Suddenly, this comparison seems fitting: Ray Bourque is five years older than Mario Lemieux. It is neither as miraculous nor unprecedented as Lemieux's latest return to the game, but when Bourque skated past the big 4-0 on Dec. 28 – while still playing at an elite level – it was remarkable.

	Ice time leaders
	Player, team	Age	Shft	Min.
	Brian Leetch, NYR	32	32	31:14
	Rob Blake, LA	31	29	28:30
	Nicklas Lidstrom, DET	30	28	28:26
	Chris Pronger, STL	26	29	27:52
	Ray Bourque, COL	40	32	26:51
	Sergei Zubov, DAL	30	27	26:34
	Al MacInnis, STL	37	28	26.32
	Eric Desjardins, PHI	31	31	26:18
	Adam Foote, COL	29	32	26:15
	Robert Svehla, FLA	31	31	25:38
	Statistics and ages through Dec. 30

When turning 40, even accountants check the mirrors for thinning hair, lines around the eyes, and added poundage, and wonder how much longer they'll be up to crunching numbers.

When turning 40, defensemen are supposed to be ex-defensemen, toasting careers past. And in Bourque's case, a year ago, it seemed possible that he would be walking away after a crushingly disappointing final season with Boston reaffirmed that there wasn't much cause to stick around. The Bruins were shaky, Bourque had lost a step or two and had been laboring under the strain of trying to do too much as the team's defensive and spiritual anchor.

But there he was last week, skating onto the Avalanche's practice rink in the Denver suburbs on his 40th, hearing the fans in the tiny seating area strike up a chorus of "Happy Birthday."

The teasing, which he had been hearing for days, picked up again. A little later, his teammates for some reason just picked that moment to get into a dressing-room discussion about which member of the animal kingdom lives the longest.

The consensus: Turtles, and we don't mean the group that sang, "Happy Together." And that's the sort of dressing-room camaraderie athletes tend to miss when they leave the game, whether at 26, 34 or – in extreme cases – 40-something.

Bourque and Detroit (again) center Igor Larionov are the only NHL players over 40, and there are barely over a dozen who were alive at the time of one of North America's universal time markers – John F. Kennedy's assassination.

	Calgary's Jerome Iginla, 23, discovers that Bourque hasn't lost his touch around the net.

After the practice, when I approached Bourque (with the turtle talk going on around us) and asked about how it felt to turn 40, he smiled. And, absolutely, I know the joke was on me. In the media, we ask this question as if we expect someone to say that at the exact moment they reached an age milestone, say at 3:36 a.m., the liver ceased functioning, the eyesight got worse and all ligaments immediately tore.

But he humored me. It's another talent of veteran athletes, too, that they can turn stupid questions into intelligent answers.

"It's a good feeling," Bourque said. "You think about how many guys have played past 40 years old in this league, and there's not too many. I'm still enjoying it and still having a great time, and I'm still a big part of a team. I'm very proud of it. I feel the same, and have felt physically pretty much the same the last three or four years, actually."

Bourque acknowledges that his game has evolved over his career, adapting as he adds years. With the Avs, he is continuing to play over 26 minutes a game, down a bit from last season's stretch run and the first month of this season. There were stretches early in the season when the odometer looked on the verge of rolling over, but that was short-lived and Bourque of late has been playing like – well, like Ray Bourque.

"It's quickness, you lose quickness," said Bourque. "But the mind still is there. I still know how to play and I still skate fairly well. The first few steps, you still see things develop and you know how you could do things 10 years ago that you can't now.

"It was a lot of fun to be able to do those things, but now it's, 'Hey, I'm just going to sit back here and move it up and follow it.' To lead rushes and come from way back to jump into a hole, that doesn't happen too often any more."

	“	He's leveled off his testosterone. We don't quite have the rambunctious Ray Bourque, but he's as effective in this incarnation. He's still very, very, very good. ”
		— Bryan Trottier, Colorado assistant coach

Avalanche assistant coach Bryan Trottier, who played against Bourque for over a decade, has witnessed the evolution. He grins slyly and says the most often forgotten aspect of Bourque's game is his toughness, which hasn't had to be proven – or tested – much in recent seasons.

"He's leveled off his testosterone," said Trottier. "We don't quite have the rambunctious Ray Bourque, but he's as effective in this incarnation. He's still very, very, very good. You never lose those soft hands. He's so smart. You know, some guys learn how to keep themselves out of trouble and make themselves look like they're not slipping, but they do it in a way that hurts the team. I've seen that a lot. But that's the most striking thing about Ray. He doesn't do that. He doesn't try to do that. He doesn't have to do that. He can keep himself out of trouble, keep his team out of trouble and help his team – all at the same time."

Bourque's closest friend on the team, Patrick Roy, said Bourque "is like a bear out there. He works out so hard every day, and he plays with a lot of pride. A lot of times a player like him could just play offense. He worries about both sides of the game. It's amazing to see him still performing the way he does.

"At times, we talk, and he's like, 'Aw, there's a few things I can't do as good as I used to.' But, hey, he's doing well."

A year ago, Bourque was a 39-year-old who looked it. He pushed for the trade that came in March, although to a team he didn't have in mind. He would have retired if he had stayed with the Bruins, but now he's playing under the first season of a two-year contract with the Avalanche.

"You go through tough times, and you're not winning, you start doubting yourself," Bourque said. "Once you start doing that, you're in trouble out there. That's what happened last year. I wasn't having much fun, we weren't winning, we weren't playing well and my game suffered, along with a lot of others' …

"I thought a different situation would help me know what was left, and if I could maintain a certain level I'd been used to. So that happened, and I was very happy about that. Same with this year, things are going very well, I'm feeling good and we're doing well. It's still a year-to-year thing for me right now."

There is a catch to all of this: The Avs are pushing the envelope with Bourque. They don't need him to carry the team, yet sometimes it seems as if they're asking him to at least come close to doing that. The Bruins needed to worry about just getting in the playoffs; the Avalanche have to be thinking, first, foremost and always, about maximizing its chances of winning in the postseason. As stunning as Bourque's conditioning and physical resiliency are, the Avs are risking turning him into a 40-year-old defenseman, so to speak. And they're also not getting the most out of him as a potential on-ice teacher for some other defensemen, such as 21-year-old Martin Skoula – who was born a couple of weeks after Bourque played his first NHL game.

The Avs, and coach Bob Hartley, insist on using the Adam Foote-Bourque tandem as a marathon-minute, match-up-against-the-other-top-line pairing when both are healthy. (Foote just returned from a four-week absence with a heel injury, and he also missed some playoff games last spring with an eye injury.) On the surface, that seems fine – and it's at least defensible because the pairing is effective and the two players are complementary and intuitively trusting of each other. But it requires that Bourque, who played the right side all those years in Boston, move over to the left side. He's a left shot, so it doesn't look strange, except to those so used to watching him nightly for 20 years on the other side.

So Foote and Bourque are playing a ton of minutes, and potentially getting worn down. The Avs should at least experiment with, or consider intermittently switching to, more balanced pairings that could decrease Bourque's minutes and also perhaps even make the defense better in terms of three-set results. (Al MacInnis and Chris Pronger don't play together in even-strength situations with St. Louis; the Avs should ponder that.)

In Boston, playing with Bourque helped Kyle McLaren, for example. Skoula played with Bourque some in the postseason last spring, and looked a lot better and more self-assured than he has the last couple of months in a struggling sophomore season.

But all of that is more about attempting to preserve and prolong Bourque's effectiveness, rather than hiding inadequacies.

He might be 40, but so far, that's not a big deal.

Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His feedback email address is ChipHilton23@hotmail.com.