Colorado Avalanche: Anatomy of Gabriel Bourque’s Two Playoff Goals

Colorado Avalanche fourth-line winger actually scored two goal in the 2018 playoffs. Here they are in detail.

Colorado Avalanche winger Gabriel Bourque is a player I didn’t give too much consideration to going in to last season. I figured he’d spend the majority of the season either sitting on the Avs bench or playing in San Antonio.

Instead, Bourque played 58 games with the Avs. Granted, he was typically a fourth-liner who played under 10 minutes a night. Nonetheless, it was more than I expected from the 27-year-old Quebecois. (In fact, I usually forget he’s Quebecois — he has very little accent and, frankly, the voice of a blues singer.)

In fact, in the regular season, Bourque earned five goals and six assists for 11 points. While those aren’t overwhelming numbers, a couple of those goals were clutch.

Speaking of clutch goals, Bourque scored not one but two goals in the six playoff games against the Nashville Predators. That’s more goals than Mikko Rantanen and Tyson Barrie combined. What?! (Neither scored a goal in the playoffs last season.)

So, here we have a player who earned only 11 points in 58 regular-season games but who scored goals in a third of the playoff games in which he appeared. Well, in honor of that surprising statistic, let’s take a closer look at Gabriel Bourque’s two playoff goals.

Bourque opened up the scoring in Game 2, which Colorado lost at a close 5-4 in Nashville. To be honest, I think that’s when the Predators started getting worried they weren’t going to be able to just roll over a team that squeaked into the playoffs.

Early in the first period, the Avalanche are making noise in the Predators’ zone. Colin Wilson takes possession of the puck only to get flattened by a Pred. The puck slides over to J.T. Compher.

Compher sees Bourque entering the zone. He makes a slick pass to Gabriel, who whips around and fires a wrist shot at Pekka Rinne from the slot:

Nashville defenseman Alexei Emelin knocks him down right after, but no matter — the puck gets past Rinne to put the Avs up 1-0.

Like I said, Colorado lost the game by one goal. However, it was a tight game that saw the Avalanche claw back every time they fell behind. And it was the second game in a row that saw the Avs open up the scoring.

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Gabriel Bourque’s second playoff goal happened in Game 3, which — yay! — the Colorado Avalanche won at home with a score of 5-3. Bourque didn’t open up the scoring this time — that honor went to Blake Comeau — but he did score the second goal of the game, which put the Avs up 2-0.

With under seven minutes left in the first period, Colorado is once again in Nashville’s zone. Once again Wilson is involved, getting dirty in the corners. Bourque gets even dirtier behind the net, fighting off that pesky Emelin for possession of the puck. The puck squirts away to Compher again — opportunistic little bugger, which we like.

Compher passes the puck to defenseman Patrik Nemeth, who takes the shot. Meanwhile, Bourque has worked his way in front of Rinne, still battling with Emelin. When the puck comes Bourque’s way, he pulls his best Alexander Kerfoot impression and redirects it with his body into the net:

Hey, ugly goals count as well as pretty ones, and that’s still more successful goal scoring than either Rantanen or Barrie. (So frustrating.)

Gabriel Bourque’s performance this year — probably especially in the playoffs — earned him a new contract. On May 24, he signed on for another year with the Colorado Avalanche with a cap hit of $950,000. Hopefully he can score clutch goals again even with his limited ice time.