BOSTON -- Zdeno Chara was throwing Oilers forwards around like he was sifting through a bed full of coats on his way out of a house party.
Matched against Edmonton's top line of Ales Hemsky, Dustin Penner and Shawn Horocoff, it was no contest as the six-foot-nine blueliner held the trio to two shots (both from Penner) in a 2-0 Bruins win.
The book on Edmonton lately is that if you shut down their top line, they lose, and Chara did exactly that.
ACCORDING TO PLAN
"Well, that's obviously the game plan," he said. "You face a line like that, I think they are all in the top 10 or 15 scoring in the league and they average more than a point a game. They have skill, they have speed, they have size on that line. Obviously the game plan was pretty clear to shut down that line."
By game's end, Oilers head coach Pat Quinn was forced to split Penner and Hemsky up so at least one of them could be free.
"He was a beast out there tonight," said Horcoff. "The most impressive thing about him is his reach. Twice I was wide open in the slot and Bobby passed it to me and out of nowhere you see this black Reebok coming at you. You kind of get a feel for what the normal reach is, but he's a big boy. I'm glad he's in the East, put it that way."
Quinn would have liked to see Edmonton do more dumping and chasing rather than trying to dance past somebody with the wingspan of a pterodactyl.
WAS DOMINANT
"He had a dominant night and we played right into his hands, tried to carry it through him," said Quinn. "A guy like that you don't carry it through him, you make him have to turn, you try to work against his inadequacies. I've seen it done."
Not yesterday, he didn't.
"He played with more of an edge today, but a controlled edge," said Boston coach Claude Julien. "He was dominant along the boards. He out-muscled everybody. He always came up with the puck and that's the kind of game if Z plays for us every night, that's going to make our team that much better."
ROBERT.TYCHKOWSKI@SUNMEDIA.CA
