It hasn’t quite been Happy Gilmore refraining from the “putter throw,” but the young season has seen a much more reserved Brad Marchand -- not a less-productive Marchand (he’s tied with Nathan Horton for the team lead with three goals and scored the deciding shootout goal Tuesday night) and not a squeaky-clean Marchand (he had some words for the Devils bench after beating Johan Hedberg five-hole in the shootout), but a more reserved Marchand. 

While Tuesday’s chirping in Boston's 2-1 shootout win gave a taste of what’s made Marchand a household name around these parts, the extracurricular stuff that’s been known to come with his game has largely been absent on the young season, which he says is a result of focusing on hockey. As such, he hasn’t gotten under the skin of his opponents. He hasn’t run his mouth between whistles. He hasn’t been dirty.  

The undersized 24-year-old has made a career out of an unquestioned ability to play two ways, underrated skill and what opponents might find to be an ungodly vocabulary. He’s been suspended once in each of the last two seasons for a total of seven games due to dirty hits and he was fined last season for a slew-foot on Penguins defenseman Matt Niskanen.

Yet there have been no questionable plays from Marchand through six games, and the jawing has been reduced to a minimum. Even on Tuesday, which he said was a departure from what has been a universally chirp-free start to the season, the yapping wasn’t overwhelming.

“A little bit. Not a ton,” he said his involvement in trash talk against the Devils. “Guys were pretty much sucking wind the whole night, but there were a little bit of words back and forth.”

Marchand was among the Bruins players who did not play professionally during the lockout, so his focus coming into the season was on making sure he wasn’t behind physically. That, combined with perhaps the wisdom of years, has changed his priorities in the early part of the shortened campaign.

“I haven't really even tried, to be honest,” he said Tuesday. “There's so much to worry about. I'm just trying to get my legs back and get my game back. I'm more concerned with working hard and just catching my breath out there than chirping guys.” 

As for the other stuff, Marchand says that he will work agitating back into his game, but that a conversation at the end of last season with Claude Julien reminded him that the most important thing for him is to continue to get better as a player. Given that, he has come into this season focused on his legs outperforming his mouth. 

So far, neither he nor the Bruins can complain about the results. He’s had points in four of the Bruins’ six games, including a shorthanded goal Monday against the Hurricanes. Marchand’s pleased to see that improved on-ice manners haven’t hurt his production. 

“I knew I could still find different ways of the game to produce to be effective,” he said. “That's one thing that I just enjoy doing. It gets me going a little bit more if I'm not going, but at the same time, I can't rely on that all the time. There's so much more to the game than just being a little rat, so I've got to focus on those things.”

Though Marchand’s tried to keep his mouth shut on the ice, he didn’t pass up an opportunity to call out Hurricanes forward Jeff Skinner, who he said “slew foots all the time.” Marchand’s obviously experienced with slew-footing given his past transgression, so perhaps the so-far-so-good Marchand of 2013 has an interest in players learning from their mistakes. 

Of course, time will tell with all of this. Marchand says he has bigger fish to fry hockey-wise than living up to his Honey Badger reputation, but he’s obviously been proven to be effective when giving his opponents headaches. His teammates and Julien are happy to see him staying out of the box (he has just one penalty, a minor for hooking on Monday, this season; he had 20 penalty minutes through the first six games of last season), but they don’t want him to lose his edge completely.

“You want to be what you are,” Julien said of Marchand. “He certainly can get under people’s skin. You don’t want to get under the referee’s skin. Early on [in his career], I think that’s what was happening. Now, he’s picking his spots and he’s picking the right spots and he knows when to get out and not push his luck. That’s a credit to the experience that he’s had over these years.”