by Michael Ham-Fan, Staff Writer, All Habs Hockey Magazine

MONTREAL, QC. – With eleven games left to the regular season, this is the period when great players start to elevate their game to the next level, in preparation for the playoffs. One player that has always performed well this time of the year is Lars Eller.

The 25-year-old Dane has had a seesaw-patterned season, this year. Offensively, he hasn’t produced much aside from the month of November, in which he accumulated eight of his 22 total points. On the other hand, his all-around play this year has been decent. He has shown a good effort level on most games and Michel Therrien recently praised Eller:

“It’s always about a good attitude, and Lars has a good attitude. He understands the situation. I really like the way he’s playing the last three weeks. He competes hard, he’s making better decisions with the puck, he’s having more fun. You can’t judge a player on goals and assists. From my standpoint, when I see a player competing and working hard and paying attention to the detail, that’s the only thing I can ask. And when they do those things the points will be there” (per @ArponBasu)

His hard work is starting to pay off and the points are indeed coming. Lars Eller has put up five points in his last six games, which represents approximately 22 percent of his offensive production this season.

As a matter of fact, the 6-foot-2, 209 pound centre has a history of warming up along with the spring weather, which, I admit, is a very bad analogy to make this year in a still-frozen Quebec.

Last year, Eller had 16 points in 20 games in the months of April and May, including the playoffs, where he and Rene Bourque almost single-handedly eliminated the Lightning. In 2012-2013, he put up 13 points in his 12 games preceding the playoffs, before getting knocked out cold by a blindsided hit on Game 1 of the playoffs. That injury would then, sideline him for the rest of the playoffs.

As you can see, Eller really does have extra energy and extra offensive flare when the games start to be meaningful. The Habs would certainly welcome some bigger offensive production from the former first-round draft pick as the offensive production from the Montreal forwards have been latent.

On top of his game, Lars Eller can be an impactful and dominant player as we have seen at times in the past. He has a good shot, a good pair of hands, good speed and good size. Mainly, his problem has been his consistency in putting all those skills together.

Also, he is very prone to that one costly mistake that leads to a goal or to an ill-timed penalty. That often, overshadows the good game he has and it puts him up for criticism, and for a guy with a fragile self-confidence, it can be very deflating.

The one aspect that I would like to see Eller improve on is his decision-making in the offensive zone. To have seen him at practices and at some occasions during games, I realized that he has a very hard shot. The issue is that he views himself as a playmaker and chooses to pass even when he has a chance to score, despite his scoring capabilities. It seems obvious when said like this, but I am convinced that he would have more goals if he shot a few more pucks to the net. That said, I believe that Eller is still a very good 2-way player that can contribute in more ways than putting up points.

I, for one, have been impressed with the patience that the Habs’ organization has shown towards Eller throughout his inconsistencies. Admittedly, with his skillset and work ethic, he still has the potential to be an even more important player for the Montreal Canadiens.

When he is playing with confidence, he is not only a threat an offensive threat, but Eller can also be a very physical player. Actually, he has led the Montreal Canadiens forwards last season in hits with 130, meaning that Eller truly has the whole package to be a power-forward center who hits, scores and can play a sound defensive game. Described this way, it would seem like we are describing the perfect player for the Habs.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to put it all together. There could be a few reasons that could lead to this inconsistency that has been plaguing the 25-year-old forward since the beginning of his career.

First, Eller has always been more comfortable at the centre position, his natural position. For some reason, he has been moved to the wing despite being in the Top 10 for face-off percentage in the league earlier this season. At of today, he still has the second best face-off efficacy on the Habs at 53.5 per cent, behind Manny Malhotra.

Also, his offensive production could be hindered because he is not often used in offensive situations. For example, in Monday’s game against Tampa Bay, Eller only had 11 per cent of his starts in the offensive zone, while a player like David Desharnais had 80 per cent of his starts in the offensive zone. Granted, Desharnais was playing with Max Pacioretty most of the game but the contrast is still very significant.

An even more glaring statistic, Eller has been used on the power-play for a total of 33:15 minutes (o:30 per game) this season. Compare that to Tomas Plekanec and David Desharnais’s  power-play ice-time which was, respectfully, 147:38 (2:04 per game) and 165:13 (2:19 per game.) Even a player like Sven Andrighetto, who has played a total of 12 games this year with the Canadiens has played over 18 minutes on the power-play (1:32 per game.) Pretty surprising when you consider that Lars Eller is second to only Max Pacioretty in game-winning goals with six.

I am not suggesting that he is being misused nor do I want to get in that conversation. I only want to think from Eller’s point of view, that being a guy that already has a fragile confidence, to not get opportunities to contribute offensively with the talent that he has, it must be hard to swallow.  And it provides an explanation for those who are solely using offensive statistics as the measuring stick.

When I look at Lars Eller, I see a guy that is too hard on himself for not producing rather than a guy that doesn’t care. The fact that he mostly has defensive starts could also be a hypothesis on why he commits more glaring defensive mistakes than his teammates, as he is used in much tougher defensive tasks, creating a vicious cycle of loss of confidence and lack of offensive production.

Again, I am not judging the game-plan because I understand that Eller may be a better defensive forward, and that could very well be the reason he is called upon to sacrifice his offensive ice-time more than the others, to do the dirty work.

The jury is still out on whether Eller can become more than a supporting player in the NHL but, meanwhile, if he can get on a playoffs hot streak again this season, we can, at least, hope once more that Lars Eller has arrived.

Sources:

NHL.com:
http://www.nhl.com/ice/player.htm?id=8474189
http://www.nhl.com/ice/player.htm?id=8474189&season=20142015&view=log
HockeyDB: http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=105385