Everybody Loves Raymond

After 22 tedious and glorious years of stellar NHL defense, Ray Bourque is back once again in Stanley Cup Finals seeking his first championship. His red beard may be seasoned with dull streaks of gray and he may have lost a half step from his former Norris Trophy-winning self, yet everyone wants to see the consummate team player earn his first champagne sip from Lord Stanley’s Cup.

Everybody loves Raymond. As his Colorado Avalanche square off against the defending champs – the New Jersey Devils – Bourque has alluded towards this being his last season; ergo his last chance for a championship ring. At 40, his veteran leadership and puck-moving ability are still vital assets for the Avs. Not to mention that ubiquitous offensive prowess.

In game 3 of the Finals, Bourque ripped an early third period slapshot over the shoulder of Devils goalie, Martin Brodeur. The goal held up to be the eventual game winner, and Bourque was labeled with yet another distinction: the oldest player to ever score a goal in the Stanley Cup Finals. The previous distinction was held by Montreal’s Jean Beliveau, who scored in the 1979 Finals at the age of 39. The ironic part about Bourque’s Game 3 goal was that he predicted he would score it. During the second intermission, the Avalanche players gathered and posed a customary locker room question: “Who's going to get the game-winner?” Bourque had stood up and promised that he would. A bold promise he did not break.

“You don't know nothing,” he said to reporters afterward with a laugh. “You just make the call and you hope you get lucky. What do you got to lose?”

Only the pivotal game 3. As for Ray Bourque, his goal holds a more personal distinction for the five-time Norris Trophy winning defenseman – it was his first score in the Finals in 11 years. Bourque last scored in the 1990 Finals as a Bruin (the team for which he played for 21 seasons, in case you were under a rock) against Mark Messier’s Edmonton Oilers. Edmonton prevailed.

Ray Bourque was selected 8th overall in the 1979 draft – so long ago that the very idea of ABC’s awesome Panasonic Scan Vision camera shots were the stuff of science fiction. Entering the league that very year, Bourque has played in 1,612 regular season games, gone to the Finals twice as a Bruin only to lose both times, and earned the dubious distinction as the player with the longest championship-winning drought of any pro sport. So why would everybody love someone who seems to be a perennial loser?

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