by Ken Dryden
Steve and Vally talked so often and so long, that at times when Vally saw Steve’s name on caller ID, he wouldn’t pick up. “Sometimes I didn’t have an hour. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get off [the phone], and I wouldn’t want to get off.” Vally stops himself. “I wish I had that opportunity now, even if just for a minute.”
—
Steve gave the Sabres what they expected of him. He played seventy-eight of the team’s eighty-two games in 2009–10, averaging over seventeen minutes of ice time a game; he played seventy-three games and averaged almost twenty minutes of ice time the following season. He had bad stretches: when the team swooned late in January the first year, Sabres coach Lindy Ruff, impatient with some of Steve’s on-ice decisions, met with him, made him a healthy scratch, then moved him up to the wing before restoring him back to defence. He had good stretches: in mid-November the second year he was leading the entire NHL in plus-minus (plus-13), and was tied for second (plus-16) a month later; this on a Sabres team that was playing below .500. He also had long solid stretches of little statistical note, but which mattered to some of his teammates in different ways.
Mike Weber was a twenty-three-year-old, tough, stay-at-home defenceman for the Sabres, who had played a scattering of games with the team the previous two seasons but had yet to become a regular. “I was in and out of the lineup,” Weber recalls, “and [Monty] would sit there for a whole plane ride sometimes, and just talk to me, about his situation, where he came from, and the type of things he had to work through to make it to be a regular in this league.” He was a “calming voice,” Weber says—someone who “[no matter] what the problem was, what the issue was, no matter what was going on with him, he always had time for everyone.” Steve was a teammate. Teammates help other teammates because that’s what makes the team better; because that’s what teammates do.
But Steve had reached a new stage in his career. He turned thirty-one during his second season with the Sabres. An improving team might improve right past him, and leave no place for him. It would also leave Steve more vulnerable to being replaced by a bigger, younger, cheaper, much less banged-up version of himself—like Weber. “[Steve] will probably go down as one of the best teammates I’ve ever had,” Weber says. Weber played with the Sabres for the next several years.
The Sabres won the Northeast Division title in 2009–10, and finished third the following year. Both seasons, they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, first by Boston, then by Philadelphia. In his second year with Buffalo, Steve started strongly but his play tapered off, and in the seventh game of the Flyers’ series—in the biggest game of the season—he was a healthy scratch. The Sabres haven’t made the playoffs since.
Steve would become a free agent once more on July 1, 2011. He was thirty-one years old. He had been a transition player for the Sabres—helping them to get better and to allow time for younger defencemen to develop. Some of those younger blueliners were now ready for more; and others, three months before the next season began, might be by the time October came around.
A player wants to be a free agent during the prime years of his career. Then he has teams competing for his services. He knows himself, and what he values most. He can chart his own path, and go where he wants to go. To play for a winner? To play with the pressure and expectation of winning—or not? To play in what city, with what climate, have what lifestyle? But outside a player’s prime years, free agency is a curse. They become just another resumé in a very high, desperate stack on a GM’s desk. Even being on the wrong team under the wrong contract is better than having no team and no contract at all. That prime/post-prime moment, where a player passes from chased to chaser, from stuck-with-them to free-of-you, happens as if overnight.
In March, Steve had written the names of five teams in his journal: New Jersey, Boston, Toronto, Buffalo, and the New York Rangers. He also wrote Philadelphia, and crossed it out. He created a decision grid for each team, drawing a large rectangle on the page that he divided into four smaller ones: What will I/won’t I get if I sign with __? What will I/won’t I get if I don’t sign with __? The criteria that he mentioned most often were: ability to contend; travel (Eastern Conference); proximity to home; and sunshine. Beside New York, Boston, and Toronto, he also wrote: “great city.”
