Dan Bouchard amassed 164 wins over his eight-season career in the Flames organization, including 32 in 1978-79.

The 4-year-old New York Nets of the American Basketball Association had moved into Nassau Coliseum in 1971, and the building's managers were looking for a hockey franchise, either from the NHL or the World Hockey Association, which began play in 1972. To stave off the WHA, the NHL created the New York Islanders. To have a balanced schedule, the League admitted a second team, the Atlanta Flames, the NHL's first Southern franchise.

Owner Tom Cousins hired Cliff Fletcher as general manager, and he hired Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion as the team's first coach. They selected goalies Phil Myre and Dan Bouchard with their first two picks in the 1972 NHL Expansion Draft. Keith McCreary was taken with the 18th pick and named the team's first captain.

The Flames had a 25-38-15 record their first season, good for 65 points, more than double as many as the Islanders. The Flames would miss the playoffs only twice in their eight seasons in Atlanta. They were developing into a good team when they moved to Calgary in 1980. Cousins was a real-estate trader and ran into financial trouble in the "stagflation" of the late 1970s.

Many good players manned the Atlanta rosters in those eight years. Some of them had seen better days elsewhere and some would thrive elsewhere later, but these 10 players are among the best who ever donned the Flaming A:

1. Dan Bouchard --An expansion goalie with a winning record is rare, but Bouchard went 164-134-72 in 384 Flames games over eight seasons, with 20 shutouts and a 3.00 goals-against average. Bouchard had been an All-Star goalie in the American Hockey League when the Flames made him their second choice in the 1972 NHL Expansion Draft. He split duties with Phil Myre until Myre was traded in 1977. Bouchard was the No. 1 goalie until the team moved to Calgary.

Bouchard holds Atlanta Flames goaltending records for games played, shutouts and victories. His 32 victories in 1978-79 are a team record.

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Bouchard was 13-30 in Stanley Cup Playoff games over his 14-year career, which also included stints with Calgary, the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets, but only 1-11 with the Atlanta Flames.

2. Tom Lysiak --After leading the Western Canadian Hockey League in scoring two years in a row, Tom "The Bomb" Lysiak was the second pick of the 1973 Entry Draft. He didn't disappoint. Lysiak, a center, was the Flames' all-time leading scorer with 431 points, on 155 goals and 276 assists. He was named to the NHL All-Star Game in 1975, 1976 and 1977. Lysiak served as team captain from 1977-79.

Joining the Flames for their second season, Lysiak led Atlanta to its first playoff berth after scoring a team-high 64 points. He finished second, behind Denis Potvin, in voting for the Calder Memorial Trophy.

His rookie season was the first of five in which Lysiak led the Flames in scoring. His best season there was 1975-76, when he had 31 goals and 51 assists. Lysiak was traded to Chicago with Pat Ribble, Greg Fox, Harold Phillipoff and Miles Zaharko for Ivan Boldirev, Phil Russell and Darcy Rota on March 13, 1979.

3. Eric Vail --Vail wasn't the first Canadian hockey player nicknamed "The Big Train" – that honor went to Hockey Hall of Famer Lionel Conacher. At 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Vail added sufficient skill to remind hockey fans of Conacher and earn the moniker. He was Atlanta's third pick, 21st overall, in the 1973 Entry Draft. Vail spent most of the next season with the Omaha Knights of the Central Hockey League, but played 23 games with Atlanta.

In 1974-75, Vail became the first Flames player to win a major award when he captured the Calder Memorial Trophy, beating out Pierre Larouche, after scoring a team-leading 39 goals. His 60 points made him the Flames' third-leading scorer.

Vail also played in the 1977 NHL All-Star Game en route to a 32-goal, 71-point season. His best year was 1978-79, when he had 35 goals and 48 assists for 83 points. Vail was the Flames' second-leading scorer, with 383 points on 174 goals and 209 assists. He remained with the team after it moved to Calgary.

4. Guy Chouinard --The NHL was being hurt by the World Hockey Association's policy of drafting players under 18 years old. So the NHL changed the rule in 1974, and the Atlanta Flames took 17-year-old Guy Chouinard, a star of the Quebec Remparts team that had lost the Memorial Cup final the previous two years. Chouinard played most of the next year with the Omaha Knights, getting into five Flames games, and most of the next year with the AHL Nova Scotia Voyageurs, getting into four NHL games.

Rejoining former Remparts linemate Jacques Richard, Chouinard put up 17 goals and 33 assists for the 1976-77 Flames. He had 28 goals and 30 assists the next year, then exploded for 50 goals and 57 assists in 1978-79, his career-best season. Chouinard had 11 two-goal games that season and finished third in All-Star voting behind Bryan Trottier and Marcel Dionne.

Nicknamed "Gramps," Chouinard was highly accurate, scoring on 21.8 percent of his shots that season, and 22 percent in 1980-81 in Calgary.

Chouinard was the only Atlanta Flames player ever to score 50 goals. He has enjoyed a lengthy career as a top coach in Quebec juniors and is the father of Eric Chouinard, an NHL veteran currently playing in Germany.

