Truth be told, Marchenko seems to be embracing every moment of being a Maple Leaf and the spotlight that goes with it, despite the whirlwind it has been for the 26-year-old forward since being acquired in a trade with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday.<\/p>\n
Whether it’s joking about not knowing the language (which, for the record, he does); raving about the chance to play with new linemates Auston Matthews<\/a> and Jack Roslovic<\/a>\u00a0or waxing poetically about the opportunity to play in hockey-mad Toronto, Marchenko says he loves almost everything about his new team and the city he’s playing in.<\/p>\n The exception? He’d have liked to been more productive in his first two games with Toronto, averaging 19:12 of ice time and recording an assist.<\/p>\n “So happy to be here, and so happy to get my first practice in with my linemates,” he said. “We are getting comfortable together a bit. It’s nice that we are building the chemistry here.<\/p>\n “It’s been kind of tough because we had zero practice before today. I think, day by day, you go through a couple of exercises on the ice, and it gets easier and easier.”<\/p>\n Helping make the transition smoother is the fact Marchenko played with Roslovic when the former was a rookie with Columbus in 2022-23. As for Matthews, Marchenko’s eyes light up when thinking of how successful the trio can be led by the Toronto captain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Truth be told, Marchenko seems to be embracing every moment of being a Maple Leaf and the spotlight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-868875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}