Marchand rips conditions at TD Garden ahead of Game 7 showdown

Just as we have all pretty much expected since Christmas onward, the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs will do battle in Game 7 tomorrow night at TD Garden in Boston. After the Bruins put a 4-2 beating on the Leafs yesterday afternoon, you would think that the team would be happy to head back to home ice for Game 7… not so though, says Bruins forward Brad Marchand.

"They've played really well in our building so far this series and the ice has been terrible there so we might as well play with a tennis ball, skate around and see who can bounce one in the net," Brad Marchand told NHL.com's Dave McCarthy yesterday. Marchand then commented on the excellent ice quality at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena and asked rhetorically, “Can we do that in Boston?"

Teammate Charlie McAvoy conceded that the ice can sometimes be bad at TD Garden, but he wasn’t nearly as critical as Marchand. "Sometimes the ice is good or bad," McAvoy told the Boston Herald's Marisa Ingemi. "It's not like you can get an unfortunate bounce and they blow it dead and say it wasn't fair."

Good ice, bad ice, one thing’s for sure: it’s going to be an epic finale to an epic first round series.