Advent Day 18 - Denis Savard

Savard played 17 years in the NHL, spending the majority of them in Chicago during two different stints. He came into the league in 1980 scoring 75 points as a rookie (he was only 1 point shy of the team lead). He would go on to score a total of 1338, with nearly 500 goals and more than 800 assists.

He never won any major awards, he only played in one All-Star game, but Denis Savard was a magician on the ice going end to end and using the infamous spin-o-rama to beat defenders (a move defined by another Savard...Serge). He was a part of the Montreal team that won the cup in 1993 (the Canadiens got Savard in the trade that sent Chris Chelios to Chicago). However, he would only be in his home province of Quebec for 3 years before being sent south to the relatively new Tampa Bay Lightning. He switched to number 9 in Tampa, not because 18 was being used but because 9 wasn't retired already as it had been in Chicago (Hull) and Montreal (Richard). His time there was short, only a little more than a season, before he came back to Chicago.

He finished out three more seasons before retiring as the third highest scoring Blackhawk in history. His number 18 was retired the next year, and in 2000 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. After hanging up the skates he never left hockey - he became the assistant coach for the Hawks in 1997 (spending 10 years in the position) and is currently their head coach.

More on Savard can be found at Legends of Hockey here.

The jerseys in the database can be found here.

About the jerseys: The Canadiens jersey with the logo on the sleeve was worn by Montreal in 1991-92 as part of the celebrations around the 75th anniversary of the NHL. All of the Original Six teams wore heritage jerseys. The Canadiens wore that particular style in the late 20's and early 30's during the time of Howie Morenz.

The Tampa Bay Lightning, despite not changing the actual appearance of the jerseys themselves between their conception in 1992 till this year's Reebok jerseys, changed their fonts and texts 4 times. Most notably each of the first three years of their existance. They have used their current font style since 2001. Besides the two shown here, in their first season the Lightning had a non-sheared version of the upper of the two types shown above. (I won't even go into their third jersey from 1996 with the rain and waves on it...)

The guy had some serious moves...