5. Ken Houston --Atlanta drafted Junior B defenseman Ken Houston in 1973, won a bidding war with the WHA Alberta Oilers and sent him to Omaha for two seasons. The Flames converted Houston to right wing in his rookie season and he went on to be Atlanta's seventh-leading scorer, with 199 points on 91 goals and 108 assists. In his first full season in Atlanta, 1976-77, Houston had 20 goals and 24 assists, the first of his four-straight 20-plus-goal seasons.

Houston had his best season in the last year in Atlanta, 1979-80, posting 23 goals and 31 assists for 54 points while playing on a line with Ivan Boldirev and Kent Nilsson.

Houston has two more reasons why he's remembered in Atlanta. He scored the 1,000th goal in the franchise's history on Dec. 3, 1976, against the Boston Bruins. And as a rookie, he beat up the Philadelphia Flyers' Dave Schultz, injuring “The Hammer's” jaw.

6. Pat Quinn --After leading the Edmonton Oil Kings to the Memorial Cup, Quinn seemed as if he was going to join the ranks of career minor-league defensemen in the Original Six era. But he came up and played two seasons for the Toronto Maple Leafs and two for the Vancouver Canucks before being taken with the 34th pick in the 1972 NHL Expansion Draft. Despite such a humbling low pick, Quinn became a key defenseman for the Flames, and their captain from 1975-77, when he retired.

Quinn was Atlanta's tough cop and a stay-at-home defenseman. He protected his teammates and was the Atlanta Flames' defensive career leader with 555 penalty minutes. Quinn had only 12 goals but added 87 assists in his five Atlanta seasons. He had only two goals in his first seaso

Curt Bennett potted 31 goals in 1974-75, becoming the first American-trained player to hit the 30-goal plateau.

n, but one was a rare power-play goal – and a game-winner, at that.

Solid goaltending and a steady defense were key reasons why the Flames made the playoffs in three of their first five seasons, and Quinn was an important leader of that defense.

7. Curt Bennett --In Bennett's case, it wasn't just the 266 points he posted for the Flames, but the points he prevented by guarding against opposing teams' best players. Bennett is one of the smartest players in NHL history. He and his brothers, Bill and Harvey Jr., are the sons of long-time minor-league player Harvey Bennett, who had a brief turn with the Boston Bruins.

Curt Bennett was a defenseman who captained Brown University's hockey and tennis teams, was named an NCAA East First-Team All-American, majored in Russian studies and earned a Rhodes Scholarship. He later coached in Japan, languages being a specialty of his. He worked for many years as a broadcaster and now constructs waterfalls for homes in Hawaii.

Bennett was converted to forward in the NHL and played briefly for the St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers. He was traded to the Flames by the Rangers for Ron Harris early in Atlanta's inaugural season. In his third Atlanta season, Bennett, born in Regina, Saskatchewan but raised in Cranston, R.I., became the first American-trained player to score 30 or more goals in an NHL season. He had 34 goals and 31 assists for 65 points in his next and best season, 1975-76. He played in the 1975 and 1976 NHL All-Star Games.

8. Randy Manery --Manery was the "kid" and the offensive defenseman on the original Atlanta Flames roster. That defense included Pat Quinn, Bob Paradise, Noel Price, Bill Plager, Noel Picard and part-timers Kerry Ketter and Arnie Brown.

Manery was the defensive scoring leader in 1972-73, with five goals and 30 assists, and was Atlanta's representative to the 1973 NHL All-Star Game.

Manery played five seasons for Atlanta and was their all-time leading scorer on defense, posting 172 points on 30 goals and 142 assists. In one of the first signs of serious financial trouble for the ownership, Manery was traded to the Los Angeles Kings for Ab DeMarco in 1977.

9. Bob MacMillan --MacMillan played only 2 1/2 seasons for the Flames, but was their first player to score more than 100 points in a season, holds the team's single-season record of 71 assists and won the 1979 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy. MacMillan had by far the best year of his career in 1978-79, when he had 37 goals and 71 assists for 108 points. That edged out teammate Guy Chouinard for the club scoring lead by one point.

MacMillan was acquired Dec. 12, 1977, with Yves Belanger, Dick Redmond and a draft pick, for Phil Myre, Barry Gibbs and Curt Bennett. MacMillan was Atlanta's all-time fifth-leading scorer with 90 goals and 131 assists for 221 points.

10. Willi Plett -- Tough call here between Plett, center Rey Comeau, defenseman Larry Romanchych, center Bobby Leiter and goaltender Phil Myre. After playing four games for Atlanta in 1975-76, Plett won the 1977 Calder Memorial Trophy after scoring 33 goals and adding 23 assists for 56 points. A rugged 6-foot-3, 205-pounder, Plett also had 123 penalty minutes that season. His 738 penalty minutes is the Atlanta Flames record.

Plett had 91 goals and 83 assists in Atlanta for 174 points. Atlanta had a strong line in the late 1970s with Plett on right wing, Eric Vail centering and Tom Lysiak on left wing.

Plett didn't start playing hockey until age 12, and his junior coach, Hap Emms, demoted the low-scoring forward. In Junior B, Plett began playing the style that would get him to the NHL, but not before Atlanta sent him to be coached by Orland Kurtenbach, a tough guy in his playing days, at Tulsa in the Central Hockey League. Plett was able to combine his toughness with skill and became an important player in Atlanta's later years.