SERGE SAVARD DISILLUSIONED
Says Habs have avoided him
Serge Savard says he feels estranged from the Montreal Canadiens organization.
On the phone recently from his home in Hilton Head Island, S.C., where he usually spends half the year, Savard sounds truly hurt as he describes his current relationship with the hockey team that was such a big part of his life. A hockey team that he helped to bring so much glory, both as a player and a general manager.
Savard won eight Stanley Cups while playing defence for the Habs between 1967 and 1981 and he also steered the CH to two Stanley Cup championships as general manager, in 1986 and again in 1993. Those, by the way, are the last two Cups won by Montreal.
When new owner Geoff Molson was looking for a general manager to replace Pierre Gauthier, who Molson had fired after a disastrous 2011-2012 season, Molson turned to Savard to help him, and it was the former Canadiens captain who recommended he hire Marc Bergevin.
“I was part of the panel that hired him for Christ's sake, and he never called me to say, `What do you think of this situation?' ” Savard said. “I was the manager for 12 years and I won a couple of Stanley Cups. I thought that I could maybe help them, to advise them on a few things. I don't think I'd hurt them. But they never used that channel. A few years back, they didn't want anyone close to the dressing room. We had to go through the press room to get to the old-timers room. They didn't want us in the hall. They certainly forgot their past. We were reminded every time of our past (when we played for the Canadiens). You know the big sign we have in the dressing room, `carrying the torch to the next generation' (`To you from failing hands we
throw the torch be yours to hold it high'), we were reminded of that.”
The biography Serge Savard: Forever Canadien is being published Oct. 21. It is the English translation of La Presse journalist Philippe Cantin's Serge Savard: Canadien jusqu'au bout. In it, Savard chronicles how he and Molson went down to New York City to interview Bergevin for the job and both were impressed by the Chicago Blackhawks executive. According to Savard, that same night Molson offered him an unspecified job with the Canadiens and said he would get back to him with a proposal. Then nothing.
“I never asked for a job,” Savard said. “He asked me to help them find a new general manager and we met Bergevin in New York that day and we had dinner that night. At the dinner he said, `I'd like to hire you.' He didn't tell me in which position. He said he wanted to hire me as soon as possible and make it public. Never heard from him after
that (about the proposal) ... I talked to him after that, but he forgot about what he'd told me. I don't think they want the (old) players around. Probably Bergevin didn't want me around. I didn't hire him, but I can tell you if I was against him, he would never have got that job.”
Asked about the incident, Canadiens senior vice-president (public affairs and communications) Paul Wilson replied by text: “Geoff considers Serge a friend and has enormous respect for him. He will always be grateful for the help and guidance he provided in his search for a new GM.”
Savard was fired as GM in 1995 when Molson Breweries owned the team, but he always maintained good relations with the Molson family. When Geoff and his brothers Andrew and Justin bought the team in 2009, Savard went out of his way to publicly congratulate them. In the book, Savard says that after he was shunned by Geoff Molson and Bergevin, he began to feel differently about the family.
He is quoted in the book saying: “But today, and I say this with some disappointment, I sometimes get a strange feeling: that my loyalty to the Molsons was stronger than their loyalty to me.”
Those were golden years for the team when he was lining up on the blue line, one-third of the so-called big three on defence, along with Larry Robinson and Guy Lapointe. Times were tougher for the club when he was GM between 1983 and 1995, but he still managed to nab two championships and there's no denying the team has not been as competitive since.
He helped pick Bergevin, but today Savard is less than impressed by the current GM'S tenure.
“They have not had much success so far,” Savard said. “They keep on rebuilding and rebuilding. At that time I thought he was the most qualified person. He had worked in almost every position in the organization in Chicago. But you have to be disappointed. In the playoffs this year, there were (four) players that he drafted on the ice. When I won the Cup in '86 after three years, I had nine players from my first two drafts on the team. They always talk about the future. But the core is getting old, Price and Weber. You have to win now because that's your core.”
But it's not only Bergevin's regime that has underperformed. So has every other GM since Savard was unceremoniously tossed from the job four games into the 1995-1996 season by then Canadiens president Ronald Corey. It's impossible not to ask Savard his thoughts on the decline after he was ejected from the old Forum.
“I told Ron, I thought we had a Stanley Cup team,” Savard said. “Then they started to move the players around. They traded Patrick Roy. The players I traded, like Shayne Corson, they got those guys back. Those guys were at the end of their road. They traded the character of the team. They traded Mike Keane. I would've never traded Mike Keane. They traded the heart of the team and they never recovered from that. They traded Mark Recchi. Mark Recchi was one of the best players in the league.”
He thought it was unfair the way Corey let him go, but he doesn't sound bitter about that.
“He hired me and he had the right to fire me,” Savard said.
I thought that maybe I could help them, to advise them on a few things ... but they never used that channel.