Bourque's Baltimore Beginnings (Part 2)

By: John Sparenberg 

Entering the 1986-87 season, Bourque's fourth in the Pens' fold, Ubriaco had an important job that he needed to be filled on his squad, and the qualifications for the job were; a mature young man, and one who was a sincere worker and also showed leadership qualities. 

When one ponders those qualifications and thinks back to his earlier days in the organization when Bourque was still learning about himself and making some mistakes on the ice like any other young player, in addition to his off-ice issues that he admitted to, it was somewhat of a surprise to the general public and press that "Ubi" filled the position, the captaincy of the Skipjacks, with Bourque. However, while everyone else who dissected the move strictly by game performances, Ubriaco had the benefit of three full years of coaching Bourque and seeing him every day in practice, on the long bus rides that are a part of life in the AHL, and interacting with his teammates. 

Being bestowed with the honor wearing the captain's "C", which was actually a co-captaincy that Bourque shared with defenseman Chris Dahlquist, was an obvious source of inner pride for him and a telltale outward sign of how the Pens' organization now viewed him.

However, another unofficial title that Bourque needed to shed was of "tweener", a player who is good enough to play in the NHL, but for one reason or another is unable to stick when called up to the NHL for one reason or another, and he took a huge step towards doing so late in the 1986-87 season when with the Skipjacks playoff hopes just about sunk, Ubriaco changed the course of his career and tried him as a forward on an experimental basis. 

"Gene was the head coach and another coach that I had who was like a father figure to me. I came in as a defenseman and after a bunch of trips through Breezewood, Pennsylvania going back and forth to Pittsburgh; Gene called me into his office one day and said this isn't working out too well for you. You should be getting a little more traction up in the NHL and it's not happening. I want to try you at forward; you can skate like the wind. At that time Mario's brother, Alain was playing for the Skipjacks and Gene said I want to put you on the left wing with him and see what happens the last 15 games of the regular season. We had a special chemistry and just caught fire."

Bourque, who originally wore number seven with the Skipjacks, but switched to number explaining that it was because he was a numbers guy and Ray Bourque wore number seven and Bobby Orr was his favorite player (7x4), continued. "Then Gene got the job in Pittsburgh and I went to that training camp as a forward and ended up making the team. So I owe a lot to Gene, but the backstory to that is growing up and playing youth hockey in Boston, I was always going back and forth between forward and defenseman. My dad always pushed me to play both and it ended up really serving me well finding my little niche and getting through the little crack in the door to get to the NHL and stay there for a while."

The number seven, as in lucky number seven, turned out to be the one that Bourque finally jettisoned the tweener tag and became an NHL regular. In that campaign, he victimized opponents' nets with vulcanized rubber 17 times to help the parent Penguins, under the leadership of Coach Ubriaco, make the playoffs for the first time in the Mario Lemieux era. The Pens stumbled out of the gate the following season winning only 10 of their first 26-games, and that sluggish start ending up costing Ubriaco his job but through the tumultuous season the Penguins endured, Bourque continued to refine his goal-scoring touch, "tickling the twine" on 22 occasions.  

Craig Patrick, the Pens' General Manager who was an assistant coach and also the assistant general manager of the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic Team, took over behind the Pittsburgh bench after relieving Ubriaco of his duties, but the club never fully recovered from their rough start and failed to make the post-season.

Realizing that the window of opportunity was slowly closing on the clubs' chances to capture a Stanley Cup with Lemieux, Patrick had a plan, and that was to surround his superstar with champions, and he then quickly went about that task in the off-season, starting with the early June hiring of head coach "Badger" Bob Johnson from the University of Wisconsin, where he had won three NCAA titles. Within a week of Johnson's appointment, two players with Stanley Cup's in their past were acquired when Joe Mullen was obtained via trade and Bryan Trottier, who had previously collected three titles with the New York Islanders was inked to a free-agent deal and those transactions along with a couple more in-season "Craig's capers" resulted in both the first Stanley Cup for the Penguins organization after they disposed of the Minnesota North Stars and their goalie, former Skipjacks teammate Jon Casey in the finals.

Tragically, Johnson suffered a brain aneurysm only three months after the championship and never again coached the club, succumbing to brain cancer in November of 1991. Scotty Bowman, who was already on staff and had previously won five Stanely Cup's as the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens took over the coaching reigns after Johnson's passing, and with Bourque playing a pivotal role, which included tallying the clubs' first goal in the Stanley Cup finals matchup with the Chicago Blackhawks, a netting that started a comeback win from a 3-0 deficit, the Pen's cruised to a second consecutive championship, downing the Hawks and Bourque's former Skipjack teammate Rod Buskas in the finals. 

Reaching the pinnacle of his profession was obviously the highlight of Bourque's career and a nice payoff, literally and figuratively, for all of the long bus rides and ups and downs of the franchise both in the minors and in the NHL that he endured on his way to the top.  

