What might have been: Luc Bourdon

[Riviera82]

I voted top 4 defender, but who knows?

There seems to be more Bourdon threads all the time, let him rest in peace. There is no way to tell how he would've turned out anyway, especially considering the Canucks luck at drafting.

[DownUndaCanuck]

For all of you complaining about how this thread is "morbid" and "unnecessary", stop whining and don't post then. The purpose of a forum and CDC is to promote intelligent, stimulating discussion about hockey. Death is something that occurs in life so for those of you who feel offended by talking about it, either grow up and deal with reality or shut up.

People create threads about potential trades and future potentials of prospects and this is a very similar concept so lets hear some intelligent remarks for once.

I for one believe Bourdon would have developed nicely alongside Edler. He was the hard hitting, strong stay at home defenceman that the Canucks sorely lack right now and desperately could have used in the last 2 playoff rounds when our smaller defencemen like Bieksa, Hamhuis, Ballard and Tanev were physically destroyed by the bigger forwards of Boston and Los Angeles. Both those Cup winners had physical shut-down guys on the blueline that contributed little offence, and Bourdon would have been akin to those guys like Willie Mitchell, Greene, Seidenberg, Ference, McQuaid etc.

Right now if Bourdon was with us I strongly believe he'd be paired with Edler and be racking up around 20-30 points (up to 7-10 goals, he had a HUGE point shot), lots of hits and PIMs and eating up around 20-22 minutes a game. He was solid on the PK and his big shot would have been perfect on the PP, especially with the twins.This is what our pairings would look like:

Edler (23 mins) - Bourdon (21 mins)

Bieksa (22 mins) - Hamhuis (22 mins)

Ballard (16 mins) - Garrison/Tanev (16 mins)

Obviously we probably wouldn't have signed Garrison if we already had Bourdon, but regardless that is one of the best top-4 defences in the league and a great top-6 with guys on our bottom pairing who can play 20 minutes in case of injuries.

If we had Bourdon during our 2011 Cup run I strongly believe we would have won the Cup. As good as Boston's physical defence was, this mix would have been unstoppable:

Hamhuis - Bieksa

Bourdon - Edler

Ehrhoff - Salo

That's as deep a defence as it gets, and with Hamhuis injured we would have barely skipped a beat with one strong stay at home defenceman still anchoring our D:

Bourdon - Edler

Ehrhoff - Salo

Bieksa - Ballard/Rome

[thehamburglar]

I think he would have been able to anchor a line. From all I heard about him, he was looking to be the real deal.

[shazzam]

#1 Defenceman

[Bure1994Mclean]

You could tell that as he got better the more he played and imo he would have been a mainstay on our D as a top four but it's unfortunate that we'll never see him realize his true potential.