The Toronto Maple Leafs have a new assistant coach, Marc Savard.
Savard’s hiring confirms the rumors and brings him back together with Craig Berube, whom he worked with in St. Louis during the 2019-20 season. In Toronto, Savard will likely handle power-play duties again. Despite only two years as an NHL assistant, he’s already proven himself by leading the Blues to a top-three power-play success rate of 24.2% in 2019-20. After one year in St. Louis, he moved on to coach the Windsor Spitfires in the OHL, achieving 44 wins each season and reaching the championship final in 2022. He then joined Calgary Flames for the 2023-24 season but struggled there with a power-play success rate of just 17.9%, ranking seventh worst.
Savard is mostly remembered for his playing days. Drafted in the fourth round of the 1995 NHL Draft, he won an OHL championship before advancing to AHL and then NHL, becoming a top scorer at each level. His career included stints with Calgary Flames and Atlanta Thrashers where he showed scoring talent but faced injuries that limited his playtime until 2005-06 when he scored 28 goals and had 97 points.
Marc Savard’s Coaching Journey
Savard then moved to Boston Bruins where he became one of the league’s best wingers over five seasons despite recurring injuries that eventually forced him into retirement in 2011 due to concussion symptoms. He played a total of 807 games over his career but retired just before Boston’s Stanley Cup win that year.
Fans might think this is a great move for Toronto given Savard’s track record with power plays.
Now as a coach, Savard aims to win that elusive title by working with stars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander on Toronto’s power-play unit.
What do you think about this new coaching addition?