On June 29, 2011, the Sabres traded Steve’s rights to Chicago for a seventh-round pick in either 2012 or 2013. This gave the Blackhawks two days, exclusively, to sign him to a new contract. The next day, June 30, Steve’s agent, Kurt Overhardt, called him with the news. Kevin Magnuson, the son of former Blackhawks captain and coach Keith Magnuson, was an agent in Overhardt’s office. He heard Steve on the phone’s speaker system. “I’m so emotional right now,” Magnuson remembers him saying. “I can’t believe I just signed this deal. It’s amazing. Thank you so much.”
“He was almost crying over the phone,” Magnuson recalls. The contract was for $11 million over four years.
The $11 million was a big deal for Steve. The fact that it was with the Blackhawks, who had won a Stanley Cup a year earlier and had the ambition and the maturing young stars to do so again, made it an even bigger deal. But what made it the biggest deal of all—why Steve had almost been crying on the phone—was that for all of his career he had been playing on one-year or two-year contracts, and for much lesser teams. This was the Chicago Blackhawks, and this was for four years. They were committing to him. They believed in him, in what he was and in what he had become. He wasn’t just another 5–6 (or 7) defenceman who filled a spot on a team until someone better, younger, and cheaper came along. He might still be a 5–6 defenceman, but now he was one that was being counted on, even needed, who would be there next year and for the future. At this contract price, the Blackhawks might even be thinking of him as a 3–4 defenceman, a guy still with an “upside,” even in his thirties—what Steve had always seen in himself, and what other teams had hoped for. He would be in Chicago longer than in any other place in his career; he would be thirty-five when his contract expired. This might be his last team. This might become home.
—
On February 5, 2011, near the end of his second season with the Sabres, Steve suffered a concussion in a collision with the Leafs’ Jay Rosehill. Steve returned to the lineup thirteen days and six games later. A few days after that, he wrote in his journal, “Keith Primeau,” “Play It Cool,” and “Sports Legacy Institute.” Play It Cool is the head-trauma assistance program that Primeau had co-founded to work with minor hockey organizations to reduce concussions. The Sports Legacy Institute, now the Concussion Legacy Foundation, was co-founded by Dr. Robert Cantu, the noted neurosurgeon and concussion expert at Boston University. A few days earlier, there had been a story in the Globe and Mail about Primeau that made reference to the recent discovery that Bob Probert, the former enforcer who had died the summer before and who had donated his brain to Boston University, had CTE.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As Steve was about to begin his career in Chicago, Marc Savard was ending his in Boston—and in the NHL.
For fourteen seasons, Savard had made magic. He wasn’t big for a hockey player, even as a kid. But he was a good skater, and what set him apart was that he could “see” the game. He always seemed to know what should happen next—and then, with hands as quick and adept as his mind, with a soft pass, he would make it happen. His joy was making plays. Offensive plays, his critics sometimes pointed out, not defensive ones. Twice he was the OHL’s scoring champion, playing for the Oshawa Generals, but he was drafted only in the fourth round by the Rangers, the 91st overall pick, because of his size. He spent his first two seasons of professional hockey moving between the Rangers and their farm team in Hartford, then got his chance after being traded to Calgary. For the remaining twelve years of his NHL career—first with the Flames, then the Atlanta Thrashers and the Bruins—he would be one of the top and most reliable scorers on his team.
During his junior years in Oshawa, Savard had discovered Pete
rborough, only an hour away. In years after, he would work out in the summers with Jay, Nick, Keats, and Steve. He and Steve also overlapped in parts of two seasons with the Flames. His career ended in 2011 after suffering a concussion, his second in ten months, while playing with the Bruins.
Savard remembers the concussions he had as a kid, but now only because he has reason to think of them. At the time, they seemed to be only big hits, moments that teammates would laugh at and reenact in the dressing room, as he did theirs; tough lessons that were learned the hard way. There was that game in Metcalfe, just south of Ottawa. He was playing Junior B, only fifteen years old—some players in the league were three or four years older. It was early in the season, and he was cutting through the centre of the ice, reaching for a pass, and got blasted. “I remember pretty much blacking out,” he says, “then crawling to the bench. I said to my dad after the game, ‘Geez, Dad, maybe we made a bad decision here. There are some big fellas in this league.’ My dad just said, ‘Let’s stick with it a bit more and see how it goes.’ I don’t think I missed any games.”
