Lars Eller signing a one-year, $1.25 million contract on July 1 with the Ottawa Senators wasn’t met with much fanfare in Bytown. Yet whether Senators fans know it or not, their team took a step forward adding Eller to its roster.
Here are six cool things that Senators fans may not know about the newest Scandinavian addition to their team.
Eller One of Only Four Danes to Play in Ottawa
Eller is just the fourth Dane to ever don a Senators sweater. He’ll join fellow countryman Mads Sogaard as just one of two Danes currently playing in the Senators organization. He follows in the footsteps of the Danish-born Peter Regin who played five seasons in Ottawa from 2008-2012 and Mikkel Boedker who played parts of two campaigns in Ottawa from 2018-20.
Boedker and Eller played hockey together as teenagers and Eller will inherit his No. 89 making him the second Danish-born player to sport that number in the nation’s capital. That’s because Fabian Zetterlund is wearing Eller’s longtime No. 20. Coincidentally, 1989 is Eller’s birth year.
Eller the Dominant Dane
Eller is hands down the player who has made Denmark’s biggest mark on the NHL. With 1,116 games to his credit and counting, he is the first Danish-born player to skate in over 1,000 NHL games. Not only that, but with 16 seasons under his belt (and counting), he’s the longest-lived Dane in the league career-wise.
Eller is Denmark’s Sole Stanley Cup Champion
Eller is the only Danish-born player to win a Stanley Cup, winning that honour with the Washington Capitals in 2018. Not only is his name on the Cup, but he scored the goal that won it in Game 5 of the Capitals’ championship series against the Vegas Golden Knights that year.
Eller’s Stanley Cup pedigree is something that will no doubt insert itself into the DNA of the Senators organization. He along with fellow Cup champions Michael Amadio, David Perron and Nick Cousins will play a big role in mentoring and molding the team’s young guns.
As Eller explained it in an interview on Coming in Hot, “I think you have to have the right mix of really good young players and have some veterans they can lean on a little bit. And I think I can be one of those guys. I know they have a couple already with (Claude) Giroux and Perron that I know a little…
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