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NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 7, 2007

Marc Savard

DAVID KEON: Good afternoon. I'm David Keon of the National Hockey League's public relations department. Our guest is Marc Savard. Thank you for taking the time to answer questions, and thanks to Matt from the public relations department for taking the call. Marc leads overall scoring for the Bruins with 84 points and ranks 6th in scoring in the National Hockey League, with 21 goals and 63 assists. He trails only Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby with 71 and San Jose's Joel Thornton who has 68. In his 9th season, first with the Bruins, he is on pace to pass a season high of 97 points, set last season with the Atlanta Thrashers. Since the start of the 2005/2006 season, Marc is 6th among all with points, trailing Thornton, Crosby, Jagr, Heatley and Alexander Ovechkin with a record of 239.
The Bruins are 2 points out of 8th place and a playoff spot. They host Minnesota tomorrow night, visit Philadelphia Saturday, and are in Detroit as part of the regional coverage on NBC at 12:30 p.m. eastern time. Again, we thank Marc for joining us.

Q. Hi, Marc, how are you today?
MARK SAVARD: Not bad, how you guys doing?

Q. Good, thank you. The race in the east, it's a log jam. How do you assess the Bruins' chances of getting in the top 8?
MARK SAVARD: I think it's good. We have a game with everybody ahead of us. We have some defense to play, and I think it looks good. We had a tough time last night, but we're still confident.

Q. Why you played better in the last little while than you were before?
MARK SAVARD: Great defensive playing, great goaltending from our goalies, and I think it's a good team effort of late.

Q. The other question I had, Marc, is we've noticed out here in the west, anyway -- I've been charting all the games -- the power plays in the games are much lower than they were in the front of the year, and I know the players have to take some credit for the adjustment, but it seems to me there has been a little backing off in terms of the officials in terms of the ticky-tack zero tolerance stuff. What are you seeing at ice level?
MARK SAVARD: I have to agree. I think they're letting more goals of late. Seems like we got away from the stuff they called earlier, the little penalties. So we have stuff we have to deal with, and it gets frustrating, because you think they're going to call it some nights, and some nights they don't. So you have to play through it.

Q. Are you okay with that or did you want it back to the way it was?
MARK SAVARD: One or the other. I'd like them to stay with when they're calling everything; I would rather that so you know everything is going to be called, but that's not the way it is right now, so you don't know if it's going to be called or not, so you gotta keep playing.

Q. Thanks for coming on the call with us, Marc. As Dave was saying earlier in the call, you're up there with some heavy company as far as points scored over the last two years, Thornton and Crosby and Ovechkin. Do you feel like you fly under the radar a little bit?
MARK SAVARD: I guess. For a couple of years things having pretty good, but they're great players, and they have been there for a lot of years and Crosby is having a tremendous two years in a row here so, I mean, you know, I think I'm trying and hopefully maybe after this year I'll get more recognition on that end, but right now it's just trying to keep work every day and just staying positive and build off each year.

Q. How has it been -- you've played with some pretty nice offensive fire power, in Atlanta, but what's the transition to Boston been like this year?
MARK SAVARD: It's been great. We have a lot of great, young players here and I've been playing most of the season, P.J. Axelsson is a nice fit, it's been fun. I've been lucky to have scorers on the wings everywhere I've gone, Calgary and Atlanta and here with Chuck and Murray.

Q. I would like you to take us back in time a little bit, here. I've noticed since you left Calgary you've been much better than a point-a-game type of guy. Can you talk about how your game has evolved or how you've matured over the past three or four years?
MARK SAVARD: I think it's ice time. My minutes in Calgary were not as much each night, and I'm up to 20-plus, and when you get ice time, you're going to get more chances and things will come together more. And I think that's the big thing, getting a chance to play a lot more on an every day basis.

Q. Was that something you had to fight for back in Calgary, you weren't getting those same opportunities, maybe?
MARK SAVARD: Yeah, I think so. I think I needed to get my game to a higher level and I wasn't getting the opportunity to do that and things didn't work out that way in Calgary, so, you know, I got a chance in Atlanta, thanks to Charlie, giving me a great opportunity to play a lot of minutes and moved on here to Boston.

Q. Sure, you know, and obviously this year you're work at a better clip average wise points than even last year. Is 100 point barrier something that's important to you given how close you were this season?
MARK SAVARD: Well, it would be nice but we would like to get in the playoffs and keeping the offense strong would be great and playing strong as a team.
DAVID KEON: Thanks, Marc, for your time today.

End of FastScripts

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