He also recalls an NHL game, with the Flames. “It was after a whistle, there was a little bit of a melee and a guy punched me in the back of the helmet.” Savard went to the bench, the trainer checked him out and asked him how he was. He said he was fine—“You’re a hockey player. That’s what you say”—and played the rest of the game. The next night, in the second period, he suddenly started to feel nauseous and tired. What followed, Savard says, “was like a week of hell.” The nausea eventually went away, but the fatigue stayed. “I was exhausted. I slept for three days straight.” But then he started to feel better, and after a week he was back. “I just played on, and everything seemed good.”
His next concussion came a few years later, when he was playing with Atlanta in a game against Montreal. “The Bell Centre had seamless glass and it was rock hard,” he recalls. “[Stéphane] Quintal hit me behind the net and my head hit the glass. I’m not even sure how much I missed that time.” In fact, he was out ten days. “But it was the same kind of thing. I was exhausted.”
Savard knew his body. If his shoulder felt a certain way, often even before a doctor or trainer told him, he knew that he’d be out of the lineup day to day, or seven-to-ten days, or he would try to play through it and not stop playing at all. He had had several knee injuries. He knew the symptoms and treatment. He knew how his knee would feel each day, and through each stage of healing, and he knew he would get better. Injuries are just a part of the normal rhythm of a season and of a career. They were not, and could not be, his focus. His focus was healing and health. It was getting back in the lineup. It was playing. No matter how severe, an injury is almost never career-ending when it happens. If doctors, procedures, and medications aren’t the answer, time and hope might be.
By this time, Savard was beginning to know his head as well as he did his knee. After each damaging hit, he knew he would feel an incredible fatigue that would last a few days, then he would start to feel better, and then he would go back to play.
Savard calls his next concussion the “massive one.” And while it represented the turning point of his career and was the cause of great debate in the media and around the league for days afterwards, Savard isn’t sure when it happened. “I think it was April, maybe January or February.” In fact, it was March 7, 2010. “I just got hit, and I don’t recall the hit at all. I was out cold for thirty seconds.”
The Bruins were in Pittsburgh; the Penguins were leading 2–1 with less than six minutes remaining in the game. Boston forward Milan Lucic carried the puck down the left side, crossed the blue line, and passed the puck back into the middle to Savard. Penguins forward Matt Cooke saw the play developing and moved across the ice towards him. Savard took his shot, the puck left his stick, and he was extended into his follow-through and completely blind to Cooke cruising into range. At the moment Savard was at his most defenceless, Cooke, moving several miles an hour, struck Savard’s head with the full force of his 200-plus-pound body, making only incidental contact with the rest of Savard. Savard’s head snapped around, his body swung out of control to the ice. He lay on his back, motionless except for occasional twitches of a hand or foot, and then was carried off. In his team’s dressing room after the game, Cooke explained, “I just finished my check.” He was not penalized on the play.
The Bruins flew to Toronto for their next game; Savard remained in Pittsburgh at the team’s hotel. The following day he was seen by a doctor, did some tests, and was released, and he flew back to Boston. “I was just feeling frustrated,” he recalls, “and irritable. I couldn’t wait to get home. When I got there I remember just shutting the door and saying, ‘I’m going to bed.’ Then I just slept and slept and slept.”
He wanted darkness, silence, stillness. He wanted to be alone. So he slept during the day and stayed awake all night. He had always been something of a happy-go-lucky guy, but now people made him irritable, as he says, and he didn’t know why; and he didn’t like feeling that way, and he didn’t like not wanting to have people around him. But people brought light, and movement, and noise, and all of these things suddenly seemed to him so bright and quick and loud. “Everything bothered me,” Savard says.
