But Gallic temper prevailed over memory when a frustrated Savard skated to the bench early in the third period of the Hawks' Sept. 26 preseason game against Minnesota and flung his gloves on the floor of the players' box. Then, recalls Tessier, "He says to me, `That bleeping power play isn't working.` So I said to him, `O.K., you don't bleeping have to play on it.`" Savard, who last year broke the Hawks' single-season scoring record with 119 points and whose scintillating stickhandling makes him a favorite with Chicago fans, spent the rest of the game on the bench while his team skated to a 3-2 loss.

By such remorselessly swift and unpolitic strokes of justice, Tessier, 49, has begun to recast the character of the first NHL team ever entrusted to him. It was a character sorely in need of recasting. In 1981-82, the Hawks were a sort of run-and-mug club that had the seventh-best offense in the 21-team league and the third-worst defense. They surrendered 31 more goals than they scored. In addition, only five teams were assessed more penalty minutes than Chicago, whose infractions included 33 misconducts. The Hawks ended the regular season in fourth place in the Norris Division with a 30-38-12 record. That they clutched and grabbed their way into the semifinals of the playoffs before losing to Vancouver only underscored the point that, while Chicago had talent, it lacked discipline. Today the Hawks seem to have both.

After Sunday's 7-3 win over Toronto, Chicago was 7-2-5 and second to Minnesota in the Norris. The Hawks had scored 13 more goals than they had given up (62 to 49) and, perhaps most indicative of the change Tessier has wrought, had the fourth-fewest penalty minutes in the league and only one misconduct. As for the Savard-Tessier relationship? Not to worry. "Denny came to see me next morning and said he wished it hadn't happened," says Tessier. "I said I wished it hadn't happened, and that was the end of it. I don't have a doghouse. I don't believe in treating human beings that way."

Besides taking quick command of the Hawks, "Orval's proving that better defense doesn't take away from our offense," says Savard, who after 14 games had six goals and 15 assists. So well has Tessier indoctrinated the Hawks with his gospel of defense that they never hesitate to spout one of his favorite maxims: "If we take care of our own end, the other end will take care of itself."

"Thus far he's proven it to us," says Doug Wilson, who last season won the NHL's Norris Trophy (best defenseman) primarily because he scored 39 goals, the second-highest total ever by a defenseman (Bobby Orr had 49 in 1974-75). This year Wilson leads the Hawks in scoring with 22 points on four goals and 18 assists and in shots on goal with 54. Defensively, though, he's still a liability. As a result, in a 3-3 tie with Washington last week, Tessier had a chance to live up to another one of his maxims: "I coach for the team, not the player." With nine seconds remaining in the opening period and a face-off in the Chicago defensive zone to the right of Goaltender Tony Esposito--a situation in which Wilson would cover the slot--Tessier left Wilson and his partner, Bob Murray, on the bench and sent out Greg Fox and Keith Brown in their place.

While Tessier later maintained that the decision was no reflection on Wilson's defensive ability, he did say, "Had the face-off been at the other end, Doug would've been out there. He's a great offensive defenseman, and I won't put any shackles on him. But I think we're going to see him become more of a two-way player, which he's perfectly willing to do."

"You work for Orval, you play for him," says Wilson. "That was the first thing he told us. He got our respect right away because he made a lot of moves and sat some people down. That takes guts for a rookie coach." In Chicago's season opener, at home against Toronto, Tessier didn't dress Captain Terry Ruskowski (who was later traded to Los Angeles) or veteran forwards Rich Preston and Grant Mulvey. In goal, he started third-year man Murray Bannerman over Esposito, a 13-season veteran who's revered around Chicago. Since then, the two netminders have split the chores, with Esposito going 4-0-3 and Bannerman 3-2-2.

Nor did Tessier object when General Manager Bob Pulford traded veteran defenseman and tough guy Dave Hutchison, leaving 6'1", 205-pound Left Wing Al Secord, who had a team-high 303 penalty minutes in 1981-82, as the Hawks' chief enforcer. Secord, who boxes during the off-season to keep in shape, emerged as a scorer last year with 44 goals, and this season he ranks fifth in the NHL with 13. But Secord is another case of a star feeling the strictures of the Tessier regime.

