Before we pivot to the NHL Playoffs later today, we can kick off a little more dirt on, and in particular, the regular season. pittsburgh penguins, After missing the playoffs for the first time since before the Obama administration, the Penguins fired GM Ron Hextall. Rumored to be an inside agent sent from Philadelphia but unconfirmed – and Director of Hockey Operations Brian Burke. The question should be why they hired either in the first place, especially the latter. But this is the NHL, where if you can get one job you’re likely to get 17.
History of Brian Burke
For a 25-year career in the NHL front office, Burke has fed on two facts. One of them was that the Sedin twins were insistent on playing with each other and the blackhawks are clearly stupid (also a persistent theme in His Glory) for allowing Burke to draft them together, and a Stanley Cup he won in Anaheim with a roster he didn’t make. Combine that with his stoic demeanor and loose tongue, which is what all hockey writers dream of and what they think hockey officials used to be and should be, and you get someone who will never have to make up for his stupidity. There was also a free pass. Challenge enough other officers to battle That hockey media could write for years (and probably flirt with them in enough hotel bars), pretend you hate the media and TV and yet strangely always be available to them, and you’re never Will not listen to discouraging words.
Burke’s teams have won two divisions for the past 25 years, and others Duck, have won exactly two playoff series. All Burke did for the Ducks was to use someone else’s possessions to collect Chris Pronger cheaply after demanding a trade. out of edmonton, He then took that cash for perhaps the most coveted front office job in the game, GM. maple leaves,
He slashed Viagra sales in Ontario by 75 percent by using several big words that Leafs media and fans couldn’t spell, that were synonyms for kill and fight and sandpaper and grit and all the other horseshit that the hockey media was fed up with. were unable to stop. Mainlining. The Leafs never smelled the playoffs under his guise. He did however provide the backbone for the Bruins’ 2011 Cup run with his trade for Phil Cassel. boston provided With Tyler Seguin and later Dougie Hamilton.
He moved to Calgary, where the Flames made the playoffs once, and that was thanks to the injection of Johnny Goudreau and Sean Monahan, two players Burke did not draft. And then came the Penguin work, in which he and Hextall were playing Nero, if you could imagine that Jeff Carter still had a pulse or that MiKlay Granlund would ever score a goal that mattered “fiddling” again.
Over the last 10 years Burke and his peers in the media have tried to mold him into just a glorified consultant, which doesn’t really stand any test when the Flames and Penguins both stink like that about him. was born Hiring and firing him. You don’t tell your fans that big changes are coming when you just bring or let go of a guy you can call once a week in Florida. He is a consultant.
But because Burke appears on any TV show in which he looks redder than a dodgeball and generally behaves like someone who just booted his car, he’s still well out of the hockey world. is thought. He’ll definitely end up on TSN during Hockey Night in Canada next year, where he can criticize teams for not having a true fourth-liner or announcing any teams that go after the need to get physically Trailing by a goal, the hockey-like analysis went all over Canada (for a country that invented the sport, they sure would have a hard time explaining it in any way). Luckily, Gary Bateman won’t be allowing the Olympics anytime soon, so Burke can’t wreck that roster like he did in 2014.
Oh, and this is also a guy who answered Peter Zeizel’s request in Vancouver that he be traded to the Eastern Conference so he could be closer to his sick niece and traded her to Anaheim out of spite.
The Penguins will be in better shape, just like every team Burke has gone through. But man, can he look unhappy on camera. That’s hockey, baby!
yet another ump show
How do baseball players get like this? Perhaps his whole life of dealing with umps like this can provide an answer:
Thankfully his teammate didn’t get reprimanded for the said umpire for long: