from Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star,

In his summertime search for a new head coach for the Ontario Hockey League’s Windsor Spitfires, general manager Bill Bowler considered plenty of candidates before conducting one standout interview. It was with Marc Savard, the former NHL all-star.

If the 44-year-old Savard’s bench credentials weren’t exactly robust — he had coached his two sons in AAA youth hockey in Peterborough before spending the 2019-20 season as an assistant coach with the NHL’s St. Louis Blues — Bowler said he was particularly impressed by one aspect of his talk with Savard. In the course of a lengthy conversation, Savard made no mention of his playing days. Not that Bowler wasn’t fully aware of who he was talking to. But the GM considered it a good sign that Savard didn’t feel the need to lean on the fact that he had won an OHL championship with the Oshawa Generals while leading the league in scoring in 1996-97, or that, in Savard’s most productive four-year span as a playmaking centreman for the Boston Bruins, he racked up more assists than any NHLer not named Joe Thornton.

To Bowler, an East York native who sits fourth on the OHL’s all-time career scoring list, five spots ahead of Savard, long-ago stats simply aren’t a great indicator of coaching potential.

“If you’re still talking about when you played and how things were when you were a player, I don’t know if that will lead to any success as a hockey coach,” Bowler said. “But all Marc talked about was coaching. If you care about coaching and trying to learn a new craft as a coach, then I think you have a great chance to be successful.”

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