Let’s not say goodbye, let’s just say au revoir.

Don't be a stranger, Bouche.

I think Bouche is going to be okay with his new team. I hate to see people traded because I fret a lot about how the player and his family are thrown into chaos at the whim of management. But he seems to be handling it well, and he promises his family is doing well, too.

There’s a really good interview with Bouche up on the Pens official site. It’s after his first practice and he looks good. He doesn’t look crushed, like poor Jeff Halpern did in his first interview after being traded.

He says that when he and his kids sit down to watch games on his off days, it’s usually Penguins games, and his son already owns a Crosby jersey and a Malkin jersey. So I believe him when he says that once it started looking like he’d really be traded, he was happy to hear it was to Pittsburgh.

Still, I’m crushed. It’s just so harsh to trade somebody. To just kick him off the team and bring somebody else in. Of course, the guy they’re bringing in was kicked off his team, and the guy that was just kicked off the team is the guy the other team prefers over the guy they just kicked off. It’s all very complicated.

I know it’s part of the business. It happens all the time. Most players are traded at least once in their careers and many are traded many times. Bouche has been pretty lucky, actually, I guess. If you want to look at it that way. He’s obviously taking it much better than I am, and even his adorable little kids are probably taking it better than I am.

I’ll get used to it. I’m already resigning myself to it. I have scheduled all the upcoming Pens games on my TiVo and I’ll be watching every minute of them. But I’ll still be watching every minute of every Stars game, first.

The Stars aren’t as lovable as they usually are right now, and for me, they won’t be until Sean Avery is gone. But the thing is, I do love them. I can’t help it. I am not going to just jump ship and be a Pens fan because the Stars traded my favorite player, or abandon hockey and move to basketball because they signed my least favorite player.

They aren’t going to be able to get rid of me, no matter how hard they try. And this season, they are trying hard.

Philippe Boucher isn’t going to get rid of me so easily, either. Thanks to the wonder of NHL Center Ice on the wonder of DirecTV, it’ll be like he’s still around. We’ll both make plenty of new friends in Pittsburgh and we’ll get to see if this Crosby kid is all he’s cracked up to be (he is).

I hope Bouche has a great year with the Penguins, then re-signs with the Stars in the summer, like Stéphane Robidas did several years ago. I hope, even if he doesn’t come back, he still has five or six more great years with the Pens. And then when he retires, I hope he comes back here and joins the broadcast.

And lives happily ever after (in Dallas).