The Bruins held their first captain’s practice on Tuesday without captain Brad Marchand.

Marchand, who skated prior to the group session, revealed he underwent three surgeries this summer. He had a torn tendon in his elbow repaired as well as two core surgeries. He said that he originally hurt the elbow last summer but played through it. He also suffered  sports hernia and groin injuries late last season.

The 36-year-old Marchand said he’s started his workouts just a couple of weeks ago, but hopes to be ready for training camp on Sept. 18, if not a couple of days into it. But he said he’s still got a ways to go before he’s 100 percent.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Marchand, who met reporters at Warrior Ice Arena. “The summer I had is not typical of what I’m used to. It might take until the season. It might take a little bit into the season. I’ll treat the next two months like a summer and train and skate in the way I normally would in the summer. The biggest thing is getting conditioning back up to speed. I think that’s the biggest thing. My strength is kind of there already. But power and conditioning is where I need to focus to get back to where I need to be.”

It’s clearly not the summer Marchand would have liked. Always a fierce competitor, the captain knows as well as anyone that it’s difficult to earn a roster spot when you’re a kid looking to make a name for yourself. But as you advance in age, a player needs to prove himself all over again.

If he’s not physically quite ready for that competition just yet, mentally he is.

“There’s so much talk these days that, as you get older, you can’t play and teams don’t want or they don’t like guys that are in their 30s, mid-30s. It’s almost like you need to re-establish every year that you belong,” said Marchand. “As a young guy coming in, you need to earn your spot every day, you need to show you’re a good pro and you can compete at this level and can deal with the schedule and the challenges of becoming an NHL player. You need to earn it. And as you get older, they try to push you out and the young guys are trying to take your job. Teams are looking to go young and you almost have that same mindset that you need to show you can play and keep up with the young guys, with the new talent and the speed. So in ways, I’m definitely a lot more comfortable coming in and understanding what it’s like, what’s expected. But in the same sense, you need to re-establish every single year that you come in that you’re still right there and belong and that these young bucks aren’t going to take my job.”

Marchand is also going into a contract season – a deal that turned out to be extremely team friendly (eight years at $6.125 million per season – but said that isn’t feeding into his motivation.

“I don’t feel like that because I’m going into a contract year. I just feel like you need every year to look to not get comfortable,” said Marchand. “It’s very easy, especially as you get older when you’ve been around a long time and you’ve accomplished a lot of things you want to accomplish and you feel comfortable in your financial situation, to want to be around the house more with the kids, to be involved with their sports and activities and not be at the rink or gym as often. And that’s where guys slip. The biggest factor is understanding that every year guys are coming in and gunning for jobs. It doesn’t matter who you are. They’re just as happy to take my spot as anyone else’s.”

Marchand did not want to discuss a possible contract extension – presumably it remains a backburner issue while Jeremy Swayman’s next deal gets hammered out – and said he’s going to maintain that stance.

“I think there’s enough respect between the two sides that we can deal with it. And we’ll leave it at that,” said Marchand.

On the hockey side of things, Marchand expects to be back with center Charlie Coyle and is excited about continuing to build chemistry with him. But there is a question as to which player will seize the right wing spot on that line. The hope is that Fabian Lysell can grab a hold of it, but there’s also the possibility of Georgii Merkulov or Justin Brazeau, or veteran Tyler Johnson, who signed a tryout agreement over the weekend.

If it’s a young player, Marchand said that the key is in the details of the game. He remembers getting a game with Marc Savard early in is career and he felt he had to do something spectacular every shift. It did not go well for him.

“The biggest thing is that guys come in and try to do too much. But for our group especially, the details are what allows you to have success and stay,” said Marchand. “First and foremost, they want to see you be able to make plays and take advantage of the situations, but you’ve got to be responsible on both sides of the puck, managing how you play with it. Just because you’re a skill guy doesn’t mean you’re going to earn that spot just because you can dangle through three guys. You’ve got to be able to play responsibly, especially with Chuck and I where we tend to play both sides of the puck and play against a lot of teams’ top lines.”

That will be one of several questions that need to be answered once camp begins.

Swayman doesn’t yet have a contract but participated in the voluntary workouts. He’s been a regular at offseason workouts at Warrior.