"I played for Don Cherry in Boston," he says, "and in one way they [Tessier and Cherry] are alike because they stress hard work, but where Don wanted us to be physically intimidating, Orval emphasizes skating, coming back with your check, playing good position in our end."

Don't be misled, however, Tessier isn't about to transform Chicago in to the Wimpy City. "Sometimes you have to fight," he says. "I understand that, but I can't stand taking misconducts that get you extra minutes for something you say to the ref, or what I call nonworking penalties. Those come when you have to trip or hook a guy because you've been standing around doing nothing."

Tessier accepts Secord's role as policeman--"Al's our big guy, and he has to let them know who's boss," he says--but insists the winger pick his spots. That's just what Secord didn't do against Washington. He and Caps' Defenseman Randy Holt were penalized for roughing in the first period and fighting in the second. "What did Holt have?" says Tessier. "A couple of goals all last season? [He scored two.] So our 44-goal scorer goes off with their two-goal scorer. That's not a fair trade. It's tough for Al, but sometimes a big guy with his reputation just has to go over to the guy who's bothering him and say, `Take off before I drive you.`"

Tessier is a plain-looking pudgy man whose moon-face is framed by a double chin and a receding hairline. It's not an imposing visage, but it abounds with blue-collar straightforwardness. Tessier looks like the guy who comes to fix the furnace. In a way he is. "Did you see that sign by the [locker-room] door?" he asks a visitor. "I think it's a good message." The sign reads: A MAN SHOWS WHAT HE IS BY WHAT HE DOES WITH WHAT HE HAS.

The message is corny--though not as corny as the aphorism over the whirlpool: YOU CAN'T MAKE THE CLUB IN THE TUB, or the one in the equipment room: WE SUPPLY EVERYTHING BUT GUTS--but it encapsulates Tessier's struggling and heretofore modest life as well as his coaching philosophy. A winger, he came up to the NHL with Montreal for four games during the 1954-55 season and then did short stretches with Boston in 1955-56 and 1960-61. "I wasn't a fast skater, so I couldn't do the things I did in the juniors or minors," he says. "That's why I stress skating with all my teams."

Always a half beat behind the NHL orchestra, Tessier retired in 1964. At the time, he was playing with the now-defunct Portland Buckaroos of the Western Hockey League and "trying to raise a family of four kids on $6,000 a year." Tessier took a job in his native Cornwall, Ontario as a salesman for Molson Breweries. He was out of hockey until 1971, when he agreed to coach a weak Cornwall Junior A team. Tessier guided the club to the national championship--the Memorial Cup--in his first season. After 10 successful years behind the bench in junior hockey, he was tapped by Pulford to coach Chicago's American Hockey League affiliate, the New Brunswick Hawks, in 1981. Tessier promptly led them to the league title.

"He's been a winner everywhere he's coached," says Pulford. The Hawks' management also was impressed by the discipline he imposed in Cornwall and New Brunswick. Murray, who played for Tessier at Cornwall before joining the Hawks, recalls a game in which Cornwall went into the final period leading 9-2 and ended up winning 9-5. "He came into the locker room and said, `You guys won't ever stop skating like that again,` and then fined us our $25-a-week expense money." Once he got his message across, Tessier gave back the money.

Rookie Steve Larmer, who played for Tessier in New Brunswick and is now right wing on the Savard-Secord line, says Tessier hasn't altered his style for the bigs: "Orval stressed defense and discipline then and it's the same here now." Which isn't to say he's always a dreary taskmaster. After the taking of Chicago's official team picture had consumed much of practice the morning following the Washington game, a group of players asked Tessier if they could play an intra-squad game instead of going through the usual regimen.

"Good idea," he said with a laugh. "Let's play a hockey game because you sure didn't play one last night." Tessier then said to Assistant Coach Cliff Koroll, "I'll coach the second and fourth lines, you take the first and third lines and $5 says my team will win." Tessier won the bet as his side prevailed 3-2.

As the sign says, a man shows what he is by what he does with what he has.