Lars Eller: Big Strides for The Great Dane

Upon signing his 4-year, $14 million contract, Eller’s expectations greatly increased. 25 games into the 2014-2015 season, it’s hard to argue with the results

Lars Eller has always carried a little more pressure than most players in the organization, largely as a result of the way in which he was acquired. A 2007 first-round pick (No. 13) of the St.Louis Blues, Eller was acquired by the Canadiens on June 17, 2010, as part of a trade that sent goaltender Jaroslav Halak to St. Louis. Discussions (albeit stupid ones) inexplicably continue to this very day about whether or not the Canadiens made the right decision in keeping Carey Price rather than dealing him in place of Halak after Jaro’s extraordinary playoff performance. Ian Schultz also came Montreal’s way, however, besides a 23-point season in 2011-2012 with the Hamilton Bulldogs, he’s been a mainstay in the ECHL; it’s safe to call him a 3rd round bust. He’s currently playing on his 4th different ECHL team in the past two seasons.

As for Eller, he’s been nothing but an underachieving centre buried in the bottom 6 since his arrival in Montreal; reliably skating alongside such superstars as Travis Moen, Mathieu Darche, Louis Leblanc, Benoit Pouliot, Brandon Prust, Colby Armstrong and Rene Bourque. He spent some time with a burnt out Andrei Kostitsyn and a young Alex Galchenyuk along the way as well.

Most would say the highlight of his career to date would be his 4-goal, 5-point night against the Winnipeg Jets in 2012, and while it was absolutely spectacular, I disagree. I believe the defining moment and highlight of his career wasn’t a single night but rather the entire 2012-2013 season when he was the 3rd highest scoring Montreal Canadien forward and tied (Markov) for the 4th highest scoring Hab with 30 points in 46 games. Only Max Pacioretty and Tomas Plekanec managed a higher point total among forwards – yes, Eller outscored (in less games) Montreal’s elite centreman David Desharnais. Eller narrowly missed out on leading the entire Canadiens team in 5v5 points as he finished one point behind Max Pacioretty. It was clear Eller had the talent to put up some substantial offensive numbers.

Unfortunately, Eller also suffered the lowlight of his career in that same year as he was knocked out cold by Senators defenseman Eric Gryba in the 2013 NHL playoffs. He sustained a concussion and a broken nose in Game one and missed the rest of the series. Some say it was the series defining moment considering Eller was among the very best Canadiens that season.

Here we are in Eller’s 5th full NHL season. With just one assist in his first seven games this year, to go along with an ugly -6 rating, on the surface it looked as though Eller was off to a start similar to the latter 70 games in 2013-2014, and the critics were front and centre. It was as if they had completely forgotten about his 13 points in 17 playoff games just 4 months earlier. 18 games later, Eller has added 7 goals and 2 assists to his totals and has played some fantastic hockey. While he’s only on-pace for 33 points this season, that mark would actually be his highest total in any one NHL season. Seems like a low season high, doesn’t it? That may be, but it shouldn’t be concerning at all; Eller’s peripheral numbers are great.

He and Manny Malhotra have combined to take a lot of the difficult minutes away from Plekanec, who has done nothing but flourish this season. And Eller has been among the league’s best in the role Therrien deploys him.

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There are 17 centres (according to war-on-ice.com) that fall within the parameters I set for the following data sets (between 10.50-13.50 of 5v5 TOI/G; Rel OZst% between -8.00% and -11.00%).

Only Brandon Prust and Tyler Toffoli have a better FF% relative to their team than Eller – both having spent the majority of their time on the wing. Leo Komarov as well as young guns Brock Nelson and Tyler Toffoli have more 5v5 points than Eller; besides Toffoli, both players carry very poor 5v5 shot metrics. Also worth noting, Eller has the highest number of 5v5 goals, something that is very important in the modern day NHL. Unsurprisingly, Mikhail Grabovski is still in a similar role he’s become accustomed to and, still producing very well.

Although Eller’s offensive zone start percentage relative to his teammates isn’t as low as a handful of others, his 40.22% overall offensive zone start percentage is only higher than Prust and Barkov, which makes his RelFenwick that much more impressive.

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In case you were wondering, here are the Canadiens’ centres. Desharnais’ Rel OZst% is actually the 6th highest among centres in the NHL that have played at least 200 5v5 minutes. Malhotra’s -38.54% is 3rd lowest.

Opening it up to the entire NHL, 22 total forwards fit within the parameters similar to the role Eller plays:

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Aleksander Barkov is having a really rough season offensively, however he’s being relied on heavily in some difficult minutes. Eller remains 3rd in RelFenwick.

For the more visual learners:

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Ideally, you’d like to be as close as possible to the top left corner. This section is reserved for players who are leaned on in the defensive zone but come away with excellent shot attempt differentials.

You will never – and I truly do mean never – see Desharnais anywhere close to this entire graph. Imagine this scatterplot’s x-axis extends as far as possible to the right; this is where you’d find Desharnais. And Therrien. Having dinner. And talking about Bouillon.

Despite this usage, Eller is 4th among Habs players with 9.47 shots on goal per 60 minutes of 5v5 play, sitting behind only Tomas Plekanec, Brendan Gallagher and Max Pacioretty. Staggering around 14th is top line centre David Desharnais. In fact, Malhotra averages 2.13 shots on goal per 60 minutes of 5v5 play more than little Davie. That is bordering embarrassing. When your No.1 centre is relying that heavily on his linemates to shoot the puck it has to become a little easier for the opposition to defend. Yet, Pacioretty continues chugging.

Only once this season has Eller put together points in back-to-back games and it was ironically a 3-game point streak in which he scored 3 times and added 2 helpers. He has a chance tonight to make that twice this season.

Overall, Eller has been exactly what I hoped for going into this season and, to be honest, his production could easily be among the best on the Canadiens if a few more bounces went his way to begin the year.

With the (baseless) rumours swirling about Eller’s potential departure in a deal that would bring in a legitimate winger so that Galchenyuk can be moved to centre, it really begs the question: What specifically is preventing the Canadiens from moving Desharnais? Is it league-wide interest? Is it the apparent superior chemistry between him and Pacioretty? Is it his contract? Or is it simply because peripheral numbers don’t really mean anything so they do little in showing Eller’s true value – which I believe is higher than Desharnais’. Whatever the reason, a Canadiens squad featuring Galchenyuk-Plekanec-Eller-Malhotra down the middle trumps a Canadiens squad featuring Desharnais-Plekanec-Galchenyuk-Malhotra down the middle.