It'd been a while since I last twin-posted with Sal, and his recent write-up about Joël Bouchard will give me yet another chance to do so!
Bouchard was drafted 129th overall in 1992 by the Calgary Flames and would go on to win two back-to-back World Juniors for Team Canada before moving on to the Flames' AHL affiliate Saint John Flames, and eventually reach the NHL.
By all accounts, he was a smart defensive defenseman who could retrieve the puck from almost any opponent, but the fact that he almost never played for a playoff-bound team and ''not-quite-top-powerplay-unit'' offensive skills may be one of the reasons why he was bounced from team to team, and from the NHL to the AHL more times than he could count. All told, he played for 8 NHL teams, 5 AHL teams, and an IHL team between the 1993-94 and 2007-08 seasons, before hanging up his skates to become a hockey analyst at RDS, and now the part-owner, President, and general manager of the LHJMQ's Blainville-Boisbriand Armada.
During the 2004-05 lock-out, he was among the first players to rally others and tour Québec for friendly games between locked-out players to gather funds for goodwill organizations, which turned into summer caravans called L'Académie McDonald's which were touring hockey schools with NHLers for kids, which were filmed and shown on RDS. He proved to be a great teacher.
This card is a signed insert from Pinnacle's 1997-98 Be A Player set (card #129), signed in black sharpie with his jersey number (6) added at the end.
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