ICYMI: Bruins GM Don Sweeney announces his new captain.... Brad Marchand?

This week featured one of the better pranks we have seen among hockey players thus far in the National Hockey League offseason, and perhaps the reason it was so good was because it involved a rather prestigious title in the sport of hockey, the captaincy of a particular NHL franchise.

This week the Boston Bruins, who lost captain Zdeno Chara when the towering blue liner signed with the Washington Capitals as an unrestricted free agent, decided to announce the next captain of their franchise and they did so in a very special way. The Bruins gathered members of both their staff and their roster into the Bruins locker room where general manager Don Sweeney stood waiting to make the announcement everyone was expecting when he announced that Brad Marchand would take over as captain.

"This was the appropriate time to make our announcement in regards to the captaincy. The organization needed to make a decision on this, we felt it was appropriate, so I'm not gonna belabor the point and I'm just gonna ask Marchy to come up and accept the captaincy," said Sweeney to both applause and laughter.

To the credit of both Marchand and Sweeney they sold this extremely well, with Sweeney even producing a Marchand jersey that had the "C" emblazoned on the chest. Especially big credit goes to Marchand who was willing to be the butt of the joke here in order to make a special moment for his friend all the more special. 

In the end however it would be Marchand that would announce the true next captain of the Bruins, and this time it was in fact the man that everyone was expecting in the form of Patrice Bergeron.

"Thank you. I'm really looking forward to taking this next step," said Marchand before quickly adding "but I think we all know who the real captain is... congrats Bergy."

The cameras did excellent work of capturing Bergeron's expression when Marchand was named the captain, and perhaps the only part of this prank that I didn't like was that there seemed to be genuine pain in the eyes of Bergeron when he believed he had been passed over for the honor. That being said it no doubt made the actual announcement that much more special, and Bergeron and Marchand could be seen embracing after it was all said and done.