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CHRIS STEVENSON, QMI Agency

Jun 22, 2011

, Last Updated: 12:00 PM ET

LAS VEGAS - Zdeno Chara has been keeping tabs on The Tab.

And the big captain of the Boston Bruins is not happy.

The story of the Bruins’ $156,679.74 bill at the SHRINE (what’s with the all CAPS?) nightclub at the MGM-Foxwoods casino has been making the rounds on the Internet after the team celebrated their Stanley Cup victory Saturday night.

Bruins winger Shawn Thornton had exchanged texts with one of the co-owners of the club and the entire team wound up going bowling at Foxwoods and then retiring to the bar.

Most notable on the tab is a $100,000 charge for a bottle of Ace of Spades “Midas” champagne, a 30-litre tub of the premium grog which was served up by the owners of SHRINE.

Apparently there are, er, were only six of the bottles in existence. It was twice as big as the piddling bottle Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban bought for his team after they won the NBA title (of course, a hockey team is twice as big).

Chara said the pictures of the tab on the Internet making the rounds are misleading, to say the least.

The bottle of champagne was gift from the owners of the club which grossly inflated the tab.

One member of the Bruins entourage estimated the B’s tab was actually closer to $25,000, still an impressive amount.

“Obviously we are very disappointed at something like this,” said Chara, who was on hand Tuesday as the nominees for the NHL Awards night gathered here in advance of Wednesday’s festivities.

“I’m not sure how it got out. That was our first and only night we had as a team together. We went out to Foxwoods to have a normal good time, nothing crazy. We started the night bowling and having some snacks then we moved to the bar and basically had a night out.”

The club owners gave the Bruins the bottle of champagne with the understanding the Bruins would be signing the bottle rather than a tab for the high-class hootch.

“We had been given as a gift the bottle of champagne from Foxwoods and we knew after when we finished with it we would sign it and Foxwoods would auction it off,” said Chara.

“That number that is posted up is nowhere near what the actual price of the bill was. All I have to say is we are very disappointed that something like this is coming out that is not true.”

Thornton confirmed to Boston Radio station 98.5 The Sports Hub the champagne was a gift.

“There’s no doubt about it, we partied like we won the Stanley Cup, but it wasn’t like Chara and his, whatever, $7.6 million salary just pulled out the black card and said, ‘Here, it’s on me,’” said Thornton, adding the ahem, bar, had been set high by the previous Cup winners in Beantown.

“Hey, we won the Stanley Cup,” he said. “All I ever hear about is how hard the guys in ‘72 went, we had to live up to those expectations.”

Okay, in the aftermath of all this, two things stick out.

Bowling to celebrate a Stanley Cup? Really?

So who was good?

“I played with (forward) Chris Kelly and other guys, but Chris Kelly was really good,” said Chara, adding that forward Marc Savard, still recovering from a concussion, also made it out to party with is teammates and put up some good scores.