Welcome to Memory Lane! This show is a bit different than the rest of our DK Sports Radio content. Unlike the daily sports team podcast's, Morning Java or Daily Shot, Memory Lane will be an evergreen podcast, meaning it is not time sensitive.
The episodes will be extra long so you lunatics will have something to listen to over the weekend. Heading on a road trip out of town or busy with an afternoon full of house chores? This is the podcast for you.
On this week's show: I catch up with the 'Ol Two-Niner', Phil Bourque. Hear about how fell in love with the game of hockey, his memories of the early 90's Penguins, some crazy stories involving the Stanley Cup and more:
For those who'd rather read than listen to the interview, here is a transcribed Q&A:
Noah: I've seen interviews where you talk about your background, you grew up in Massachusetts or in the New England area but you don't identify as someone who’s from Massachusetts, you identify as a Pittsburgh guy. Is that correct?
Phil: No, my birth certificate says Massachusetts but I don't feel like I was born there. Yeah, no disrespect to my hometown. It's a small town of about 30,000 people, a little northwest of the city of Boston, Chelmsford, Mass. But I've been in Pittsburgh for so long. This will be my 17th season coming up as a broadcaster on the radio side with the Penguins and 10 years in the organization as a player. So you know, not quite but pretty close to half my life has been in the Burg. I just feel so at home here. So connected to everything here. Whether it's Penguin fans or Steeler fans, or, you know, people who just like cold beer. Yeah. I just, I just find it a place that has all the things I'm looking for that I consider home.
Noah: Do you think that Boston and Pittsburgh are similar in that way where it's two kind of blue collar towns, two very sports heavy towns? Do you see the similarities there between the two towns?
Phil: No, that's a good point. No, there's there's some similarities. And probably the main thread that runs through each city is their passion for their sports teams. The winning tradition from their sports teams. They kind of go hand in hand. That is why people get so emotionally involved is because they've been to the promised land, and they want to get there again. As far as the personality of each city, I think there's a stark difference. I really do. I think Bostonians have a certain chip on their shoulder, you know, where I'm gonna go with this. You're shaking your head up and down. They have a certain attitude. It's a little bit more than confidence. I think it's a bit of arrogance, which rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I don't hear that about Pittsburgh people. Do we have a little bit of a swagger and a bounce in our step? Yeah, but we've earned it. It's more confidence than arrogance.
Noah: So in Boston, that's a big hockey area, as Pittsburgh is now. Was that area as hockey crazed back then?
Phil: It was huge. I was born in 1962. Shortly thereafter, Bobby Orr came to the Bruins, and they started winning Stanley Cups in the early 70s. So that's really when I got my skates sharpened the most in that area. You know, that's, that's where I really decided, well, this is a sport for me. The Bruins were good and they were winning championships, and they had some superstars like Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr. The Patriots weren't very good back then obviously, the Celtics were, and the Red Sox were always fun to watch, but they couldn't win a World Series. So hockey in that area was big. When I look back in my childhood, mostly because of the climate, we could skate everywhere. My dad would run the garden hose out of the basement, and he just flood the driveway and I'd be out there skating all the time. He built a rink in the backyard and that was up and running all winter long. Where you look at Pittsburgh, I know some buddies of mine that build outdoor rinks and they're melted four or five times during the wintertime. It's just such a crazy up and down climate that we have here in the Burgh but yeah, hockey was huge back then. And it's even bigger though.
Noah: It sounds like you learned a lot about the game of hockey as a kid on a pond or in your backyard compared to kids now who are learning every ounce of hockey in an indoor facility. Is there any difference at all? Do you think you kind of learned hockey in a more organic way? Because it was learning it in the backyard?
Phil: I mean, I'm speaking, just from experience, but I think about all the hours that I was out on my driveway, sheet of ice, my dad eventually put spotlights out there. Then when we moved to a bigger house with a bigger backyard, he used to buy sheets of plastic to build a rink back there. Again, he had to put spotlights out there, because me and my two younger brothers, you couldn't get us off the ice. I mean, we just loved it. We would see things the Bruins were doing, and go out there in the backyard, and try to duplicate it. We had some great pickup games, they would get nasty and ugly, and there would be some blood in the snow. That's all part of it right now. Kids don't have that luxury so much, especially here in Pittsburgh. And there's a cost involved renting a sheet of ice. I don't know what it is $250, $300 an hour, whatever it is. There's a heavy cost involved when the equipment or the renting of the ice so that that can hold kids back, unfortunately. So yeah, having that luxury to grow up and now the area and that climate, and to have a sheet of ice in my backyard my whole childhood definitely was a difference maker.
Noah: You mentioned your two younger brothers. I heard that you have a brother named Ray, but it's not the Ray Bourque that a lot of people know about. How many times have people made that mixup and assumed Raymond Bourque of the Bruins was your brother?
