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Originally Posted by dissentowner
No he wasn't, he was a skill player that didn't want to play like a meathead which is what Greg Gilbert wanted. He didn't change a thing about his game and went on to be the #1C we were missing during Iginla's prime years. The blame falls on Gilbert and Button, not Savard.
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Yes he was lazy and disinterested. This is hardly new information, his game changed and he evolved as a player after leaving Calgary. He credit's that to Bob Hartley in Atlanta.
The game changed after the 2005 lockout that favoured smaller skilled guys like Savard. Learning how to play and the game opening up helped him immensely.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...rticle1343981/
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"There were some tough times for sure," Marc Savard says, "especially when I felt I could play in the league at the time. I had some tough situations there, you know, obviously the coach ..."
Calgary dealt him to the Thrashers in 2002, where a new coach, Bob Hartley, soon arrived and immediately had a profound effect on Savard.
Player and coach lived on a golf course only five houses apart, and Hartley used "idle time" - pitching golf balls (Savard is a scratch player) and playing bubble hockey in Hartley's basement - to get through to the player no one else had been able to penetrate.
"If he would listen," Hartley says, "I told him I would be willing to trade quite a bit of ice time."
What Savard listened to was a series of lectures on how good he could be if he wanted to be.
"You're going to waste quite a talent," Hartley told him. "Your talent is a given, but the rest of it is not a gift, you have to make a choice. You have the talent to be a star, but your worst enemy is you.
"In Marc's mind, it was everybody's fault, but I give him credit. He took the plan and went with it."
The plan was simple. Work harder, check harder, be a team player. In return for a new work ethic, Hartley gave him ice time with rising stars Ilya Kovalchuk, Dany Heatley and Marian Hossa. It paid off handsomely for all.
"[Hartley]was like a father figure to me," Savard says. "He really helped me out."
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The idea that Savard's game stayed exactly the same after leaving Calgary is insanely stupid. He's acknowledged the work he put in, you should too.