Ah, the Joy of Truculence.
He is walking down Rue de la Montagne in Montreal. When the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Canadiens, he always walks the five blocks to the rink. He admires the flaming passion of Habs fans – French blood easily reaching the natural boiling point of his own Irish blood – and he enjoys the shouts and taunts and even the fingers.
A car skids to a halt by him. He sees the driver put the vehicle into park. Then the driver steps out and just stands there screaming profanely at him while other cars twist and turn past the outraged fan.
"It was great," Brian Burke remembers. "Absolutely great."
But it was not so great this past week and a half for the 56-year-old general manager of the Maple Leafs. He fired head coach Ron Wilson, his close friend of nearly 40 years. He hired a new coach, Randy Carlyle, who won his first game only to lose the next two. He got eviscerated on Hockey Night in Canada's Coach's Corner for allegedly trying to get Don Cherry fired, torn apart again by the CBC's controversial broadcaster for having no Ontario players on Ontario's marquee team. He was ripped on radio for having a team headed for the playoffs in January and headed for the basement in February. When he was asked in one live radio interview if the GM should also go, he told the interviewer he did not appreciate such "an ignorant question, and a gutless one, too" – before slamming down the phone.
And somewhere in the midst of all that sound and fury he signed forward Mikhail Grabovski to an eye-popping five-year $27-million deal. And with his son Patrick, a scout with the NHL Philadelphia Flyers, he helped launch "You Can Play," a courageous initiative that will use NHL stars to work toward ending homophobia in hockey – a tribute to brother and son Brendan Burke, who died two years ago at age 21 in a tragic car accident shortly after coming out as gay himself.
It has been said in hockey circles that this year, Brian Burke's fourth as GM of the Leafs, the signs of stress are showing, the tie and hair more askew, the hurricane-lamp face burning a bit brighter.
"It's part of the job," he counters. "You can't take the job as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs unless you're prepared to accept the pressures and the lack of privacy. I have no privacy in
Ontario."
"In some of the junior rinks when I sit in the crowd, I have to have a security guard with me, because of people wanting autographs and to take pictures. They're all positive, but it's an endless stream of people saying 'Can I take a photo?' or 'Will you sign this?' and I hate to say 'No.' So I have to have a security guard – not for security but because I have to watch the game."
He knows the security guard story will be misinterpreted by some. He knows there are those out there who see him as a bully and a publicity lover and someone quite capable of doing what Cherry has accused him of – though he is adamant that the story about going behind Cherry's back is wrong and will be proved so.
This is a complicated human being: part hockey player, part lawyer, part executive, part hunter, belligerent one moment, soft the next. Following his lengthy news conference in Montreal concerning the firing of Wilson, reporters who had not known him seemed stunned at the revealing detail,
"I know people see this big gruff guy," he says, "but I place great value on my friendships. That broke my heart to fire Ron Wilson. We've been friends for 39 years this fall. I met him in the fall of '73. We played together. He is a good coach. That was hard. It's not a business where you take those things lightly. It's the first time I've fired a coach in midseason other than Mike Keenan [Vancouver in 1999]and Mike and I didn't get along, so that wasn't a surprise to anybody."
Burke once told the media that: "The private side of Brian Burke is private. My family sees that, my friends see that. But I'm not interested in you guys understanding me."
The public side of Burke, on the other hand, is there for all to measure. He has become, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a polarizing figure: enemies on one side, admirers on the other, with mostly barren ground between. He certainly has strong opinions, but so, too, do most hockey fans on him.
"I don't pay any attention to that," he says. "You can't. It was like this in Vancouver, too, only on a smaller scale."
Burke was GM of the Canucks from 1998-2004 and GM of the Stanley-Cup winning Anaheim Ducks until he joined the Leafs in late fall of 2008. He concedes he has never experienced anything even remotely comparable to this ride.
"The place that hockey occupies in the universe that is Toronto, the place that the Leafs occupy is that it's No. 1," he says. "And there's no analogies for it in other sports. I was talking to Theo Epstein one time when he was still running the Boston Red Sox and he said, 'Is your job like mine?' and I said, 'Theo, the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs is like the GM of the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox and Bruins combined.' There's five million Leaf fans in Toronto and millions all over Canada. Wherever we go, we see blue. And they all know more about running this hockey team than I do."
The fan base remains strong, despite the growing realization that the team seems destined to miss the playoffs for the seventh successive season. Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Ltd. is in flux, majority ownership transferring from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan to Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc., and yet he continues to act as though in total control, firing and hiring a coach, spending millions on a new player extension.
"My contract is very specific," he says. "Board approval is required for hiring a new coach. It was sought and obtained." There was no interference coming from new owners and, he says, the new ownership will not affect his contractual powers.
The true owners of a sports franchise, however, are always said to be the fans, and their disappointment has been palpable lately as a promising young team simply collapsed in a string of a dozen games or so.
"What happened this year is something I have never had happen in my career, to be in eighth place and playing well and then the bus just went off the cliff," he says. "That is bewildering to us all. And I know the progress hasn't been nearly as fast as our fans would like it. I know they get frustrated – but no one is more frustrated than I am."
With Burke's Leafs preparing to play host to the fifth-place Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday night, that frustration was bubbling over in Toronto on Friday. No longer able to blame Wilson for every sparrow that falls, fans calling into talk radio were raking Burke over the coals for his hockey moves, such as signing Mike Komisarek and Tim Connolly to huge contracts with small returns. Nearly four years ago he promised fans he would deliver on a "Brian-Burke team" featuring "pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence."
(Burke was raised in a large Irish-Catholic family in Edina, Minn., where the 10 Burke children took turns bringing new words to the dinner table and using them properly in a full sentence.)
Beyond the angry callers, he believes, lies more rational fans who know that it will take time and there will be unexpected setbacks, never so dramatically illustrated as in the team's February collapse.
"When I go to Starbucks or if I'm walking around town, the fans that stop me are all supportive," he says. "They see the plan, they see the skill going up – we've basically turned the team over – and they like the coaching change. I think our fan base understands the process."
Such public debate only serves to make Burke more recognizable. He is asked late in the conversation if he craves the spotlight, if he enjoys – even needs – the attention. And for the first time in a very long conversation, he is speechless.
"I am trying to think of the right answer," he says after a very long pause. "And I guess the right answer is that I accept it.
"The one part that I like is that it allows you to throw some real heavy weight into charity work. I'm very proud of the fact that I have made a difference in every NHL city in which I've worked. I've used the office of general manager to enact change. I work for Ducks Unlimited. I do work for Big Brothers and Sisters, Special Olympics, military and now Canadian Safe Schools Network ….
"I do as much as I can to make a difference where I live. I am proud to live in Toronto and I am proud to spend that time. I was brought up that way by my parents. And as long as I am GM I intend to use that office to make things better in Toronto. I feel very fortunate to have this job and to live in Toronto. I love this city. And I like the way our team is coming together.
"I have the best job in hockey – and it's the worst job in hockey. But I wouldn't trade places with anybody."
Editor's note: Ron Wilson and Brian Burke were not college roommates. The on-line version of this story has been corrected.
Roy MacGregor