'His Personality Works Really Well With Those Types Of Players': Craig Berube Explains How Marc Savard Can Help as an Assistant Coach With the Maple Leafs
The Maple Leafs hired Savard this summer to round out their coaching staff.
The Toronto Maple Leafs will open the 2024-25 NHL season with a whole new look on the bench.
Shortly after hiring Craig Berube to become the team's head coach, he began to fill out his coaching staff. After hiring Lane Lambert as an associate coach and retaining Mike Van Ryn as an assistant, Berube hired Marc Savard to complete his staff.
Speaking following the announcement of Auston Matthews as the team's new captain on Wednesday, Berube spoke about the Savard hiring.
"He’s an offensive guy, right? He scored a lot of points in the league. Great power-play guy when he played," Berube said. "Just the familiarity I have with him and his personality works well with those types of players."
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Savard will run a Leafs power play that has been anchored by a top unit that features Toronto's core players of Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly over the years. The Leafs finished with the seventh-best power play during the regular season at 24 percent, but the playoffs is where the unit struggled mightily, scoring just once in their first-round series loss to the Boston Bruins.
As a player in the NHL, Savard had success with the man-advantage. In his 13-year career, he scored 207 goals and 499 assists in 807 games. Eighty of those goals came on the power-play accounting for 39 percent.
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As a coach, Savard ran the power play with the St. Louis Blues under Berube during the 2019-20 season. St. Louis had the third-best power play at 24.3 percent. He returned to the NHL after spending a couple of years as a head coach in the OHL where he led the Calgary Flames power play, but they struggled at a seventh-worst 17.9 percent.
What impact will Savard really have on the power play?
It's going to come down to sticking with what has worked. With the Leafs being loaded with offensive talent on the first unit, it's hard to envision much of a breakup of the current core on the first unit. However, if they struggle, it will be interesting to see of Savard does split it up to spread the wealth among two units.
There's nothing really wrong with Toronto's power play other than coming up big when it matters, like in the playoffs. Savard has scored some big game-winners in OT and perhaps that might help.
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