Bye Bourdon
As most who follow the sport of hockey know by now, Canucks defenseman and former QMJHL star Luc Bourdon was killed on Thursday in a motor vehicle accident.
I came across Bourdon at the 2006 Memorial Cup in Moncton where he played for the hometown Wildcats. All the Moncton players had bleached their hair blond as a team building thing in the playoffs and by the time the Memorial Cup rolled around they all had really terrible roots showing through and Bourdon was no exception.
I remember after the final game where Moncton lost to Quebec for the Cup Championship, going over to the scrum outside the Wildcats dressing room. The media guy for Moncton was bringing players out to be sacrificed to the surging mass of press. Most of these kids had just faced their toughest loss of their short hockey career and now they had to talk about it while the wound was still raw and fresh.
Bourdon came out with that shock of black and blond hair and those eyebrows and started answering questions. The look on his face was wide-eyed shock, as if he had no idea on what was going on. Of course, now it is being mentioned that Bourdon was a shy person, however he handled himself well in the scrum, given the difficult circumstances.
Bourdon’s ankle at the time was shot. I remember hearing that it was being held together by three pins and one of the pins might have even been broken. It was a wonder he could walk, let alone play hockey. I remember him saying that he was supposed to go for surgery to reconstruct the ankle two days after the championship game, it was that bad. But when asked if he felt the ankle held him back or limited his play, he refused to take the bait, claiming he did the best he could do and that’s all that could be done.