Phil: Before I answer your actual question, let me back up a little bit. My whole childhood growing up outside of Boston until 1978. My name was Phil Bourque, but people said it like ‘Burke.’ My nickname was Berkey. You talked to anybody I went to high school with, like, Oh, yeah, Berkey this Berkey that. When Raymond Bourque was drafted by the Boston Bruins, all of a sudden, because of the pronunciation of his last name it became the pronunciation of my last name. But yes, my youngest brother's name is Raymond Bourque. He grew up in Boston and he will tell you how many shots of whiskey he's won in the bar when people say ‘Oh yeah, sure your name is Raymond Bourque. Show me your license by a shot of whiskey.’ He’d whip out his license and say, ‘Pour me a stiff one and make it a double.’ I mean, Raymond Bourque is a Hall of Fame defenseman that I'm proud to have the last name as. I'll be honest with you, but I do have a kind of an elbow into the ribs type of joke once in a while when people call me Ray. I'll say ‘Oh, no, I'm Phil Bourque. I'm the Bourque with two rings instead of just one.’ It's all in fun, but Raymond Bourque is one of my favorite players ever to put on a pair of skates. Incredible defenseman.
Noah: You signed with Pittsburgh over the Boston Bruins. Both teams were interested in you. Pittsburgh makes the offer a little sweeter. So you go with them. It takes you a couple years, though, to become an everyday player for the Pittsburgh Penguins. I think four seasons before you played 80 games. Was there ever any doubt maybe that it might not happen for you?
Phil: You did your homework. Yeah, I wasn't drafted. I was just an invite, and I got an invite from the Boston Bruins, and one from the Pittsburgh Penguins. At the time, the Bruins were a pretty good hockey team. I was playing defense at the time. As you know, the Penguins in the early 80s weren't very good. So I accepted that invitation to the Penguins. Part of it was, I don't want to get too much into this, but my dad and I, we had an abusive relationship. So to accept the Bruins invitation would mean staying closer to home near my dad. So a big part of that was I needed to spread my wings and get away from there. So that was another part of picking Pittsburgh. But yeah, to answer your question I absolutely got frustrated. I mean, I made that drive from Pittsburgh to Baltimore and stopped in Breezewood so many times, I was on a first name basis with the guy at the Sunoco station. Every time I come through there, I get called up and sent down so many times. I was kind of young and dumb. I just, I was just loving, being a professional hockey player. So I knew I had a way to go. I don't know if there was a time until maybe right around 87-88 when I kind of knew I was ready. I do remember, I got sent down. We were in Vancouver, this is probably right around 87 or 88. I was in Muskegon at the time. And I got called in and sent down. And boy, and when he sent me down, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re sending me down.’ I said ‘You're making a big mistake.’ I knew at that moment that I was an NHL player. I mean, it took me a while, hundreds of games in the American Hockey League and the international Hockey League but at that point, I knew I was an NHLer. I figured out what you had to do off the ice, as well as on the ice to play in this league and and to play on a consistent basis.
Noah: I was talking with my coworker, Mr. Molinari about this, about you before this interview, and I said, you know, what are some things that you never got a chance to ask him and he said, You were a guy who could play D and O. Um, did you did you have a preference? Which Did you like more? What did you think you're better at?
Phil: To be honest with you, defense. I love playing defense. I was an offensive defensemen. I loved to rush the puck. I kind of felt like a quarterback and everything opened up in front of me and the play would just seem to be easier for me. As a wing that was a lot more work, you know, for back checking. Yeah, I mean, as a defenseman, you have time to kind of glide and and kind of conserve your energy and then there you can burst and jump in the play offensively. But that's one of the things my dad really pushed hard. When I was a kid growing up I played both back and forth. He'd be in the coach's ear saying, put them on defence, put him at forward. And it worked because it was second nature to me. Once I got to the NHL, there was nothing for a coach to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, I need to go play D, go back to the defenseman.’ Tap me down there and say, ‘I need you to go play forward’. I'm like, well, this is what I did growing up my whole childhood. It's no big deal.
Noah: I want to ask you about something that happened after your time in Pittsburgh. You suffered a major injury off the ice. You fell 40 feet from a cliff. Some of the younger Penguins fans don't necessarily know about this. Can you explain what happened there?
