Frankly it should have been either Dell or Goodrow. Meier was aa pretty big disappointment IMO.
I think it is supposed to be the best player in the
absolute sense, not relative to expectations. So I guess Meier is fine for that pick, although it is damning with incredibly faint praise.
What an odd random story…on top of that the article states he only played in 177 regular season games when I’m almost certain he played much more than that.
My first guess is that Bougher played 177 games in juniors (maybe the AHL) and whoever edited the article was using a bad source. To be fair, a lot of databases aggregate and label stats in unusual ways; for example, they'll aggregate all numbers from all pro leagues, or they'll label junior production as "pro" production (and a layman will take that to mean NHL aggregates).