Penguins Cup Chronicles: Phil Bourque

It didn't take long for Phil Bourque to pinpoint the moment when the Penguins' dreams of a Stanley Cup run made the transition from mere whimsy to a legitimate possibility.

That would be the acquisition of Ron Francis (as well as Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings) from Hartford.

”I don't know if you ever think like, ‘We have a chance to win the Stanley Cup,” Bourque recalled last week. “You think, how far can we get• We have a special team here. Can we win a round• Can we win two rounds• Can we win three rounds?

”You don't really start believing you're going to win the Stanley Cup until you're in the Stanley Cup Final.”

Bourque's role on that team stretched from the first line to the fourth line, which didn't bother him one bit.

”It goes back to me playing in the minors for a really long time,” he said, “and knowing that you better be able to do whatever's asked of you if you want to play in this league.”

The veteran left winger recorded his second 20-goal season, including his first -- and only -- career hat trick. Bourque, who had been the second-longest tenure with the organization, actually welcomed all the trades, despite losing one of his best friends, John Cullen.

”When those trades were made, we knew that it was tough to lose those quality players and people,” Bourque said, “but I thought that (general manager) Craig Patrick did an amazing job to bring in character people that filled the void, the needs that we had at the time.”

It obviously worked, as the Penguins won their first Stanley Cup.

When Bourque finally got to hoist the Cup above his head, a lifetime of hockey memories crashed over him.

The early morning skates at outdoor rinks in Boston. The long bus rides in the minors. The doubters. The simple joys of the sport.

”It takes you back to the street hockey games when you actually put it over your head and you didn't have anything in your hands,” he said. “So all that, all those emotions come pouring out in a matter of what, five or 10 minutes after you actually win the Cup.”

Quoting Phil Bourque

On the new atmosphere under Badger Bob :

Yeah, it changed everything. It changed the air we breathe, you know. He put a positive spin on things. He brought a different professionalism, a different work ethic, different expectations to our hockey team that we didn't have before. And it was refreshing. It was something new, something different that had never been around here before. He was a guy that made it really fun to come to the rink. And even when you didn't feel like going to the rink to practice because you're sore or you had a tough loss before, five minutes being around Badger Bob, you couldn't wait to get on the ice.

On the team's best trash-talkers :

Kevin (Stevens) was the best, and Trotz was his little sidekick. So I don't know if Trotz would initiate something like that. If you watch that video, it's Kevin who starts in on (Minnesota's Brian) Bellows, and then Trotz is the one ... that was our team, and you know what, that went on in our dressing room, too. It didn't matter if you had a No. 66 on your back or a No. 25 on your back or a No. 29, it was one of those check your egos at the door. But we were such a band of brothers that we could say stuff like that to each other and we checked ourselves and we policed ourselves and we almost kind of coached ourselves.

On the team's leadership with the addition of Joe Mullen and Bryan Trottier :

And Paul Coffey, too. Those guys had been there and done it. I think it's real important. I think you can still win the Stanley Cup without guys like that. It sure is a luxury to have guys like that, that when they say something it carries a lot more weight, because you know we all watch highlights, we all watch tapes of years in the past and see those guys put the Stanley Cup over their heads. And they're in the same dressing room as you telling you to get your butt moving because it matters. It carries a lot of weight.

On picking up the slack without Mario Lemieux in the lineup :

I think everybody did. Whether it was Jimmy Paek or Phil Bourque or Troy Loney or Bob Errey, or whoever it was, Mark Recchi, we all felt that we had to maybe get 10 percent better, if everybody got 10 percent better that maybe we could just kind of put our finger in the dike. And hopefully Mario would be back soon.

On the team “toughness” :

We were really, really tight. And that's what makes it so special, and that's why you win a Stanley Cup. You talk to any team that's won a Stanley Cup, they have that bond. Sometimes you get it one time in your career and, you know, we had it again in ‘92 and were very lucky then. But you don't get it very often, so when it comes around, you better embrace it. Maybe we didn't have the toughest team, but we had that ‘team toughness' which made us very difficult to play against. As talented as we were, we also realized in our room that we had to play that style of game, that we had to get our noses dirty and i think it ended up paying dividends in the long run come games played in April and May.

On his first and only career hat trick on Dec. 3, 1990:

That was really special, too. It was just one of those nights. It's funny, that game, I'll remember it because usually I slept in the afternoon from 2 to 4, my routine. I couldn't sleep that day. And we were in New York City and I just got up, I got out of my hotel room. Troy Loney was my roommate, I left him alone and I just went out for a walk and I just walked around and I just, I just had a moment, you know, where I just couldn't wait to play the game. I loved playing in New York, there was this excitement and this anxiety that I had that afternoon. You look back on it now maybe that was part of the reason I scored three that game.

On his unusual breakaway vs. the Detroit Red Wings on Dec. 16, 1990 :

Mike Comrie just asked me about it three days ago. He goes, I watch it on Youtube all the time and he says he's been working on it in practice so ... Nobody's done it since. I wonder if he'll be the guy. I used to do it in practice all the time and my teammates dared me to do it in a game. When I blocked that shot against Detroit, a little voice went off in my head and said if there's ever a time to do it, now's the time. Do it.

And Badger Bob, when he came in between periods and gave his little spiel of ‘Hey, we've got to watch Stevie Yzerman, we've need to be better on our dump-ins, you know, let's be better on our forecheck.' And he said, ‘Hey Bourque, in all my days of hockey, I've never seen that play. And there was a long pause and he said, ‘I'll never see it again, right?' And I said ‘Yes, coach.' And then he just clapped his hands and said ‘OK, let's go get ‘em.'

On winning the Stanley Cup :

It's emotional. It brings you back to your parents, it brings you back to all the early mornings that you woke up and you didn't want to go out. I skated on outdoor rinks, too, growing up in the Boston area. It takes you back to riding all the buses in the minors. It takes you back to all the people who said ‘Ah, he'll never make it.' It takes you back to the street hockey games when you actually put it over your head and you didn't have anything in your hands. So all that, all those emotions come pouring out in a matter of what, five or 10 minutes after you actually win the Cup.

On his Stanley Cup celebration speech (“What do you say we take this out on the river and party all summer!”) :

I had a boat, and I did take it out on the river and party all summer. It's funny: I didn't know what I was going to say when I got up there. I had no clue at all. And Mike Lange actually kind of whispered in my ear: ‘Bourquie, give ‘em something that they'll remember.' And that just came to me. So completely unrehearsed, and when you look back on it, you can tell. It just flew out of my mouth. When I got up there, I still, I grabbed the Cup, I was just like, the first thing that came to my mind was the river right there and what I wanted to do with it and let's take this thing down on the river and party all summer. And it was a party.