Snowbound Canadiens fan gets push from Pacioretty Klefbom strong, silent type on Oilers blue line
Oscar Klefbom was back at his usual post on the Oilers blue line alongside partner Adam Larsson against the Boston Bruins on Thursday, but with one noticeable difference.
“I’m not going to be doing much talking,” said Klefbom, who took an errant puck to the right of his Adam’s apple in Tuesday’s resounding 7-1 win over Dallas and has a nasty welt as a souvenir.
“It’s tough to eat or drink anything. It’s so swollen inside,” he said. “I got scared for a while. I couldn’t breathe.”
Would it have helped if he had a neck guard like some players wear?
“I don’t know. I didn’t see the puck coming at all.”
Klefbom missed most of the second period against the Stars but came back for the third frame, even though it was a romp for the Oilers and he could have taken the rest of the night off.
“It was tough. I had trouble breathing.”
WRONG SONG
Boston winger David Pastrnak has the second longest consecutive game point-streak this year at 11 games, one back of Minnesota’s Mikael Granlund, after scoring his 31st goal on a first-period power play.
Pastrnak, drafted by current Oilers assistant general manager Keith Gretzky 25th overall in 2014 when he was chief scout for the Bruins, had 63 points after the Bruins’ first goal of the night.
“He’s a 20-year-old who comes to the rink and never has a bad day, he’s smiling and singing, however poorly that may be,” said Boston forward David Backes. “I wish I could decipher the song. At times, the lyrics get a little muffled and we try to help him out. It’s a special rendition. If we could get it on film, it would be a highlight.
“And his (hockey) skills are phenomenal.”
TEAMMATE BAIT
Oilers’ defenceman Matt Benning was pressed into service as a salesman recently, trying to convince his former Northeastern University teammate Zach AstonReese to sign a free agent deal with Edmonton, before the senior from Staten Island, N.Y., opted for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Benning thought his buddy, one of 10 Hobey Baker finalists as NCAA player of the year, was leaning toward an eastern locale, even though the Oilers have Connor McDavid and have had the good fortune signing Benning and Drake Caggiula as college free agents last summer.
“I talked to him a few times. He said it felt right (in Pittsburgh), just one of those things, you know, as a player,” said Benning.
“His family loves the Penguins. I kind of knew it was coming.”
Aston-Reese led the NCAA in goals this season.
“He’s strong, hard-nosed with a touch around the net. Tough,” said Benning, who has no idea how long it will take the winger to make it to the big league. He’s starting this season in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in the AHL, but the NHL may not be far away.
CASSIDY’S COMEBACK
New Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy, who replaced Claude Julien a month ago, was in the NHL as a head man in Washington for 110 games from 2002-04 with a .500 record, but he was only 37 then.
He really had to bide his time for a second shot. After the experience with the Capitals, he was an assistant with the Blackhawks for a year, then coached junior in Kingston for a year.
He was an assistant coach with Providence Bruins for three years, then head man of Boston’s farm team for five more before becoming Julien’s assistant this season.
“I was hoping I’d get another chance, but it took 14 years. That’s fine, there was no timetable for me. Everybody with any sense of pride wants to get back at it and I’ve learned a lot over that time and I’m trying to apply it now,” said Cassidy, a former defenceman who was Chicago’s first-round pick in 1983. He turns 52 in May.
Julien is one of the game’s best coaches, but maybe the Bruins are less conservative now.
“Defensively, the team was solid, with a Stanley Cup pedigree, but we’ve worked a bit on the offensive side, with the forwards trusting their skills. We changed with our D getting more involved in the rush, being more a four- and fiveman attack on offence and we’ve been more aggressive trying to turn pucks over and reload our offence,” said Cassidy.
“The pace is up, too.”
GENTLE GIANT
Zdeno Chara is the most fearsome fighter in the league at 6-foot-9 and 260 pounds, but he doesn’t drop the mitts very often.
He’s had three fights this year, including two against the Oilers — in Boston against Patrick Maroon on Jan. 5, the night the Oilers forward scored a hat-trick, and against Zack Kassian on Thursday.
He tried to engage Maroon again Thursday but Maroon laughed him off when they bear-hugged.
Chara, normally a standup guy, didn’t play fair in the Kassian scrap late in the first period.
Chara looked like he didn’t want anything to do with it.
Then, as Kassian skated away, Chara grabbed him and started swinging. Max Pacioretty has a good shot at winning the Maurice Richard Trophy this season as the NHL’s top goal-scorer, but he should already win a Good Guy Trophy for what he did on Wednesday.
The Canadiens had a day off Wednesday following a 4-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks at the Bell Centre Tuesday night and after a massive snowstorm dumped more than 40 centimetres on Montreal and surrounding areas.
The snow made driving dangerous — even on suburban side streets on the South Shore.
That’s where Lawrence Huang lost control of his car while out with his girlfriend.
“I had a little accident ...
I drove into a snowbank,” Huang recalled in a telephone interview Thursday night.
“I got stuck there for a good 30 minutes trying to shovel the snow out from the side of the car.”
While Huang tried to dig his car out of the snowbank, another car stopped and a tall man wearing jeans, a blue jacket and a grey tuque with a pompom on top got out and started walking toward him carrying a black-and-yellow shovel. It was Pacioretty.
“A couple of cars had passed by — not five, six or seven cars, it’s more like one or two … some (people) exaggerated the story,” Huang said about a story that went viral on social media. “Still, not to take away what Max did.”
Turns out Pacioretty is as good with a shovel as he is with a hockey stick. The captain leads the Canadiens with 33 goals and heading into Thursday’s games was tied for third in the NHL, three behind leader Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins and two behind the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby. The last Canadiens player to lead the NHL in goals at the end of a season was Guy Lafleur when he scored 60 in 1977-78.
After some digging and a helping push from the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Pacioretty, Huang’s car was finally out of the snowbank. Huang said he recognized Pacioretty as soon as the captain started walking toward him.
“He’s really tall,” Huang said with a laugh. “He came over and said: ‘Do you need any help?’
“I’ve seen him a couple of times before, but I’ve never had a chance to talk with him because I always wanted to respect his privacy, even though I’m a big fan of his,” Huang added.
“That was the first time we ever had a little chat. He’s a great guy … an awesome guy.”
What did they chat about? “The conversation was pretty short,” Huang said.
“I just told him he was having an incredible season … a little chit-chat and that was about it. Definitely, he’s very nice and very humble.”
Was Huang surprised one of the most famous people in Montreal would stop to help dig a stranger’s car out of a snowbank? “For sure,” Huang said. “But I think in any case that was the right thing to do … it doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity or a normal human being. I think anybody in that situation would offer to help ... it just turned out to be Max. He did the right thing and I have to give him thanks for that.”
Huang didn’t ask Pacioretty for an autograph or anything like that after his car got out of the snowbank, but he did get a nice surprise from his girlfriend, who had been in the car. “She was taking pictures of us doing the work,” Huang said. “I didn’t even know that she took those pictures, but good thing she did.”
It’s tough to eat or drink anything. It’s so swollen inside. I got scared for a while. I couldn’t breathe.