Blackhawks fire Savard, bring in Quenneville
Last Updated: Thursday, October 16, 2008 | 8:03 PM ET
CBC Sports
Denis Savard was off to a 1-2-1 start this season with the Blackhawks. (Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press)Denis Savard is the first coaching casualty of the NHL season.
The slow-starting Chicago Blackhawks fired Savard on Thursday and replaced him with veteran head coach Joel Quenneville.
A big spender in the off-season, Chicago (1-2-1) is coming off its first win of the new campaign, a 4-1 home triumph over the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday.
Quenneville, 50, was already on the Blackhawks payroll. He came aboard as a pro scout in the off-season after parting ways with the Colorado Avalanche following three seasons as their head coach.
Blackhawks GM Dale Tallon said firing Savard, who was in his third season as the team's bench boss, was the toughest decision he's ever made.
"There was some silence and a lot of emotion. He handled it with tremendous class and dignity, as he always does," Tallon said at a news conference. "He accepted it, and we're going to move on."
Tallon said the possibility of making a change arose during training camp.
"It was a flat camp, and we got out of the gate flat. It just didn't seem that we carried over the energy that we had to finish the year last year. We felt we needed to send a message and invigorate this team. …
"It's about moving forward, about achieving and winning and developing a consistent approach. And we felt we needed a more experienced person in that position, and that's why we made the decision."
Great expectations
"It was a little different watching from afar," Quenneville said. "The appetite and the passion that creeps in when you coach hopefully comes out tomorrow. I expect it to."
Before joining the Avalanche, Quenneville spent parts of eight seasons at the helm of the St. Louis Blues. He won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's coach of the year after the 1999-2000 campaign, his fourth in St. Louis.
Quenneville has finished with a winning record in each of his 11 seasons as an NHL head coach.
Savard, a Hall of Fame player, became the Blackhawks' head coach in November 2006 and finished that season with a record of 24-30-7 in 61 games.
In 2007-08, he guided a team including star rookies Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, the team captain, to the Blackhawks' first 40-win season since 2001-02. They went 40-34-8 to finish just three points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.
"I put our young kids in a position to succeed," Savard told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I thought we were on the right track."
Chicago fans expected even better things this season after Tallonv bolstered the roster by lavishing rich free-agent contracts on defenceman Brian Campbell and goalie Cristobal Huet.
"I understand the business," Savard told the Sun-Times. "We made a commitment to our fans, and they're going for what they think is the best coach available."
With files from the Associated Press
