February 19, 2011
Howe and Why
Bourque, Bouwmeester and Tanguay

by Robert Vollman

Displaying pretext

In preparation for the upcoming Heritage Classic, we thought we'd take a look at a few of the Calgary Flames' key players. Using the Snepsts system, which is a particular way of searching NHL's history to find players with similar statistics, we can establish a set of historical expectations for Rene Bourque, Jay Bouwmeester and Alex Tanguay, much as we did previously for Jarome Iginla and Olli Jokinen.

Rene Bourque, 29

Rene Bourque didn't make his NHL debut until he scored 34 points at age 24, which stood as his career high until coming to Flames, where he entered this season having posted 98 points over 131 games and topped the team in even-strength scoring rate over the both seasons. The key issue with Bourque has been injuries, having missed a whopping 90 games since the Lockout.

Age Closest Comparable       GP  G  A PTS
27 Geoff Courtnall   1989-90 80 26 30  56
28 Nik Antropov      2008-09 81 27 30  57
30 Darcy Rota        1983-84 59 20 15  35
27 John Gould        1976-77 79 12 20  32
28 Glen Murray       2000-01 64 18 21  39
30 Donald Audette    1999-00 63 19 25  44
29 Bobby Schmautz    1974-75 56 17 26  43
28 Scott Young       1995-96 81 18 35  53
27 Martin Gelinas    1997-98 64 17 20  37
30 Bob Pulford       1966-67 67 16 27  43

Worst (Gould)                82 13 21  33
Best (Schmautz)              82 25 38  63
Average                      82 23 29  52
VUKOTA (82 GP)               82 28 34  62
Current Pace                 80 23 23  46

It's amazing how Bourque's comparables are a tight pack of offensively-gifted second-line wingers, and it helped us feel that we had a solid projection here. In my view, Bourque had proven that he was the Flames best scorer; granted he doesn't face shutdown players as often as those on the top line. With a healthy season alongside some hot linemates, I saw Bourque earning a 25-goal, 60-point season, but we were obviously a little too enthusiastic about his current potential and should have listened more carefully to what history was telling us.