On Canucks Captain
The long-time Boston Bruins captain, a Stanley Cup winner with the Colorado Avalanche in his final NHL season, and the all-time leading scorer among defenceman in NHL history, Ray Bourque had a little chat with Vancouver Hockey Insider a couple days ago. The conversation centered on a couple of things, including an upcoming writing project, but we threw in a little talk about Canucks captain Quinn Hughes.
“Whenever they’re playing, he’s always part of the highlights, he’s pretty special,” Bourque pointed out. “He’s frickin’ good.”
“Borkie” would know. In 22 NHL seasons and more than 1,600 games, he piled up 410 regular season goals and 1,169 assists. He added 41 and 139 more in the postseason.
“Him and Cale Makar (of the Avalanche),” Bourque stated. “His brother (Luke Hughes) is good too. New Jersey. A bit different, but good.”
Quinn is on pace with Bourque’s numbers and the similarities are startling, even with Hughes’s comparatively limited sample size. His career high 92 points came last season, his fifth full one in the NHL. Bourque’s career high 96 points came in his fifth season.
Bourque had a slightly higher points-per-game number at this juncture.
Hughes missed four Canucks games this campaign, but is still on pace to improve on last season’s personal best.
Projected out, “Huggy” could finish with 95 points, giving him 428 for his first half dozen seasons in the league. Bourque had 442 after six winters.
“He sees it in a special way, he sees things way before other guys see it, and you can tell he makes it look easy,” Bourque said of Hughes. “A lot of the stuff he does, the subtleties of his game, that’s the stuff for me that really stands out. The subtle stuff that a normal fan won’t even notice or appreciate because it looks so easy.”
Bourque played in a tougher NHL, but then again, he’s bigger and more durable. He played two inches taller and almost forty pounds heavier than Hughes.
While ‘horsepower’ is an apt description for Bourque’s rear end and thighs, he believes it’s what sits above the shoulders that really matters in either case.
“Footwork, quickness, you see it in all areas, but it’s really about the vision,” Bourque said of Hughes. “Guys who see it that way, it’s like they have eyes in the back of their head, or side of their heads. When I talk about subtleties, that’s what I mean, a little subtle pass and you’re like ‘how did he see that?’ He saw that because he’s special.”
— Footnote: In the past week, winger Alexander Ovechkin passed Bourque on the all-time NHL scoring list, knocking the D-man down a notch to 13th all-time.
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