Other items from around the Eastern Conference this morning:

• Of the Red Wings’ long list of potential impact prospects, look for a dark horse to log significant NHL minutes this season, opines The Athletic’s Max Bultman. That’s 22-year-old left winger Carter Mazur, who Detroit selected in the third round of the 2021 draft. Mazur, who won an NCAA championship as a freshman at the University of Denver in 2022, is entering his second professional season. He had a strong rookie campaign with the AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins last year, totaling 17 goals and 20 assists for 37 points in 60 games, finishing second on the team in scoring behind Jonatan Berggren. Bultman argues that Mazur has a more straightforward path to a roster spot early on in the season because of his projectability in a bottom-six role,
• When the Maple Leafs gave new head coach Craig Berube some runway to reshape the rest of the coaching staff, he poached Marc Savard from the Flames as an assistant to run the team’s power play with consistency from Toronto’s immense star power in mind. “He’s an offensive guy, right? He scored a lot of points in the league. Great power-play guy when he played,” Berube told reporters (including David Alter of The Hockey News). “Just the familiarity I have with him and his personality works well with those types of players.” Savard served under Berube while the two were with the Blues in the 2019-20 campaign.

Savard has become a popular coaching candidate despite just two years as an NHL assistant. But he proved plenty successful in both opportunities, leading the Blues to a 24.2 percent success rate on the power-play in 2019-20, good for third-best in the league. Savard stepped away from St. Louis after one season, moving to a head coaching role with the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. Savard would spend two years in Windsor, leading the team to 44 wins in both seasons, and a run to the OHL championship in 2022. He kept his tenure brief, though, taking his talent behind the Calgary Flames bench in the 2023-24 season, where he found significantly less success than in St. Louis. Savard led the Flames power-play to a a 17.9 percent success rate, the seventh-worst in the league.

But for all of his coaching prowess, Savard is still remembered most fondly as a player. Originally selected in the fourth round of the 1995 NHL Draft, Savard won an OHL championship before making the jump to the AHL, and then NHL in the three years following his draft – finding a way to emerge as a top scorer at every step. Savard would move through appearances with the Calgary Flames and Atlanta Thrashers, consistently showcasing plenty of promising scoring and plenty tenacity, though he wasn’t able to play every game of a season until 2005-06. He performed well when fully healthy, recording 28 goals and 97 points and vindicating it with 96 points in 82 more games the next year. The pair of high-scoring seasons, which overlapped Savard’s move to the Boston Bruins, established him as one of the league’s top wingers. He’d carry that title through five years with the Bruins, though repeated injuries eventually caught up to Savard. He famously retired in 2011, citing concussions-related symptoms. He totaled 807 career games across 13 seasons in the league and retired just ahead of Boston’s 2011 Stanley Cup win, which would have been the first of his career. He’ll now look to chase that title as a coach, taking over a power-play unit featuring Auston Matthews and William Nylander, among plenty of other star offensive talent.

The 46-year-old ran the Flames power play this past season, which was seventh worst in the NHL. However, when Savard ran the Blues power play under Berube, St. Louis had the third-best power play in the NHL at 24.3%.

In other Atlantic Division notes:

• Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch is reporting that the Ottawa Senators are likely to pursue Boston Bruins netminder Linus Ullmark prior to the NHL entry draft next month. The Bruins have received some of the best goaltending in the league over the last two seasons and are in a predicament as they want to sign Jeremy Swayman to a long-term deal but will have Ullmark’s $5MM on their salary cap for one more season. The Senators were reportedly among the teams that tried to acquire Ullmark prior to the NHL trade deadline but were unable to complete a deal. Ottawa received some of the worst goaltending in the NHL last season despite inking free agent Joonas Korpisalo to a five-year $20MM deal last summer. The goaltender position has been a revolving door for the Senators since veteran Craig Anderson left town as a free agent back in 2020.
• Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic is reporting that it seems likelier than not that Detroit Red Wings forward Patrick Kane will go to free agency on July 1st, but he believes that Kane’s agent Pat Brisson will talk to the Red Wings in the next couple of weeks. Kane took a one-year deal for $2.75MM this past season and will be looking for more term on his next contract after posting solid numbers coming off hip resurfacing surgery. Kane dressed in 50 games for Detroit this season, tallying 20 goals and 27 assists while averaging a career-low in ice time at just 18:23 per game.

We would like to thank Marc for his commitment last season and also for his professionalism during this process to arrive at today’s decision. We wish Marc success with his future endeavors in the game.

Savard joined Calgary last June, joining Ryan Huska’s staff after he was appointed as their new bench boss.  It was his first time being back behind an NHL bench since the 2019-20 season when he was with St. Louis.  In between that time, Savard spent two years as head coach with OHL Windsor which helped get him back on the NHL coaching radar.

