Marc Savard to Stay Behind As Bruins Travel to Northern Ireland, Prague Remains Possibility

BOSTON — Marc Savard joined his teammates in their team-building trip to Vermont earlier this week, but he won’t be among the traveling party headed to Northern Ireland after Wednesday night’s preseason game.

Savard is expected to begin the season on long-term injured reserve as he recovers from post-concussion syndrome symptoms, but it is still possible he will join the club for the second league of their European excursion in Prague.

“He’s not going to start with us,” said Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli at Wednesday’s media day at the Garden. “He may join us [later in Prague]. We’re putting him on a seven- or eight-day plan while we’re gone to see the doctors. He’s got to ramp up his physical activity just to get to the exertion test, so there’s a lot of protocol we have to go through and we decided we’d be better having him here with the guidance of our doctors. We’ve got a physical therapy group here too that will work with him and start his conditioning. So he’s got to go through a number of steps [and is] better served here than over there.”

Despite the fact that Savard won’t be leaving with the team for the start of their European trip, Chiarelli was upbeat about the star center’s progress in his recovery from the Grade 2 concussion he sustained from Matt Cooke’s viscous blindside hit last March.

“He just spent the last few days with Claude [Julien] and the team in Vermont to do the team building,” said Chiarelli. “He’s again, from what I see, he’s progressing very nicely. I’ve talked to him every day and he’s on his way. But we need to make sure we do this properly.”