Mike Bullard

[carjackmalone]

On again off again elite scorer with above average seasons thrown in

Why did he fizzle out of the NHL and wind up in Europe for the next 11 years?

Click to read more...

 

[rnhaas]

Is finishing Top 10 in GPG once in his career elite?

I'm too young to have watched him play - and when I first heard of him I couldn't believe there was a hockey player with the same name as a talk-show host - but finishing Top 10 in GPG once and Goals twice doesn't strike me as elite.

That being said, you must be at least decent to outscore your next best teammate by 35 points. (Shedden did play 9 fewer games...)

 

[The Panther]

I only remember Bullard with Calgary in 1987-88, when he scored 48 goals and 103 points. Not surprisingly, almost half of his points came on the Flames' lethal PP, when he'd be up front with Nieuwendyk, and with MacInnis and Suter firing bombs from the point. But then he was weirdly useless in the playoffs, with 0 goals in six games before being speared by McSorley, which in retrospect ended his prime.

He had scored 51 goals on the dreadful Pens team the season before Lemieux was drafted.

I remember that he went to Philly during 1988-89 and 1989-90, when that club was starting to decline. 113 points in 124 games for them, so not too bad.

I have no memory at all of him being with Toronto in 1991-92.

Does seem a bit odd that he retired (from the NHL) then. (For reference, he's slightly younger than Gretzky / Messier.) Did he marry a Swiss or German woman or something? Looks like 11 or 12 years of playing in that region.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Selfish, one dimensional, and I believe struggled with substance abuse at points. More or less a bad team scorer. He had some skill certainly, but struggled to fit into the NHL team concept. If I recall, he didn't really challenge himself on the European leagues he jumped to either...

 

[reckoning]

Mike Bullard was not elite. He was offensively skilled and could score, but didn't do much defensively or physically. He also had a reputation for being too individualistic and not using his linemates enough.

Many people thought Calgary would win the Cup in '88, instead they got swept by Edmonton.. After his 100+ point season, Bullard only had 1 assist and was minus-7 in the four game sweep. When Fletcher saw the opportunity to get Gilmour, Bullard was the obvious choice to move.

There were many skilled Canadian players in the 80s and 90s who had long successful careers in Germany or Switzerland when their NHL careers stalled, guys like Peter Lee or Dale McCourt. The pay was good and the seasons were shorter and less physically demanding than the NHL

 

[Gorskyontario]

I only remember Bullard in Calgary. Decent player, definitely 1 dimensional. I mostly remember him for being impaled by McSorley. So I checked youtube to see if theres any interviews or podcasts.

It's not super good quality, I listened to it at 1.75 speed while doing other work.



12 mins he admits booze was his biggest problem. He said he's 27 years sober now because of his daughter.
@Michael Farkas was right about that.
48 mins, admits the penguins tanked for Mario Lemieux, says he usually never played the third period.
52 mins, says Terry Crisp hated him and Brett Hull
around 1:02 he started talking about the flyers run in 89 which was pretty interesting.
1:09 says his first move to europe was due to a contract dispute. Says going to switzerland hurt his game in Toronto and he picked up bad habits.
at 1:11:30 he said he got blackballed by toronto for partying. Went to Europe and partied more.


There's some other stories about the early 80s penguins if anyone is interested from like the 20-45 minute mark.

 

[MS]

48 mins, admits the penguins tanked for Mario Lemieux, says he usually never played the third period.

They might have been tanking and maybe he skipped some shifts here and there, but this is pretty easy to disprove - he scored 21 of his 51 goals that year in the 3rd period, which was easily his most productive period. He certainly wasn't 'usually not playing' and his memory might be a bit faulty here.

Generally speaking, Bullard probably belongs in the same category as guys like Rick Vaive. 1970s-style shooters who peaked as pretty elite goal scorers on bad teams (and didn't mind mixing things up physically either), but who had poor off-ice habits and conditioning and little/no attention to detail defensively who kind of got left behind by the short shift revolution and general 'professionalization' of the game in the late 1980s/early 1990s and were pretty much toast as effective NHLers by the age of 30 or so.

It's always been crazy to me that a team as bad as the 83-84 Penguins had a 50-goal scorer on their roster. Even as a little kid looking at hockey cards, I was like 'how is this possible?' when Bullard had almost as many goals as Mel Bridgman (NJ's leading scorer that year) had points.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Generally speaking, Bullard probably belongs in the same category as guys like Rick Vaive. 1970s-style shooters who peaked as pretty elite goal scorers on bad teams (and didn't mind mixing things up physically either), but who had poor off-ice habits and conditioning and little/no attention to detail defensively who kind of got left behind by the short shift revolution and general 'professionalization' of the game in the late 1980s/early 1990s and were pretty much toast as effective NHLers by the age of 30 or so.

it’s almost always this, although unlike vaive didn’t he also have some playmaking ability?

bullard was traded for a similar guy, dan quinn, only quinn was three years younger. similar career arcs, only quinn was young enough to make it to expansion and hung on as a scratch-or-PP specialist little longer.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

actually funnily enough within the span of a few months calgary made two trades with st louis, for similar reasons.

one was (arguably) the wrong move: rookie brett hull for veteran two way dman rob ramage and mike vernon insurance (rick wamsley). arguably because longterm, or even short-to-medium term, that was too much to pay.

the other was the right move: bullard for gilmour.

but it was the same gamble and both contributed significantly to the 1989 cup. slow, all offence/no defence guys with questionable competitiveness swapped for tough, playoff hardened players who took care of their own end of the ice.

but obviously hull was so good, he succeeded (wildly) anyway. and i think this was really hockey IQ more than a really really excellent tool (his shot) that made the difference between a hall of fame career through the DPE and being scoring winger the game would pass by in the early 90s, say a rob brown, who also was a rookie in 1988.

when hull was in the lineup that year, calgary had a an unbelievable third line: bullard centering hull and tonelli. a current 100 pt player with a past and a future one. the other lines would be rookie nieuwendyk and roberts with hakan loob, and otto centering mullen and peplinski. with tonelli leaving in the summer to be a ringer on the LA gretzkies, that entire third line would be gone by the cup year.