Savard was responsible for running Calgary’s forward group and power play this season, units that didn’t exactly light it up.  The Flames scored seven fewer goals than 2022-23 while they had just a 17.7% success rate on the man advantage, good for 26th league-wide after being 18th the year before.  Of course, it bears mentioning that they moved out their two top point-getters from 2022-23 in Tyler Toffoli and Elias Lindholm which certainly wouldn’t have helped things.

Savard’s time with St. Louis is notable as there has been speculation that Toronto head coach Craig Berube would be interested in adding Savard to his staff.  That outcome is a lot easier to make happen now as a result of Savard parting ways with the Flames.

10:54 am: While news about the Calgary Flames in the past 24 hours has surrounded people wanting out of the organization, at least one person wants in. The team is hiring Marc Savard as an assistant coach, per Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek (and Savard himself).

According to The Hockey News’ Tony Ferrari, Savard is expected to work with the team’s power play and offensive strategy.

Savard’s hire continues to bring the band of early 2000s Flames players back together, joining one-time teammates Craig Conroy and Jarome Iginla in coaching and managerial roles. After coming over in a June 1999 trade from the New York Rangers, Savard registered 6o goals, 94 assists, and 154 points in 221 games as a Flame around the turn of the century before later stints with the Atlanta Thrashers and Boston Bruins.

The move will likely complete Calgary’s bench next season, led by new head coach Ryan Huska. Per Sportsnet’s Pat Steinberg, their goalie coach position is probably solidified with Jason LaBarbera not being affected by the team’s other coaching changes.

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman says only one of the team’s three other assistants from last season under head coach Darryl Sutter is returning – Cail MacLean. Savard and former Nashville Predators assistant Dan Lambert are expected to fill the spots vacated by Huska’s promotion and the departure of associate coach Kirk Muller.

Savard’s return to the game in a coaching role has been one of the better feel-good stories of the past few years. The Boston Bruins signed him to a seven-year, $28.15MM extension set to begin in the 2010-11 season, during which he only played 25 games. He spent the final six seasons of the contract on long-term injured reserve due to severe post-concussion complications.

Nearly a decade later, Savard joined the St. Louis Blues’ bench in 2019-20, helping them to a second-place finish in the regular season while boasting the third-best power play in the league. He didn’t return for the 2020-21 campaign but then took over as the head coach of the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires for the following two seasons, during which the team posted a combined record of 88-35-13 and reached the OHL final in 2021-22.

With a change potentially on the horizon in the Sunshine State behind the bench of the Florida Panthers, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports that he’s heard a connection between the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners and Blashill. It’s unclear at this point whether the Panthers will retain interim head coach Andrew Brunette, who was a nominee for the Jack Adams Award this past season after guiding Florida to a 122-point season. It would be a puzzling choice from the Panthers to move on from Brunette for someone like Blashill who hasn’t made any notable achievements at the NHL level, undoubtedly.

• After getting fired by the New York Islanders today, Jim Hiller is on the radar of the Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings (among other clubs) for their head coaching vacancies, reports ESPN’s Kevin Weekes. It would be a return to the Red Wings organization for Hiller, who got his first NHL job there as an assistant in 2014-15 after five seasons as the head coach of the WHL’s Tri-City Americans. He’s been with the Islanders since 2019-20 and has overseen their two back-to-back runs to the Eastern Conference Final in 2020 and 2021.
• The Athletic’s Saad Yousuf today downplayed the link between the Dallas Stars and Marc Savard for their open spot behind the bench. While Yousuf didn’t rule out Savard as a candidate in the team’s search, he says that nothing from the team has indicated him as a frontrunner.

Tocchet, 58, last coached the Arizona Coyotes in 2020-21 and has most recently been working as an analyst for Turner Sports’ NHL coverage, primarily on TNT. Tocchet also coached the Tampa Bay Lightning for two seasons from 2008-09 and 2009-10. Tocchet’s results as a head coach are mixed, with his teams only making the playoffs once, in the unique bubble situation of the 2019-20 season. But with those mixed results comes the two Stanley Cup rings Tocchet won as an assistant coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and there are many coaches who have difficult early tenures only to finally figure things out in a second or third job. While Tocchet never played for the Stars during his illustrious 1144-game NHL career, it seems that he may end up there as their next head coach.

