For days now, Marc Savard has stayed inside his Boston condo, unable to do much beyond eat and sleep. His friends and Bruins' teammates say he exists in a vacuum of silence – no TV, no music – with curtains drawn even in daylight.
They know this from his text messages and brief telephone calls since he was carried off the ice at Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena, his game and life interrupted by a head shot from the Penguins' Matt Cooke.
What the Bruins also suspect is that Mr. Savard, at 32 in the prime of a rebuilt career – from “me” player to team player – is done for the season, the playoffs too. They spoke of that yesterday after practising in Montreal, where Boston head coach Claude Julien registered blunt disappointment. “He's not well. Not well at all.”
That Mr. Savard's career has been jeopardized has sickened many in the NHL, including Mr. Cooke's Pittsburgh teammate Bill Guerin, who said the league should punish headhunters. Mr. Cooke got off scot-free, although the NHL is vowing to draft new legislation to ban blind-side headshots next season. Boston forward and former Penguin Mark Recchi was certain of one thing: “Once again it's a black eye for the NHL.”
Mr. Savard had just unleashed a shot on goal last Sunday and had his head down when Mr. Cooke, angling in from Mr. Savard's right, levelled him with what Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli dubbed “a very surgical hit to the head.” Video replays showed Mr. Cooke, an aggressive forward with a history of rag-dolling rivals, didn't leave his feet. The NHL reviewed the play, took into consideration there was no penalty called, took into account its previous disciplinary calls for other on-ice hits, and decided Mr. Cooke should not be suspended.
“We couldn't find criteria that was consistent with suspending him,” said NHL senior vice-president Colin Campbell.
For fellow Bruin Patrice Bergeron, seeing Mr. Savard lying motionless on the ice was something worse. In October, 2007, Mr. Bergeron was rammed into the end boards from behind by Randy Jones of the Philadelphia Flyers and suffered a concussion that ended his season. For the longest time, Mr. Bergeron was a physical wreck, crippled by the slightest sound or movement.
“I couldn't really do anything in terms of little activities that you do every day – watching television, having a crowd of people around me. I had a lot of trouble with noise,” he recalled. “There's no chance that I would have been able to handle being here [in the locker room] today, talking to you … I know that [Mr. Savard] needs time. He needs to not use his brain too much to touch off the symptoms.”
Mr. Bergeron said he wasn't on the ice when the Cooke hit occurred but hopped over the boards to watch trainers tend to a motionless Mr. Savard. Mr. Bergeron noticed his former Olympic teammate, Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby, was skating nearby.
“There's not much to say and I didn't really feel like talking much either,” Mr. Bergeron said. “But Sid didn't look like a guy who liked that [Cooke] gesture very much.”
Mr. Savard had missed 24 games this season with a foot and knee injury but was being counted on to lead the Bruins in the playoffs. Last December, the team signed its top centreman to a seven-year contract that was to take him to the summer of 2014. That he would be considered so vital a component to the team spoke to his turnabout from defensively soft, one-way player to respected leader.
