go kim johnsson said:
He will get drafted and never make it to the NHL. In fact, the only reason he will probably even be drafted is because his name is Bourque.
And why do you have reason to believe that? I will give you good odds on your first point, and will even probably agree with you.
BUT.....Chris Bourque will earn his draft position by his performance and NOT by his name. First of all...teams are not stupid enough to waste a pick because of a bloodline, there may have been situations where kids went higher because of a name, but would have been drafted nonetheless.
as alluded to by JNRhockeyGuru...size is the reason he isn't even ranked higher, and the reason he jumped up in the rankings is NOT because of his name.
I invite you to fish around this site:
http://www.usahockey.com/2004nationals/main/tier1_17u////
That link is the results of a tournament that a Bourque-led prep team with a lot of Cushing flavor went out to Michigan and absolutely DESTROYED every other team in their path, including the much heralded Toews/Brad Miller etc. led Shattuck St. Mary's team.
I would especially like to highlight the stats page of that link for any interested to see that Chris Bourque was the tournaments leading scorer with 22 points in 6 games! Only his teammates reached even double digits. Now...It's not like I was there so I can't preach for the quality of his goals or the quality of the competition, other than Shattuck, but certainly since it was a prep all star team he was on, you can assume the level of competition was higher than that of his regular prep season, not to mention he has played for USAhockey before on a U-17 squad, although I dont know how he performed.
Who knows what this means for his pro or even college prospects, but I am just sick of people accusing him of just being heralded by his name sake most likely without ever even seeing him play or researching his game. Hell...I am not even a Bourque supporter, hoping that he is overrated since he chose to play at BU over my beloved (and his Sister's school) Wildcats. I just feel the need to defend him and let people know the REAL reason why he jumped up 100 spots from the midterms, which would have happened if his name was Bourque, Smith, or Williams.