Now, for some other notes regarding the Dallas Stars:

• Another former player is, like Tocchet, on the Stars’ radar for their vacant head coaching job. Marc Savard, the rookie head coach of the Windsor Spitfires who now has his team in the semifinals of the OHL playoffs, is “on Dallas’ radar,” per Marek. Savard’s Spitfires posted a 44-17-7 record this season, and his connection to prized prospect Wyatt Johnston, who tore the OHL apart this season to the tune of 124 points, could prove useful should he choose to pursue the job.
• The Stars’ offseason is a crucial one for reasons beyond just their coaching search. Star forward Jason Robertson and goaltender Jake Oettinger, the team’s playoff hero, are out of contract and are eligible for restricted free agency. The direction the team goes in terms of their extensions could dictate what the Stars are able to do in terms of adding other players. Another crucial Star, Roope Hintz, is not out of a contract but eligible for an extension thanks to there only being one season left on his current deal. Per Marek, the Stars want to get an extension “done early” and lock up Hintz along with their other core players. Given Hintz’s play these past two seasons, the Stars’ reported desire to extend him now seems wise, because his price is likely only going up as he gets more productive seasons under his belt.

It’s not too late for Laberge to develop into a strong AHL player, but the idea that he will ever be an NHL option is quickly disappearing. Given the fact that German Rubtsov, he of four career NHL games, was the team’s first-round pick that season you might think the 2016 class is a write-off for Philadelphia. Not so, as the four picks after Laberge have all played in the NHL, including a goaltender by the name of Carter Hart, selected 48th overall.

• One of junior hockey’s biggest programs is getting a high-profile coach, as Marc Savard has been hired by the Windsor Spitfires of the OHL as head coach. Savard had 706 points in 807 NHL games, including a pair of 95+ point seasons before his career was cut short by concussion issues. He served as an assistant coach with the St. Louis Blues in 2019-20, but this will be his first chance to run a high-level program. The Spitfires have won the Memorial Cup three times, most recently in 2017 when they had players like Mikhail Sergachev and Gabriel Vilardi leading the way. Savard has his own history of success in the OHL, twice leading the league in scoring (with 139 and 130 points) for the Oshawa Generals.
• Matvei Michkov, a name you will hear more and more in the coming years, is making his debut for the senior SKA St. Petersburg squad today. Why is that impressive? Well, Michkov is just 16 years old and not eligible for the NHL Draft until 2023. The dynamic winger has carved through the Russian junior system scoring at will and was a big reason why his team won gold at the recent Hlinka-Gretzky Cup. While there are several incredible prospects set to be eligible in that 2023 draft, Michkov has a real shot to compete for the top spot.

Marc has decided to step away and will not coach in the National Hockey League in 2020-21. I want to thank Marc for his work with our coaches and players during his time in St. Louis and wish him nothing but the best.

Savard, 43, joined the Blues a little over a year ago as a powerplay coach and helped St. Louis to the third-best success rate with the man-advantage this season. A dynamic playmaker during his career, Savard was forced from the NHL due to chronic concussion issues in 2011 after scoring 706 points in 807 games.

This was his first stint as an NHL coach, but perhaps Savard will return down the road at some point.

I was fortunate to play with Marc during my career and I’m very familiar with his passion and acumen for the game. He was a tremendous player and possesses an elite offensive mind. His addition to our staff will be a great benefit to our players and the organization.

There’s no doubting how effective Savard was during his playing career. Originally selected in the fourth round—likely because of his size, given he had just scored 139 points in 66 OHL games—he quickly forced his way into the NHL and never looked back. The 5’10” center was an incredible playmaker, creating space for himself before finding an open teammate. In 807 career regular season contests Savard recorded 706 points, including back-to-back years of 97 and 96 during his prime. His 69 assists in 2005-06 was the franchise record for the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets until last season when Blake Wheeler recorded 71.

Unfortunately, Savard’s career was cut short by multiple concussions sustained in 2010 and 2011. When the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, Savard’s name was included despite not having played in the postseason after the team petitioned the league to include it. He wouldn’t play again, though his contract would run through the 2016-17 season.

Savard joins Steve Ott and Mike Van Ryn as assistants for Berube as the Blues attempt to defend their Stanley Cup championship in 2019-20. He is expected to take on a role with skills development and contribute to the powerplay.

However, Kovalchuk, who signed a three-year, $18.75MM deal last summer, might not fetch a big return for the Kings. A team has to be willing to take on two more years of the 35 year-old’s contract which carries an expensive $6.25MM AAV with it. He has scored 13 goals and has 28 points in 50 games so far this year, while dealing with injuries, but few teams would be willing to give up more than a lower-level prospect to take on Kovalchuk.

Elliott also points out that Los Angeles are far more likely to hold onto defenseman Alec Martinez, who might not bring back the return they were hoping for, while few teams have shown much interest in Jeff Carter so far.

