Sports

Ray Bourque: Great player. Bad haircut.

by Jason Gay

Ray Bourque is gone, traded to the Colorado Avalanche, and Boston will miss him. He was a phenomenal hockey player. He was gutsy and tough. He was a nice person and a class act, and he played here for 21 years, through good and bad, without complaint.

He also had a remarkably bad haircut.

Wow, did he ever. It was a real drunken-lumberjack-with-a-chain-
saw-and-blindfold $4.99 special. Bourque's hair was naturally bushy and brown, and whoever cut it cut it in such a way that it looked as if a thick, spiky bed of sod had sprouted from his scalp. But although it was ugly, it was indisputably lovable. It made the macho Bourque look endearingly like a Chia Pet or a Monchichi.

And it also proved that no matter how famous or rich you are, you can still get a crappy haircut.

It's hard to name the kind of haircut Bourque had. It wasn't a buzz cut; it was too lengthy and uneven. It wasn't a mullet; it never got long enough. There wasn't a definable part; Bourque's short, puffy locks seemed to spin from the center of his forehead, like a pinwheel or a hurricane. The effect was amplified by Bourque's thick, bushy eyebrows, which were conjoined over his battered defenseman's nose. Once in a while he grew a beard, and that made him look like Fozzie Bear.

It was unclear if he used mousse or gel.

Bourque was not alone. Professional hockey is a sport full of bad haircuts. There was the Mullet Mafia, which once included Chicago's Tony Amonte and Phoenix's Jeremy Roenick and still controls Pittsburgh's Jaromir Jagr, whose flowing black hair drapes so far over his shoulders that he looks like a cross between Billy Ray Cyrus and Secretariat. Former Bruin Chris Nilan had a short, scruffy cut that resembled a Brillo pad. Ex-great Bobby Hull wears a rug.

But Bourque's haircut was special.

It was special because it underscored Bourque's commitment to being an ordinary guy. Even as he grew in legend, winning five Norris trophies as the league's best defenseman and becoming a multimultimillionaire, the haircut barely changed. His former teammate Cam Neely went uptown, getting stylish cuts so he could loiter on Newbury Street with the rest of the beautiful semi-people. But Bourque still looked like the kind of guy you'd expect to find in the waiting area at Supercuts, reading an out-of-date issue of Road & Track.

Now Ray Bourque belongs to Colorado. Let's hope he wins a Cup. Let's hope he doesn't find a stylist.