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Habs’ Therrien, Sens’ MacLean mend fences

Paul MacLean

Paul MacLean speaks with the media after being named head coach of the Ottawa Senators hockey team during a news conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Tuesday June 14, 2011. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld)

AP

Montreal’s series against Ottawa was perhaps the most heated of the first round and both coaches got involved in the war of words. However, now that the Senators have eliminated the Canadiens, both bench bosses are putting that behind them.

“Series over, Paul MacLean did a good job,” Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said of his counterpart to reporters. “I’m not going to deny that. He’s a good coach, did a good job.”

Senators coach MacLean started his postgame press conference by praising the Canadiens, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

“I thought it was great fun,” MacLean said about the series and disputed the notion that the series got bitter. He added that he thought Therrien did an outstanding job with the Montreal Canadiens, especially given that they were in the Eastern Conference basement in 2011-12.

So with the series behind us, here’s a handful of the memorable exchanges that it left us with:

“(If I’m Eller), I’m really mad at (Diaz), whoever he is, because he passed me the puck in the middle of the rink when I wasn’t looking,” said MacLean, regarding Eric Gryba’s hit on Lars Eller, which sent the latter player to the hospital.

Therrien said MacLean had “no respect for player on the player on ice, bleeding” while Canadiens forward Brandon Prust called MacLean a “bug-eyed fat walrus.”

The Canadiens coach also felt Ottawa’s late third period timeout during the Senators’ 6-1 win on Sunday was “classless.”

MacLean responded by saying, “I’m classless? This is another disrespectful thing? They were doing a good job of (humiliating) themselves … [they] don’t need my help.”

He added that he took the timeout to protect his players in a game where the two teams accumulated 234 combined penalty minutes.