Savvy's back! Now let's start planning that parade route in June for the Stanley Cup

In the recent history of Boston sports, there's no local pro athlete that I have felt worse for than Boston Bruins center Marc Savard.

Not only did he miss much of last season on a dirty hit by Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke (which went unpunished by Colin Campbell - and now we might know why given his e-mail history) but he also missed 23 games this season while he recovered from the lingering effects of that pesky concussion.

Finally, Savard returned to the ice last night as the Bruins absolutely skated circles around the Tampa Bay Lightning, 8-1 at the TD Garden.

Savard didn't even have a point in the game which saw seven different Bruins (14-8-2) score goals but that's not the point (no pun intended). With him back, Boston has way more depth offensively and can boast a center combo of Savard, David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron and Gregory Campball. Not bad at all.

After losing in Tampa Bay last week, this blowout was quite unexpected since the Lightning (14-9-3) are one of the NHL's most up and coming young teams.

With Tim Thomas (13-2-1; 37 saves) in goal, this was never really a contest as the Bruins led 2-0 after one period and 4-1 after two periods before pumping in four in the third period. Cue the youth hockey coaches and assorted douchebags saying something dumb like wish those goals carried over.

Krejci opened the scoring with a goal from Milan Lucic and Andrew Ference at 10:51 in the first. Dennis Seidenberg made it 2-0 with 20 seconds left in the frame when his snap shot from the point went past Tampa Bay goaltender Mike Smith (17 saves). Smith completely misjudged the play as he thought Seidenberg was going to wrap it around the boards, instead he put it on goal and was lucky enough to get his first tally of the season.

Lucic increased the Boston lead to 3-0 at 6:48 in the second period from Krejci and Nathan Horton (who lately had been the invisible man).

Victor Hedman broke Thomas' bid for another shutout at 15:14 on a one-timer from Ryan Malone and Sean Bergenheim. That would be the Lightning's only highlight of a forgettable night.

Shawn Thornton answered with Boston's second cupcake goal. A Lightning defenseman and Smith fumbled with the puck and it ended up right on the goal-line where Thornton just had to skate up and tap it in. Brad Marchand and Thomas assisted.

It might be because I was watching it a bar with no sound on but the third period was nuts. It seemed like every shot the Bruins threw at the Tampa Bay net went in.

34 seconds into the third Krejci potted his second, unassisted. That prompted Smith to get pulled but it didn't matter as Dan Ellis (7 saves) certainly wasn't the solution to Tampa Bay's myriad problems.

1:16 after Ellis entered, Michael Ryder greeted him with an unassisted goal of his own. Later, Mark Recchi scored on a power play (from Ryder and Zdeno Chara) and Blake Wheeler (who else?) closed it out with a goal from Recchi.

Boston looks to be playing good hockey once again so ideally they can keep it going as they travel to Toronto tomorrow night to meet Phil Kessel and the still-shitty Maple Leafs.

PS. The Marco Sturm trade to the Los Angeles Kings for a conditional draft pick didn't happen, at least not yet. Not sure why it fell through but apparently it wasn't because he failed a physical. Uh ok then.