BOSTON -- It was when Brad Marchand was getting ready for dinner on Sunday night -- a meal with former teammates Patrice Bergeron , Zdeno Chara , Tuukka Rask and Adam McQuaid at which they “bullied” him into paying – that it started to truly hit him. He had intellectually understood that he was coming back, back to his home for 16 seasons, back to the city where he’d had his kids, back to where he first learned how to be a professional hockey player, back to where he’d first won the Stanley Cup.

But now? Now the emotions started to bubble.

“I kind of thought about it for the first time last night, being here,” Marchand said, after the Florida Panthers practiced at TD Garden on Monday. “I was actually going to dinner and on the way over, I was kind of thinking about it and star

See Full Page