Canadiens centreman Lars Eller did 28 National Hockey League teams a great service on Saturday night: he demonstrated how to get supersized Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara off his skates.
Eller showed that to topple Chara, you take his jersey, just below his No. 33, between your gloved thumb and forefinger, give it a gentle tug and boom! He’s down.
As easy as that.
“I must be really strong,” Eller joked after the Canadiens’ 2-1 Bell Centre victory over the Bruins.
Eller’s penalty for holding, a weak call at best, gave the visitors a 6-on-4 power-play for the game’s final 56.4 seconds, goaltender Tuukka Rask pulled for an extra skater.
Boston made 21 passes with the two-man advantage yet didn’t get a single shot on goal, Bruins’ David Krejci blaming that on the Bell Centre’s “(expletive) ice.”
Presumably, the Canadiens’ ferocious, smothering penalty-kill unit of Tomas Plekanec, Travis Moen, Josh Gorges and Andrei Markov had nothing to do with it.
And the ice, apparently, was crappy only in the Habs’ end.