Phil: This was August of 1994. I was a member of the Ottawa Senators at the time, and I was at Lake Powell, which is right on the Utah, Arizona border. I was with a bunch of friends and on a houseboat they also had a water ski boat. It was going to just be a fun, crazy weekend, before I had to go to Ottawa for training camp. So I've been training all summer, and I'm in the best shape of my life. Before the festivities that weekend were going to start I said, ‘Listen, I'm gonna get one more workout and I'm gonna go run some sand hills.’ They're like, ‘What are you nuts? Just relax, you're in great shape. Let's just have a beer and relax and have some fun.’ I wanted to get one more workout in, so I could be guilt free. That workout of running sand hills, led into me rock climbing, free climbing by myself. I heard it was a great workout. Kind of fast forward, I get up to the highest point I'm waving down to the houseboat to let them know where I was. And I'm like, come on back. Come on back. So I was planning my road, Noah, and it was straight down. And I was gonna shift my weight from the right to the left, then jumped off to a landing on the right, and then reevaluate my next move. When I committed to go to the left, my footing everything crumbled underneath me. I remember that free falling feeling. Falling feet first, but on my way down. I hit my head on the back of a rock fractured my skull three inches and it propelled me forward to do a face-plant. So when I fell, my hands were on my side and I fell face first 40 feet. That's four stories straight down. When I came to, I could feel the blood on my face and the heat from the sun. I was trying to peel my eyes open. I couldn't peel them open because the impact was so severe, and my eyes were completely swollen shut. And I was going in and out of consciousness. I knew I was in shock also, so I just have to sit there and wait. Finally they came and found me, all my buddies on the houseboat. This took forever for them to find me. Then go back down the mountain. Get in the water ski boat, find the park rangers, show them where I am. They had to hike up the mountain to find me. They gotta find a place where they can stabilize me in a basket. So the helicopter from Flagstaff Arizona, come and hook me in the basket and life-flight me to Flagstaff where they found out I broke my neck in five places. The impact of the fall broke both my cheekbones. My forehead cracked like a potato chip. Ibroke my nose. I was in a really bad place. The end to the story is I ended up playing that year because there was a lockout and the season didn't start till January. That allowed me to rehab all my broken bones. The doctor said if I wasn't in such great shape before going to training camp, I would have at least been paralyzed if not killed.
Noah: You might have done more damage to the Stanley Cup than anyone else in NHL history. Just reading through and watching the videos, the conversations, I mean, holy cow, a lot of people are scared to even drop the thing, you threw it off of a waterfall into a pool. Do you think anyone's given that thing more of a hard time than you?
Phil: I actually hope so. I'm glad that I'm considered to be up there as somebody that had as much fun. But that was before, you know, they have the keeper of the cup. There was no guy with the white gloves. So yeah, I was the guy that threw the cup in Mario’s swimming pool. Also, I was the first guy to have my name scratched or engraved on the inside and outside. I was about to return the cup before having some fun with it and there was a little nut that came loose on the inside of the cup. So I put a pin light in my mouth, crawled inside the Stanley Cup to repair the loose nut but when I was inside, I noticed three French guys had engraved their name on the inside. They had repaired the cup back in the 70s. The light bulb went off as if they can do it, I can do it. So I got the screwdriver out. It took me three hours to engrave, ‘Enjoy it’ in quotation marks. I put my name, Pittsburgh Penguins 91 champs.
Noah: So you had a good view of both the Penguins dynasties. In the 90s, you played for them and you covered the last few cups. I'm sure you've been asked this question a million times but if the 91-92 penguins played the 16-17 penguins, who wins in a seven game series.
Phil: I've thought about this a lot, because I've been asked this a couple times. My knee jerk reaction obviously would be our teams, right? And in the early 90s, I'd still have to go with that. The trump card of all trump cards is 66. Right? I mean, to me, the greatest player to ever play the game. I mean, Mario, I think, at his best when he's healthy would dominate, and with any kind of rules, and I think even more without the clutching and grabbing there he had to endure in the early 90s. Also, you look at that team, I mean, you wind the lens now that, you know, we're 30 years later, you look at all the Hall of Famers. From Ronnie Francis to Paul coffee to Larry Murphy to Joey Mullen. I mean, Mark Recchi. I mean, the list goes on. And guys that maybe should be in the Hall of Fame. When you talk about the guys like Kevin Stevens and Tom Barrasso. It's just an incredible lineup. I mean, when you're living it day by day, Noah, you know, you're part of something special, but you don't really know. Until players get voted into the Hall of Fame. Then you really take a step back and say, wow, man, that was, that was amazing. I got to play with them. That's not taking anything away from the 16 and 17 teams. I just think our high end talent that we had back then probably would have beat the 16 and 17. teams.
Who is better at his craft: Mike Lange or Mario Lemieux?
Phil: I'm gonna bail on that question. That one's not fair. Because they're equally at the head of the table. Really? You know, there's been some other great, great broadcasters, including Doc Emrick, who just retired. But you know, my flavor and we all have different flavors, just like the way we think of the best player in the world. You know, do you want that offensive guy? Do you want the strictly goalscorer or do you want the complete player like Mario? But the way I like to listen to a hockey game is the way Mike Lange calls it. I like the little things in there. I like that he kind of sprinkles in, you know, a little bit of Pittsburghese, if you will, you know, with the fry up the jumbo Homer and Turtle Creek and all that. I love all that it's not over the top. It's not flagrant. It's not trying too hard. It just oozes out of Mike Lang. And he calls a hell of a game. What I love about Mikey is he has a heart of gold. He doesn't let a lot of people in. He's a very, very private person. I always sit on this right. Recently, the last couple years I have found myself kind of just you know, gazing at him a bit and just in awe when he's making a signature goal call. Just not knowing how many more I'm going to get with him because, you know, Mikey's health has not been great. He's still good. I talked to him the other day. But obviously his health is not great. So he'll probably dial things down. He won't probably travel on the road anymore. Maybe dial down the home games a little bit but he's still itching to get back in there again. And to me my flavor the way I like a hockey game broadcast would be by Mike Lange.
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