• Sportsnet’s Marc Savard tweets that the Florida Panthers are getting a lot of calls on forward Mike Hoffman and the Arizona Coyotes, who are looking to make a late playoff run, are pushing hard to acquire the speedy winger. The 29-year-old is having a nice season as he has 26 goals and 51 points, which is in line for a career year. Hoffman could bring back a signficant return as he has another year on his deal at $5.19MM and would be another significant addition of scorers for the Coyotes.
• The Anaheim Ducks may make a quiet move or two, but after agreeing to a five-year extension with Jakob Silfverberg, the team lacks any significant trade assets to move at the trade deadline. However, The Athletic’s Eric Stephens (subscription required) writes that with the play of Max Jones and the Max Comtois (currently in juniors), winger Nick Ritchie might be expendable now and be potentially available. A holdout at the beginning of the season, Ritchie eventually signed an inexpensive three-year deal, totaling just $4.6MM, which some teams might covet. Ritchie, of course, hasn’t proven he can be anything more than a 15-goal scorer.
• Kevin Kurz of The Athletic reports that Erik Karlsson, who left in the second period of Saturday’s loss to Columbus, tweaked his groin injury in the game. No word on the severity of the injury, however. Karlsson already missed a month between January and February with that lower-body injury, and more missed time would be a setback for a Sharks’ team trying to work their way to the top of the Pacific Division. Head coach Peter DeBoer said he is concerned. “Absolutely,” said DeBoer. “I thought we were as conservative and cautious as you can be but muscle injuries you don’t know. Sometimes you get in positions or over-extend it. We’ll see where it’s at tomorrow.”

Interestingly, players like Ryan Merkley (#21 among North American skaters) and Bode Wilde (#22) find themselves relatively far down the list despite their previous top-10 projections. Whether that has more to do with their own play slipping this season or the influx of talent throughout the draft class is unclear, but it should excite even teams in the playoff picture with the prospect of adding an impact player on defense.

• Many of the Olympic rosters have now been released, with young players like Dahlin, Miro Heiskanen and Eeli Tolvanen dominating the headlines for Sweden and Finland. Rosters for the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and host Korea are available on the IIHF website. Igor Eronko of Sport-Express reports that the Olympic Athletes from Russia squad will release their roster on Thursday, which should be one of the powerhouses of the tournament.
• Marc Savard has officially announced his retirement, exactly seven years after his last game in the NHL. The exquisite playmaker was forced from the game due to concussion problems, but was still technically under contract through last season. His career ended in 2011 with the Bruins after 807 games, in which he registered 706 points including seasons of 97 and 96. According to Chris Lomon of the NHLPA, Savard is looking to move up the coaching ranks after spending some time behind the bench of his sons’ triple-A teams.

@JimRouleau39: When will the Red Wings make a move on Jeff Blashill? The team seems to have no energy! And continue to beat themselves.

This season has been nothing short of a disaster so far for Detroit.  They sit dead last in the Eastern Conference and their quarter-century playoff streak is in serious jeopardy.  Despite that, I don’t suspect Blashill’s job is in jeopardy any time soon.

GM Ken Holland is quite patient and Blashill was long heralded as Mike Babcock’s successor even while he was still behind the bench for the Red Wings.  At that time, they were hesitant to grant interviews for Blashill to interview for other NHL head coaching jobs, something that doesn’t typically happen.  Blashill has been Holland’s guy for a long time now and it’s hard to see one season, as bad as it has been, cause him to change his mind.

Detroit has been hit hard by injuries this year while goalie Petr Mrazek hasn’t played anywhere near the level that he is capable of.  These are also factors that suggest that Blashill will get another opportunity next season with what may be a bit of a different looking roster.

Jay: In general would you expect less trades this deadline because of the expansion draft or will that not really have a huge impact.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see a quieter deadline this year because of the dearth of sellers and a lot of teams being capped out.  I don’t expect the expansion draft to be at the forefront at the deadline though except for the sellers who can try to plan ahead a little bit.  For the teams that are looking to contend, their focus is going to be adding the right piece(s) to help them win now and worry about sorting out their protected list later.  Most of the deadline deals are likely to be rental players anyways and it’s unlikely that those pending unrestricted free agents will be considered for protection.

For teams like Arizona, Colorado, and whoever else becomes a sure fire seller over the next month, they can determine what their list is likely to look like in June and who is most likely to be selected by the Golden Knights.  From there, they could see if a buyer would have interest in making a move for that player but beyond that, I suspect the bulk of the expansion-related deals will come after the trade deadline.

@Grade5Woolgar: Where and how is Marc Savard? Post concussion and no news since. Is he ok?

Savard is living in Peterborough, ON and is staying involved in hockey as, like many retired players, he is coaching his son at the minor hockey level.  He also has taken up golf and has qualified for a couple of tournaments on a lower professional golf circuit although his physical limitations have made it difficult for him to play a full four rounds.  He’s also dealing with some memory loss as well given all of the concussions he has dealt with, the last one coming back in 2010-11 when he last played.

This is the final year that Savard will be on the books of an NHL team as the Devils acquired him from Florida as a salary cap dump last offseason.  Once his contract expires, he will likely officially file his retirement papers.