Revisiting the house in which we grew up always takes on a nostalgic cachet when we come back to it after a few years. This is a bit of what David Savard will experience on Wednesday during the Canadiens game in Columbus.
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In fact, this is the first time the 31-year-old defenseman will set foot in Nationwide Arena since the trades that saw him move to the Detroit Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning on April 10, 2021.
“It’s going to be special to go there because I’ve never been back. Even after the playoffs because of the short summer we had. It will remind me of lots of memories and good years, ”said the Quebecer.
“A lot of things happened there. I had my three children there,” he added.
The surprise of 2019
A fourth-round pick of the Blue Jackets in 2009, Savard played the first 597 games of his career there. It grew at the same time as the concession which, from its birth in 2000, to the first full season of Maskoutain, in 2013-2014, had only participated in a single playoff round.
His arrival preceded by a few years those of Boone Jenner, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Elvis Merzlikins, Zach Werenski, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Seth Jones, this group of young people who would contribute to the surprise of the 2019 playoffs.
« Tampa [battu en quatre matchs] was a highlight of my time there. It was special to do it at home. It was the first time the organization had won a playoff round. In addition, it was against one of the very good teams in the league,” said Savard.
The passage of St-Louis
Martin St-Louis is another who will set foot in Ohio State for the first time since a tenure.
From January to May 2019, then-head coach John Tortorella offered him an advisory role within his assistant group.
St. Louis had the mandate to stimulate the massive offense of the Columbus team.
Stay connected
Moreover, this special team had greatly contributed to the success of the Blue Jackets against the Lightning since it had hit the target four times in eight occasions.
“It gave me experience in the NHL and it allowed me to stay connected with hockey,” said the man who is now the head coach of the Canadiens. I went there every two or three weeks for a period of two or three days. It allowed me to see enough of what was going on inside a locker room to understand what the job of a coach was all about. It helped prepare me for what I’m doing right now. »