This continued for weeks with little change. “These were some of the toughest days in my life. I just didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel at that point. I felt like crap every day.”
He’s not sure whether it was because his symptoms diminished or, as he put it, “the hockey player in me started to come out because the playoffs were just around the corner.” But he started to get excited; he had something to look forward to. He took the tests he needed to take, and passed them. “I got back on the bike and started working out again. I was getting myself ready for the playoffs. Sometimes, I admit, when they asked me how I felt, I told them great, and told myself great, because I wanted to play.”
The Bruins lost the first game of their first-round series against Buffalo; Savard was skating but not yet ready to play. As his return got closer, the Bruins started winning, so Savard rested a little longer. Boston won the series in six games, and in the next round they faced the Flyers. Savard returned to play.
Not playing for two months, jumping back into the fire of the playoffs, Savard didn’t know how he would feel. “I don’t remember the total feeling I had,” he says. “I remember feeling just still tired.” It was a different kind of fatigue. It had nothing to do with the state of his conditioning. It was as if his life-energy had been sucked out of him. “Suddenly, I just didn’t have anything to draw from.” The first game went into overtime; Savard scored the winning goal.
The Bruins won Game 2; Boston coach Claude Julien was carefully monitoring Savard’s ice time, limiting him to about fifteen minutes a game. In the third game, Bruins centre David Krejčí broke his wrist in the first period. Krejčí had taken over some of Savard’s roles when Savard was injured; now Savard needed to do the same for him. The Bruins won Game 3.
The fourth game went into overtime; Savard played over twenty-four minutes, the most of any Boston forward. The Flyers won, cutting the Bruins’ series lead to 3–1. At first, Savard had tried to persuade himself that he was tired because he hadn’t played in the previous weeks. Then, he thought, maybe if I keep playing I’ll feel better. When Game 4 was over, Savard recalls, “I don’t say anything to anybody, but I’m done.”
The Flyers won the last three games, and the series. When the round was over, the Boston Globe wrote, “Marc Savard didn’t have the ending he wanted. In 15:53 of ice time, Savard had three shots, was on the ice for two Philly goals, lost 7 of 10 faceoffs, and was involved in the too-many-men blunder in the third. Clearly, Savard needed more time to recover his touch after missing two months because of a Grade 2 concussion.”
“After the series, I went into a bit of a depression,” Savard says. He was tired, but he was used to being tired. He was disappointed, but he had been disappointed before. This wa
s something more. “I really felt horrible. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with me. I don’t feel like myself.’ I was just feeling down, really down on myself. Down on everything.” His girlfriend, now his wife, was in Peterborough. “I basically didn’t want to be with her because I was just irritable. I didn’t want to talk. I think I was pretty mean at the time.”
He went back to Peterborough, took it easy, slept, but nothing changed. When training camp began in September, he was still in Peterborough. Later that month, he drove to Boston and spoke at a press conference. The next day, Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe reported:
A somber Marc Savard, his eyes welling up a couple of times, stood in the TD Garden dressing room yesterday morning and made it clear he won’t be able to play hockey for a while.
“I am definitely going to take my time,” said the Bruins’ No. 1 center, “and make sure that I am 100 percent in every aspect before I even think about playing.” What ails Savard, in the broad and often-ambiguous definition, is postconcussion syndrome.
Dupont then listed the most common effects: “nausea, headaches, dizziness, seeing spots, and depression.” When he asked Savard the most difficult one for him to deal with, Savard replied, “Oh, probably the depression part.” The article states that “his tone [was] somber, his emotions clearly stirred.”
“With no training camp,” Savard recalls, “I was having a tough time. I didn’t know what I really wanted to do. I wasn’t really interested in hockey because of what I’d been through.” But now he was in Boston. “I got back to being around the rink, and seeing the guys, and then I started working out a bit.”
