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From an early age, Marchand had an appreciation for boundaries and how far they could be stretched. If he was on a dirt bike and his parents warned him not to go too fast, he would start pedaling as hard as he could until they screamed at him to slow down. He’d listen, at first, but would soon start pedaling faster again until they said something — or, more often than not, simply gave up trying.

It was the same on the ice. Some referees were quick with the whistle, while others let Marchand run wild. As a smaller player with limited ability, playing with one foot on the line — and other clearly over it — gave him an advantage. Often, he exploited it.

Sometimes, he’d go so far he didn’t even know where the line was anymore. The slash that dented his opponent’s facemask earned Marchand an automatic ejection, but it also earned him considerable clout around hockey circles. If you didn’t know who Brad Marchand was before then, you did now.

That wasn’t always a good thing.

“I would never make reference to being embarrassed, but there were a couple of instances where Brad would actually use his stick on the ice that might almost injure somebody,” said Kevin Marchand. “It’s like, ‘Shit, that’s going to cost you. Why did you do that?’”

His former coach Rob O’Brien, who also coached Jason Spezza and Brad Boyes, was at the rink scouting for the Dartmouth Subways major midget team on the day of the slash. He wasn’t horrified. He was kind of impressed.

“I really felt that his temperament could be an asset rather than a detriment,” said O’Brien, whose brother Andy is the strength and conditioning coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins and has worked with Marchand, Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon. “Brad is a real personality on the ice. A lot of coaches tried to beat that out of him, but I encouraged it. I thought it was fantastic that he was able to do it. I used it to his advantage.”