Marc Savard’s long journey has brought him back to major junior hockey

By: Scott Burnside

We caught up with Marc Savard moments after the Windsor Spitfires’ team bus had pulled out of the parking lot of the WFCU Center in Windsor headed for Kitchener and a game against the Kitchener Rangers.

We imagine him in his seat at the front of the bus with his new charges behind him and wonder if those teenage boys are thinking the same thoughts that Savard was thinking when he headed out of Oshawa with the OHL Generals back in the day?

Savard, whose number has been retired in Oshawa, could never have imagined what would lie ahead, the dark corners and the abrupt turns. And he certainly could never have imagined that one day he would be sitting at the front of a similar bus.

But here we are and Savard is happy to talk all of these things as the miles slip away.

He is just weeks into his new gig as a Major Junior Hockey head coach, having taken the job in Windsor after the late-summer departure of Trevor Letowski, who joined the coaching staff of former Canadian national junior team head coach Dominique Ducharme with the Montreal Canadiens.

So there is a lot of learning on the fly for Savard, who was junior sensation in his own right, before a star-crossed NHL career was ended far too early by concussions.

We first got to know Savard when he was acquired by the Atlanta Thrashers in November of 2002 in a deal that was definitely under the radar. Savard, a fourth-round pick of the Rangers, had been biding his time in Calgary when the Thrashers acquired him for Ruslan Zaynullin, who was a second-round pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning who never played an NHL game.

Savard transformed as a member of the Thrashers under head coach Bob Hartley, recording 97 points in 2005-06. This led to a trade to the Boston Bruins, where Savard recorded 96 points the following season. He was a sure-fire point-a-game player and considered one of the top playmakers in the game until March 7, 2010, when Savard was levelled by a blindside hit courtesy of Matt Cooke of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

It’s a hit that would play a major role in the NHL’s being forced to address an epidemic of concussions and blows to the head, leading to the introduction of Rule 48, which became part of the rulebook in 2010-11.

Savard returned to play in the 2010 playoffs, but would play just 25 games in 2010-11 before he was taken hard into the end boards in Colorado by former Boston teammate Matt Hunwick.

We happened to be in Denver that night.

We remember rising up from our seat in the press box, along with other members of the media, after we realized who the Bruins player was slumped on the ice was. Savard reached momentarily for his head as he tried to get up and then slid back to the ice.

Nothing wrong, really, with the hit, except in the end it was the final straw for Savard. It would be his final turn as an NHL player, even as the Bruins were headed towards their first Stanley Cup since 1972.

Savard’s name is on the Stanley Cup, but in some ways his presence on the game’s holy grail is more a reminder of what might have been and what was lost.

We met up with Savard one night in Boston before a Bruins game in January 2012 and he talked openly about the long journey that recovering from post-concussion syndrome had become.

He described being dizzy on the bench if he was coaching his two boys in youth hockey, his balance all out of whack. He would see spots and get headaches if he yelled during a youth team practice. He recalled going into arenas to watch games and not remembering where his keys were, only to find them still in his vehicle.

“I’ve been through some pretty dark times with what I went through,” Savard said from the Spitfire bus.

It’s not the only time during our conversation that Savard will mention those dark moments. Those moments reflect inexorable link between the mental and the physical when players discuss their experiences with concussions.

It’s the headaches and the dark rooms and the vertigo. But it’s also the sometimes unanswerable question – what next?

“I was down a lot. Not doing a lot around the house and stuff like that,” Savard said.

In the beginning he began mapping out practice routines and drills for his kids with a pal because he was bored.

“I didn’t know if anything was going to come of it,” he said.

In large part it was Valerie, his second wife and mother to their daughter, eight-year-old Elle, that continued to encourage Savard to challenge himself and take chances.

“She’s pushed me to get out there again and do things,” Savard said. “Even this job. I wasn’t sure I could do it. Not that I couldn’t do it, but I didn’t know if it was something I wanted to do, to put myself out there.”

Valerie is a dental hygienist and the couple have been together 15 years, including eight years of marriage. She and Elle remain in the Peterborough area and Savard has tried to find times in the Spits’ busy schedule to get home to see them as the early part of the season has unfolded.

“It’s a balancing act,” Savard said. “She’s been a real backbone.”

It’s not just what Savard went through, losing control of his own career, not being able to make the choices he wanted to make at the end or rather how it was going to end, but also how people helped him along the way, the doctors, family, teammates and how he helped himself.

“All the stuff I’ve been through I think everybody was excited,” at the Windsor opportunity Savard said.

“I’m all in, I’m all invested,” Savard said. “It’s great to have that support.”

Indeed, there is something almost buoyant about Savard as we talk about his new adventure, even if there has been a kind of blur element to all of this.

“Everything kind of happened fast,” Savard said.

He rented a home belonging to Windsor native and former Spitfire Eric Wellwood, brother of former NHLer Kyle Wellwood, who is the head coach of the ECHL’s Newfoundland Growlers.

“We’re starting to settle in,” Savard said. “We live right across from the rink.”

Then there was getting the on-ice systems in place and managing the fact that some of his guys were away at NHL camps to start with.

