Marchand rips TD Garden ice: 'We might as well play with a tennis ball'

The Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs will settle their series Tuesday night at TD Garden in Game 7, but some Bruins players aren't as thrilled about heading home as one might expect.

"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 after Boston's Game 6 win in Toronto on Sunday.

Home ice hasn't been an advantage in this series, as each team has won two of its three games on the road.

Marchand's rant about ice quality didn't end there. After Sunday's game, he said the ice was much better in Toronto.

"Can we do that in Boston?" he asked, according to the Toronto Star's Bruce Arthur.

Marchand wasn't the only Bruin voicing his displeasure with TD Garden's ice.

"Sometimes the ice is good or bad," Bruins defenseman Charlie 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."

Opposing players are noticing the poor ice quality in Boston, too. Maple Leafs forwards John Tavares and Kasperi Kapanen have both noted the issue throughout the series, and head coach Mike Babcock said "the ice was tough," after Game 5, according to TSN's Mark Masters.

TD Garden, which houses both the Bruins and the NBA's Boston Celtics, is the league's ninth-oldest building after opening in 1995.