pastrnak. That being said it would appear that Marchand himself did not take too kindly to the suggestion from McLaren, because he made the decision to personally respond to him through social media.

"Tough take," wrote Marchand in response to McLaren's suggestion.

It would seem that either Marchand doesn't believe there's any chance of him being traded moving forward or that he simply doesn't like the idea of playing for an NHL team other than the Boston Bruins. Considering he has been with the organization since being drafted in 2006, I can hardly blame the guy.