Then the Spitfires, considered one of the top teams in the OHL by preseason prognosticators, had some bumps coming out of the gate and frequently played from behind making it hard for Savard to get his whole roster engaged on a nightly basis.

“It’s tough, tough as a coaching staff getting guys on and getting the fourth line guys out there,” he said. “It’s a learning process early on for myself for sure.”

Maybe all junior coaches or coaches somewhere in the pipeline have the same goal – hone their craft, wait for an opportunity, seize it.

With Savard there is a calmness, a sense of being in the moment as opposed to being in some other moment down the road. As though this place in the game is enough, certainly enough for the moment.

“I’ve always wanted to coach junior hockey,” he said. “We want to focus on not just making better hockey players but better human beings.”

“Our doors are always open,” he said of he and his coaches, including former NHLer Andy Delmore and Jerrod Smith, who have been with the organization for a decade.

And perhaps because of not in spite of what Savard went through he may be in a unique position to not just coach but help his young players through the inevitable obstacles and setbacks to come whether those obstacles are hockey related or simply life obstacles.

“They’re just kids and I know how to maybe approach them a little differently,” Savard said. “Each kid something makes them tick differently.”

Bill Bowler is, like Savard, a former major junior scoring sensation, having scored 379 points in a three-year span in the early 1990s with the Windsor Spitfires. He dabbled in coaching with the Spits and is now the team’s GM.

For a player that had so much success at the NHL level, Savard spoke little about his personal accomplishments. The two started their discussions about the coaching opening and that struck a nerve with Bowler.

“The pedigree was there,” Bowler said. “But what sold me was his passion for coaching. He didn’t talk about himself at all. He’s a really humble guy.”

“He’s a guy that I think had the hockey IQ that I think can help young players,” Bowler added.

So he’s willing to put up with a learning curve because he feels it’ll pay dividends for everyone in the long run.

Savard has three children from his first marriage a son, Zach, 21 and daughter Isabella who is studying at McGill and the youngest, Tyler, whom he will face as a coach in the OHL this week when Tyler’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds play the Spitfires.

At one point when he was coaching his two boys in travel hockey, Savard thought about following in the steps of former Windsor owners former NHLers Warren Rychel and Bob Boughner in purchasing and running his own major junior team.

There was some tire kicking and he had a group of investors.

“But it never happened,” Savard said.

Then a chance to join the St. Louis Blues staff as a power play coach came up and after talking it over with the family, he agreed to take that step.

St. Louis Blues GM Doug Armstrong didn’t know Savard at all, but head coach Craig Berube had crossed paths with Savard in Calgary near the end of Berube’s career and before Savard’s career had really taken off.

So, when Berube suggested Savard might be able to help the Blues power play, Armstrong agreed.

“You could just see the passion he had for the offensive side of the game,” Armstrong said. “Being able to talk to skilled players, to understand the nuances of what they are going through.”

“He did a really good job,” Armstrong added.

As for Savard’s gig in Windsor, it’s about broadening that scope, Armstrong said.

“Now it’s about the understanding and the responsibility of not just the offensive part of the game but the defensive part of the game and all the other facets of the game,” the long-time NHL executive said.

The St. Louis experience was like Coaching 101, for Savard who was given freedom to run the power play as he saw fit. He ran the video meetings and met with players.

“It was a big step for me, I learned a lot from that,” Savard said.

“I’m very detail oriented,” Savard added. “But it’s not just coaching and getting ready for practice, it’s everything.”

Like where will the team stay on the road? Where and when will they eat? Practice times. Days off. Off-ice commitments in a town where the team has a long and storied history.

“There’s a whole side of it that I wasn’t totally prepared for,” Savard acknowledged. “All the little things that go along with it.”

But he’s getting there and really, given where he came from, this is all small potatoes.

Armstrong allows himself a little joke as he acknowledges Savard’s return to the game after so many difficult days.

“You can tell he’s rekindled the passion after what he went through with the concussions,” Armstrong said. “I’m glad he took the time because now his job as head coach is going to cause lots of headaches.”

And it’s good to laugh, isn’t it? Because it’s a game and it’s supposed to be fun.

And Savard laughs easily, too, as he describes his own learning curve as a head coach.

Savard is 44. His first year with Oshawa was 1993-94. The oldest kid on the Spitfires was born in January of 2001. The oldest players were still little boys, nine or 10, when Savard played his last NHL game.

So whatever connections are real in-time connections, not kids who grew up with Savard as a household hockey name.

They know he played, and of course there is the internet to check things out.

“But I don’t talk about myself very often,” Savard said.

One day, one of the Spits’ top young players asked Savard at practice who he played for in junior. Savard couldn’t tell if the kid was busting his chops or really didn’t know he was one of the most prolific junior players of all time. Not that it really mattered.

“I asked him, are you being serious right now?” Savard said.

“He said, ‘I kind of know but I just forget,’” Savard said with a laugh.

So Savard told him about the scoring championships and the like, another reminder of a circle being closed here.

“Did I think I’d be where I am today?” Savard asked. “No, I don’t think I did. But am I excited? Yes. Am I learning? Yes.”

And is he happy?

Oh yes. That is a given.