Hockey hall-of-famer Savard packs them in at Roselle grocery store

Chicago Blackhawks fans clogged three aisles of a Roselle grocery store Saturday afternoon to snare an autograph from Hall-of-Famer Denis Savard.

"This is going right in the center of my shelf," beamed 9-year-old Dominic Williams of Schaumburg. "Nobody wears this hat."

Super Low Foods hosted the autograph session at its store at 825 E. Nerge Road. It's the grocery chain's newest of four stores. It's also the first time co-owner Frank Ingraffia has done something like this, so he didn't know what to expect.

"We wanted to keep it from interrupting shopping, but I don't know," he said. "We wanted to do it here to give this store a shot in the arm."

The back of the line began in the juice aisle, wrapped around the household items aisle and log-jammed in pet supplies. Savard's table blocked off the liquor department for two hours.

Savard remains with the Blackhawks organization after being fired as the team's head coach just after the start of the current season. He is the team's third-leading scorer behind Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita.

A pile of glossy photographs from Savard's playing days were available free for fans who didn't bring anything for the Blackhawks legend to sign. However, most fans brought something with them and Savard gladly signed whatever was put in front of him.

Bensenville resident Darryl Rivera had pasted his poster from this year's NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field onto a poster board and Savard became what Rivera said will the first of many Blackhawks to sign the item.

"I'm going to take this around with me for other guys to sign it," he said. "I didn't know what I was going to do with it until now."

Ingraffia said the success of Saturday's session will likely lead him to line up other Chicago sports figures for similar events at the chain's other stores in the future. He just may not set up in front of the liquor aisle again.

"Yeah, that's gonna hurt a little," he said.