2015-16 Report Card: Lance Bouma

Lance Bouma

Grade: C-

MarkParkinson14: C+

Lance Bouma. It seemed like every time you looked in his direction he was limping off the ice. Bouma played in only 44 games this season and really didn’t make much of an impact when he was there. “Boom Boom” did have 110 hits in his shortened season, but outside of that he didn’t bring much to the table. He had only 7 points this season, down from his career high of 34 the season before and he managed 3 separate stints of 8 or more games with 0 points. When he was forced into face off duty he was close to 50% and his 110 hits were 5th on the team in very limited time.

Is Lance Bouma more like the 2014-15 player or is this season a better barometer for his success? When you look at his stats from previous seasons, it would appear that his 34 point season would be a rarity. Bouma is still young and can prove me wrong, but his injury history this past season may be something the Flames need to keep an eye on. C+

Samwell9: D

A lot of people were pretty apprehensive to the Flames giving Lance Bouma a big new contract after scoring 16 goals on 78 shots last year. Turns out, it was for good reason. It really did not help Bouma's cause that he had a broken leg in the third game of the season, but even when he was in the line up he had no offensive production. He had 2 goals in 44 games, with only one goal scored on a goaltender, which did not happen until March 5th against Pittsburgh. I think we can all agree that Bouma is meant to be a defensive forward, but he is getting paid to produce at more than a 4-goals-per-season rate and his possession stats at 5-on-5 and work on the penalty kill definitely did not do enough to redeem himself.

The $2.2 million dollar cap hit hurts because there are multiple players in Stockton that could replace him (Turner Elson, Freddie Hamilton (, Kenny Agostino, Emile Poirier, Garnet Hathaway) at a lower cost. You do have to love the guy's effort and commitment, hopefully he can avoid major injuries this upcoming season and be able to contribute more than he did this past season, I would be pleasantly surprised to see anything close to 16 goals from him again though. I'm giving Bouma a D.

MattyFranchise: D

Bouma did not have a good season. It was mired in inconsistency and injury and I believe that the two are related. While he did have a great season in 14-15, 15-16 was something else entirely. While he's listed as a center Bouma has spent most of his career playing on the right wing. Season before last he spent a lot of time on the Flames defacto second line with Backlund and I feel that Bouma owes Backs more than a couple nice dinners given his current contract. We can justify a lack of performance because of rust due to injury but this season he spent most of his time on the left wing on the bottom line with Bollig and Stajan and that didn't help either. Either way, he's not really that good. Character guy? Sure. A hockey player in today's NHL? There I'm not so sure.

Without the Backlund Bump, his counting stats were terrible and his underlying numbers definitely aren't helping his case. I don't want to get too in depth here about how bad he was this season because honestly, that would probably take a whole other article, and I'm struggling to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was injured a lot, and yes, those injuries were unrelated but it's not enough. If he played the whole season this poorly my grade would have been an F, but since he was trying to get back into the game after long bouts with strange injuries I'll give him a passing grade.

FlamesMM: D

Bouma's last few seasons to me strikingly resemble that of Bob Hartley's. Two years ago, Bouma and Hartley helped create the Flames' identity. Bouma through his effort, shot blocking, and team play while Hartley through his coaching and messages. Then last season – like Hartley – everything that could've gone well for Bouma went well and suddenly they both looked like permanent fixtures on the Flames as they succeeded despite their underlying weaknesses starting to show.

This season, both had their glaring flaws exemplified as Bouma's uncalculcated risk to block shots resulted in him missing nearly half of the season while Hartley's strategy was simply cut through by other coaches like a hot knife through butter. Personally, with Bouma's cap hit at $2.2M for another two seasons, I'd try hard to trade him or even buy him out and allow a younger player to take his roll on the team. Bouma gets a D because I do appreciate his effort, I just don't think his style of play fits where the Flames want this team to go in the future.

BizzleJ: B

HockeyGoalieEh: D-

Bouma slid in just over the F range coming in at a D-. Not a lot needs to be said as to why. In 44 games he had two goals and three primary assists with horrible possession numbers and was completely useless on special teams. He didn't come anywhere near his 15.4 percent career high in shooting percentage last year which was the largest reason for his precipitous drop off. He was a sub-par fourth liner teetering on the edge of being a replacement player and the only thing that bumped him up was the +10 penalty differential, something which on an average power play team would have added about another 1.875 goals which makes his numbers slightly less disgusting.

It's rather apparent that the Flames overpaid him last year, but his shooting percentage won't be 4.1 percent like it was last year, though it won't be as high as the year it was prior to that. If he can keep up the penalty differential and supplement it with a bit more scoring, then he can be useful as a fourth line player. It hurts that he isn't a good special teams player and it would have been helpful if he could have contributed on the penalty kill, but those are the ropes. As it stands, the Flames will either have to settle for paying a fourth line grinder 2.2 million per season until he goes away or hope that somebody will take him on.

by Mark Parkinson