The annual image of an emotional Marc Savard struggling through his words as he talks about his future isn’t easier the second time around, especially when the questions are about whether concussions have doomed his career for the last time.
“Why? Why again?” Savard recalled saying to trainer Don DelNegro as he remained on the ice on Jan. 22 following his second regular season-ending concussion of the last two years.
Monday served as a difficult closing of the book on what has been the season from hell for the 33-year-old. After missing the final 18 games of the 2009-10 regular season and returning in the second round of the playoffs, Savard spent the months leading up to the season working out harder than ever and ready to put the concussion caused by Matt Cooke’s cheap shot last March 7 behind him.
Of course, it didn’t come to that, as post-concussion concussion syndrome symptoms sprung back up, leaving Savard weak and depressed, and, according to Mark Recchi, looking just as gloomy in September as he did on Monday.
One would have to imagine Savard’s spent more days looking like that than he or the Bruins would care for him to. Even when he was on the ice this season, it was painfully obvious that long before Matt Hunwick’s hit that Savard the player wasn’t his “old self,” so to speak. The elite playmaker whose passes turned Phil Kessel into a player the Maple Leafs were willing to ruin their future for was instead setting up other team’s goals with uncharacteristic blunders. He didn’t seem to click with various linemates, including Nathan Horton, the man expected to be next in the line of wingers made great by Savard.
Though it was hard not to draw such conclusions from watching him, the statistics made it clear that he wasn’t the same. The point-a-game player people had gotten to know around these parts was less than half that, totaling only 10 points in 25 games and a stretch in which the offense was performing at its highest all season. A plus-30 over the last three seasons, Savard had what has remained the worst plus-minus on the Bruins this season with a minus-7.
Given that he had missed the first 23 games of the season and was working to get back into playing shape while his teammates were well into the grind of the regular season schedule, it was expected that there could be struggles early on. It became apparent over time, however, that sizable progress was not being made and the Bruins were getting a different Savard than the one who had 11 points in 12 contests entering the game in which Cooke changed his career.
“It was a concern and Marc communicated to me about the speed of the game—how he sees the speed of the game—and that, to me, coming from him, who thinks two or three steps ahead of everyone on the ice, that he could see that a little bit in the [Deryk] Engelland hit [vs. the Penguins on Jan. 15] and the [Hunwick] hit,” general manager Peter Chiarelli said. “I know he was working hard to come back and get to where he was at and I think he was frustrated at times, because it didn’t come back.”
What makes Savard the special player that he is was not there in 25 games this season, and it’s hard to guess whether it would have eventually shown up in 59 games. Given that progress in his game was a combination of slow and simply non-existent, it was tough even before Jan. 22 to call a potential return to glory for Savard this season a certainty. Right now, if that return to glory ever is made, it will be in another season, and with head injuries hopefully far enough back in the rear-view mirror that Savard can just focus on the game.
“I’ve got a lot of feelings going on,” Savard said with tears in his eyes. “I think I’m frustrated mostly. It’s tough to understand why this happens and obviously the most frustrating thing is to not be able to just know exactly what’s going on and how to cure it. And I think it’s just time and patience and those are things I feel like I don’t have much of, so that makes it tough.”
Savard will return home to Peterborough, Ontario, and can now take the next however many months to try to get himself right, whether that means spending time with family, texting Claude Julien advice during games (as he joked in perhaps the only light-hearted moment of pretty dark press conference) or opting for retirement. At the end of the day, the media (unless members double-majored in college) can’t speculate on medical matters with any authority. We don’t know if this is it for Savard’s career or whether it should be. What we do know is that the hell he has had to endure – at least as it pertains to 2010-11– is over.
That might be the best thing this ugly season could have given him.
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