connormcmuffin
Registered User
- Feb 17, 2018
- 1,080
- 424
Second and first team allstars are pretty much interchangeable. I've never hear an argument where the goal posts were 'player x was a first team allstar and player y was a 2nd team allstar' it's really silly.Well, first of all, Bourque was a 1st team all-star that regular season in which he won the Stanley Cup in the postseason, so unless you're gonna try to introduce some drop off in quality of his play, he was better than 99.9% of defensemen that year, and most in the playoffs as well, though you chose to compare him to Rob Blake, a 2nd team all star, having one of his three 2nd team all star seasons, arguably Rob Blake's best regular season other than his one career 1st team all star season (Blake was 4th in Norris trophy voting that 2001 season, 40-year-old Bourque 2nd to only a peaking Lidstrom).
Secondly, who was embarrassed in Boston when he returned with the cup? I was surprised at the time how many Bruins fans eagerly praised Bourque and cheered his accomplishment as an Av. He was an NHL all star that season, he won the cup, he was 2nd in team ice time, one of the core three defensemen on the championship squad. The only argument for embarrassment would be the idea of disloyalty to one's old franchise, which would be beside the point, irrelevant to what is being talked about by posters here.
So Bourque isn't as good as Lidstrom, got it.