Most Canadians know Brian Burke as the forceful, combative hockey executive who shaped the Anaheim Ducks into the reigning Stanley Cup champions and who wouldn't seem out of place trading elbows with an opponent in front of the net.
What few people know is that Mr. Burke's hugely successful career in the National Hockey League was built on a strong legal foundation that continues to play an important role in how he views the sports world and his place in it.
"There is very little in my job that my law degree didn't directly provide valuable skills and background [for]," the Harvard Law School grad said.
That goes for his current job, his earlier work as a league official and his start in sports in the 1980s as a player agent, which opened a revealing window into sports management.
He was practising corporate law with a Boston law firm when he began representing a handful of players. This gave him a chance to see how teams handled different responsibilities so that he could later adopt their best practices when he turned to management.
"I could see how to do certain things and how not to do them. I found it a tremendous educational phase of my life."
Since 1987, when he was named assistant general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, Mr. Burke has been on the other side of the table. He is now in his 10th year — and with his third team — as a general manager. His résumé also includes a five-year run in the 1990s as the league's director of hockey operations.
In that role, he dealt with discipline, got involved in international hockey deals and played a pivotal role in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement during the 1994 work stoppage.
"So again, the law degree had constant value in virtually everything I did."
Today, in a world of salary caps, revenue-sharing and complex collective agreements that cover every aspect of a player's relationship to his team, legal expertise is more important than ever.
Mr. Burke, 52, has plenty of legal company in the executive ranks of the NHL, starting with commissioner Gary Bettman. Other lawyers running teams include Toronto Maple Leafs' John Ferguson; Jay Feaster of the Tampa Bay Lightning; Peter Chiarelli of the Boston Bruins; Dean Lombardi of the Los Angeles Kings; Scott Howson of the Columbus Blue Jackets; and George McPhee of the Washington Capitals, a Burke protégé.
"For a non-player, an advanced degree is almost required," Mr. Burke said.
Some NHL GMs, like Montreal's Bob Gainey, made the grade because they were talented players who established their ability as administrators.
But Mr. Burke, who lasted only one season in the minors before realizing his future lay off the ice, said he had to bring something else to the table.
"That's going to be what gets you into that card game. And if you don't have it, you're probably going to be watching hockey on TV."
It's unlikely that any of his NHL brethren ever took so much unalloyed pleasure in the law, or continued practising, teaching and writing articles for law journals long after entering sports management.
And it's a safe bet that none ever mounted his own legal challenge before an international arbitrator, as Mr. Burke did when he refused to pay a hefty transfer fee to the Russians for Vladimir Krutov, a player who proved useless for Mr. Burke's Canucks.
"He was very much a lawyer's lawyer," said Joseph Weiler, a law professor at the University of British Columbia. He was Mr. Burke's co-counsel in the arbitration battle, where they won only a partial victory — proof that while there are no more ties in hockey, they still exist in the law.
The two developed UBC's first sports law course in 1988, and Mr. Burke continued teaching there for about 10 years, spread over two stints with the Canucks.
He continues to speak regularly to lawyers and law students, including a speech tonight in Toronto at an awards dinner honouring Canada's brightest young legal lights.
"He didn't just tell anecdotes about hockey," said Peter Gall, a partner with Heenan Blaikie's Vancouver office, who invited Mr. Burke last spring to address his class in sports law at Stanford University.
"Brian knew the precedents, he knew the law. He knew the legal issues. He could talk to them as a very knowledgeable professor would."
Stanford, in Palo Alto, Calif., is not exactly a hockey hotbed. Indeed, Mr. Gall doubts that any of his students had ever heard of Mr. Burke or had any interest in pursuing hockey as a career. It was his legal acumen and blunt honesty that made the deepest impression.
"I start every lecture the same way," Mr. Burke said. "Make sure you have other legal skills that will put food on your table, because in this business the available jobs are limited in number and people fight desperately to obtain them and keep them.
"That being said, it is a great field. It is exciting and interesting and fun and fast paced and public. And it is different."
Doing estate planning requires considerable legal skill and can be quite lucrative, he said. "But it's not sexy. Sports is sexy."