"Early on, I was just happy to be in the NHL and getting an NHL paycheck. To be quite honest with you I was just trying to carve out some kind of a career for a guy who wasn't drafted. You think about winning but you knew back then that we were not good enough to win. This may sound a little selfish and as I look back, I think it was, but sometimes you just have to look out for yourself because nobody else will. You just want to play in the league."

"As we start to get better and Mario started to be surrounded by better players, that's when you start thinking about winning. First, you start thinking playoffs, then, win one round. Then, once you get that taste in your mouth and you see all the pieces that have been brought in. Guys like Paul Coffey, Ron Francis, Larry Murphy, and Kevin Stevens; these are all Hall of Fame type players. At that point, expectations certainly start changing in the locker room, and thinking about getting into the playoffs and winning one round is not good enough. No, we're built to win a Stanley Cup, now, let's go out and do it."

After a short period of celebrating the history that he had helped obtain for the Pens' in capturing the back-to-back championships, it was then on summer and the reality of the business side of hockey where both the player and management are looking for their own best interests, and through this sometimes painful process, loyalties are tested and feelings are often hurt. 

The first sign that Bourque's ten-year tenure in the organization would not stretch to an 11th was when he was left exposed in the expansion draft that stocked the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Ottawa Senators, who would be entering the league in the fall. Having cleared the expansion obstacle, Bourque was now in a position that was not unique to him, an unrestricted free agent. 

In his first foray into free agency when he was a young defenseman with modest offensive numbers in junior hockey and little bargaining power, Bourque basically had to settle for whatever terms he could get. But this time around at only 30-years of age, seemingly in the prime of his career, and with back-to-back championships and consecutive 20-goal seasons as the latest entries on his resume, he was in the driver's seat and his services were sought after by at least a half dozen clubs, and in the end, he signed a lucrative multi-year deal with the New York Rangers, although he was loyal to the end with the Penguins and gave Patrick a last-minute chance to match the deal the Rangers presented. 

Big expectations came with the big money that the Rangers threw his way, but Bourque potted only six strikes in his first season in the "Big Apple", and his sophomore season saw him unable to get in the lineup on a regular basis. But yet he stayed the course and weathered the storm for the good of the team, even rejecting an idea from his agent to pursue a trade that his representative thought he could help facilitate, knowing that his client was still a wanted commodity. And what did that loyalty buy him, a trade to the Senators, who were assured of a last-place finish. Asked the reasoning for the trade, the Rangers' GM said simply that the Rangers had too many players. 

With his ego bruised by the combination of the trade and not being able to put up numbers that compared to his latter days in Pittsburgh, Bourque went into the off-season determined to regain his place as a top-tier power forward, trained with dogged determination in an effort to stop his freefall, but that same determination led to a freefall of another sort, and one that nearly cost him his life.   

"It was in August of 1994. I was in the best shape of my life and was about to go to the training camp with the Ottawa Senators," said Bourque, who like everyone else in the hockey world hoped that a lockout could be averted, but that was not to be the case and the truncated season started in January 1995 instead of October of 1994. "I had really been working out hard and was going to have one more free weekend at Lake Powell, which is on that Arizona Utah border. We were there at the house with five or six other couples and I said, hey, I'm going to go run some sandhills so I can have a guilt-free weekend and have some beers. They were like no just have a beer and sit down and I was like no, I'm going to run some sandhills."

"Running sandhills led to me doing some rock climbing, and I got up pretty high and lost my footing. I ended up falling four stories straight down, and on my way down, I hit my head on the back of a rock. That knocked me out cold, and by the time I landed, I did a face plant. I broke all my facial bones, my cheekbones, my nose, and I broke my neck in five places. When they finally came and found me, they knew they couldn’t transport me because of my condition, so they called in a helicopter, put me in a basket, and then flew me to Flagstaff, Arizona. That was the year of the lockout in the NHL, which was a blessing for me. The lockout allowed me to get into rehab, get back in the gym, and get back into some kind of shape to play again when the season started, which was in January. When the season started I was ready to go, and the doctor said the only reason I wasn’t paralyzed was that I was in the best shape of my life when the accident happened," finished Bourque, who amazingly played in 38 of the Sens' 48 contests.

Amazingly, Bourque went on to play an additional six seasons of professional hockey after the rock-climbing incident and retired in 2000, putting an end to his 18-year career. One that had enough twists and turns to make his former pet Burmese python Monty jealous. And while the compelling story of his career seems tailor-made for a Hollywood film with its trials, triumphs, and tragedy, even if his story never makes it to the big screen, "Bourquie" will always be remembered as a two-time Stanley Cup winner who "etched" his place in history. 

"The night before I was supposed to return the cup, I was sitting on the floor in the living room with a screwdriver, a bunch of beers in an Igloo cooler, and a screwdriver. I took the screwdriver, and about three hours later I had finished putting my name and enjoy it in quotation marks on the inside of the Cup. It's not there anymore because the Cup doesn't get any taller, so they take off the large bands. The top one comes off, and it gets flattened out and put into the hall of fame and a new one gets put on the bottom. But for many years, I was the only guy with my name on the inside and outside of the Cup."