On Thursday night, Ottawa Senators coach Paul MacLean rather flippantly brushed off suggestions that Senators defenseman Eric Gryba's hit on Montreal Canadiens center Lars Eller — one that left Eller motionless and bloody on the ice — was a dirty play.
In fact, MacLean went so far as to blame Eller's teammate, Habs defenseman Rafael Diaz, for the collision, saying:
"(If I'm Eller), I'm really mad at player 61, whoever he is, because he passed me the puck in the middle of the rink when I wasn't looking. That's always been a dangerous place, as far as I know. Ever since I've been playing this game, that's a dangerous place to be — bad things happen.”
On Friday morning, Canadiens players caught wind of MacLean’s remarks, and one player in particular, forward Brandon Prust, got personal, comically attacking MacLean’s appearance during his rebuttal of MacLean’s remark.
“Yeah, he already showed enough disrespect over there,” Prust told reporters in Montreal Friday. “So we don’t really care about what that bug-eyed, fat walrus has to say.”
Anyway, the Senators and Canadiens play Game 2 tonight, but Gryba has been suspended two games for the hit, so he won't be back on the ice until Game 4 Tuesday.
When Gryba returns, however, things should get interesting fast. At the end of his interview Friday, Prust — who was a member of the last year’s Rangers squad, which played in a physical first-round series with Ottawa — said that he hoped Gryba wouldn’t be suspended at all, so retaliation is almost certainly forthcoming.
