Have you ever cheered for a man walking across the ice at Pegula throwing candy? If so, then you have seen Bill Savage, a.k.a. Doc.

Many people don’t know what his job is, or where this candy man came from… So we decided to sit him down and hear his story.

Onward State: What is your job at the arena?

Doc Savage: We have a group of 10 to 12 people. We’re called off-ice officials. So you have the on-ice officials, the guys skating around, then we’re the off-ice officials. We have a team of people, and we all do different things on that team.  Down low, there’s me and someone else who handle the penalty box duties. Then we have a guy that starts and stops the clock, another that runs the scoreboard… It’s a team of all of us that have been doing it for a number of years, it’s pretty cool!

OS: When did the candy start?

Doc: It was a Friday night game, Christian Sarlo dropped his stick right by the penalty box with about 30 seconds left to go in the game. Normally, the referees get the stick and take it back to the player. Well, no one came over, and the game was over, and so I kind of stole a stick, which I wasn’t supposed to do. I kind of got in trouble for that, but then the next game, he got a penalty. It was right at the end of the first period, and I knew he was coming back to start the second. I said to him, “Christian, I’m sorry I took your stick home, I hope you don’t mind.” He told me it was his lucky stick… But I said, “I think the one you got now is lucky, is there anything up in the concessions that you like? I’ll go get you anything.” He asked for peanut M&M’s. So, I ran up like, I gotta get some M&Ms for number 10! I told my friend Ian, who was running the clock, I told him Sarlo’s going to eat some M&Ms, you have to get a picture, it’ll be pretty funny. So we get this picture of Sarlo eating his M&Ms. Once he got out of the box, the puck comes right down to him, he takes off, scores, the place goes nuts. We all felt like we had something to do with the goal. That’s what started the whole candy thing! Hockey players are very superstitious. If you do something and it works, then you do it all the time. So, now I have to buy candy. Every game, I have to have candy, because it may help the team win. It has nothing to do with them winning, but we think that we have to play a part!

OS: What’s been your favorite memory this year?

Doc: So far, it was the Clarkson game, Schoener [Ben Schoen] getting the out-of-the-box after eating Skittles and scoring. The Skittles seem to be the favorite amongst the players. Not everybody does it, it all depends on the game mode, and the mood. Sometimes they’re just pissed off, and don’t want to talk. But other times they’re ready to go and need some Skittles. I do also offer candy to the other team. I’m an equal opportunity type of guy. We gave a kid from Alaska a Snickers bar. He actually scored, came over, and celebrated at the penalty box. He brought the whole team over and did their celly right at the box, and even pointed at us.

OS: How’d you get this job?

Doc:  I started in 2019, so this would be my sixth year. Jay Horgis, I met him playing hockey here at Penn State, and just have known him ever since I got to school. He’s in charge of all of us. In 2019, he sent an email to our men’s beer league and it said that they were looking for people. I told him I’d do it. He joked that I knew my way around the penalty box, because I spent a lot of time in there in my playing days. That’s how it started!

OS: How do you feel while getting cheered at?

Doc: The goal is a great show. The Roar Zone, I’ve gotten to know those guys. It’s so much fun, I am so excited every game and especially at the end of warm-ups, that’s when we have the big candy toss. We try and be part of the show and get everybody fired up, and we just try to give them a little more fuel for the fire, it’s a great feeling. I get so excited.

OS:  Do you get to travel with the team?

Doc: We don’t. Each team has its own set of off-ice officials. We went to Allentown and St. Louis as fans, I won the Jumbotron contest with my overalls. My significant other, Melissa, and I went to Arizona State this year, and it was the best trip ever. It was so much fun.

OS: How does the student section pump you up for the game?

Doc: Six years, I’ve been doing it. I still get as excited as I did the first time. There’s something about it. It’s something about hockey and the atmosphere. I love that. If you see, I have a sign on the glass. It’s, Bugs Bunny says, “What’s up, Doc?”

We’ve been to all these other places, and there’s nothing like The Roar Zone. It’s great. It just gets you so excited. I mean, I know it gets the players excited, and it gets us excited. We all just love the experience.

OS: How did you get the nickname Doc?

Doc:  I’ve been in State College since 1984. And I bet you 95% of the people have no idea that my name is Bill Savage. They just all know me as Doc. I played on the club team when I came to Penn State. One of the first games that I played in, someone hit our good guy, and I was the bigger guy and I cracked my stick across someone’s neck and broke my stick. That was back when we had wooden sticks and got kicked out of the game. We went out that night to a Halloween party, and everybody called me Dr. Hook. It’s a character from the movie Slapshot. As things went on, they just kept calling me Dr. Hook, and then it got shortened to Doc.

OS: Why Penn State and why hockey?

Doc: I grew up in Hershey. Everyone wanted to go to Penn State, and I was fortunate enough to get accepted into the main campus as a freshman. I walked on and made the club team, but only played for, like, a semester. College was a little more challenging than high school for me. So, I dropped off the team and tried to get my grades and figure out what I was gonna do. I started out in chemical engineering, and that didn’t really work out well for me, so I switched to DUS. Then I got into wildlife and fisheries biology. I tried out again for the club team, my junior year, and played my junior and senior years. Afterwards, I was just like, this is a pretty cool place, so… I just ended up staying. I had a one-year stint in Chicago, but was back after a year. I was like, no, I gotta come back to State College!

Hockey was one of the three major sports I played growing up. Hershey was a hockey town. We got to travel, when I was on the traveling pee-wee team when I was like 11 and 12, and traveled all up and down the East Coast, and I got to play in the Quebec International Tournament. So hockey’s just my favorite. I played sports you could hit with a stick: hockey, baseball, and golf. Now it’s still just hockey and golf.

OS: Per Onward State tradition, the last question is, if you could be any dinosaur, what would you be and why?

Doc: I don’t know… I am a dinosaur as far as being old. But, probably the kind that flies! Pterodactyl. I’d like to fly.

Make sure to wave at Doc next game!