U.S. GM Burke balances grieving, Games
Last Updated: Monday, February 15, 2010 | 11:25 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Brian Burke, general manager for the United States men's hockey team, speaks to reporters at a news conference Sunday in Vancouver. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Brian Burke, the general manager of the United States men's hockey team, stood in front of a large group of reporters after the team's introductory news conference Sunday and faced the question he knew would come. "Shoot," he said.
Then it came, the question about how he was coping with the death of his 21-year-old son, Brendan, in an auto accident Feb. 5. "My family needs me to be strong right now, and my team needs me to be strong," Burke said. "Part of leadership is dealing with personal adversity. There was never a thought about not coming.
"My son would have wanted me to be here," Burke said, then his voice broke.
"I cry less every day. It's been tough. I just think about him."
Burke, who is also the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is a big, bluff, funny, Stanley Cup-winning executive, a man who builds teams that hit hard and often lead the league in fighting. He is smart, with a law degree from Harvard, sometimes bombastic and remarkably accessible and accommodating.
When his son and an 18-year-old friend died in the accident on an Indiana highway, it affected an unusually high proportion of the hockey world, prompting an outpouring of support.
On Sunday, looking drawn, Burke conducted the American men's team's introductory news conference. But he answered questions with his usual aplomb.
"We've been criticized almost every place I go for why this guy's not on the team or that guy," Burke said, responding to a question about the team's composition. "Well, it's a small wedding, folks, just 23 chairs."
He was asked what he thought about the assertion from Steve Yzerman, the Canada general manager, that Russia was the gold medal favourite and not Canada.
"Steve Yzerman is a real smart man," Burke said.
"He's trying to take some of the pressure off Team Canada - which, I might mention in passing, I think is glacial and unremitting and unrelenting," Burke said, adding that "the pressure started building on Team Canada the day Vancouver won the bid for the Olympics."
'A courageous kid'
But after the formal part of the news conference ended, he came over to a group of reporters and talked about his grief.
"I've been asked to do a job, and I'm going to do it," Burke said. "The fact that I've had a tragic event in my life shouldn't change that." Burke skipped the opening ceremony Friday — "my heart just wasn't in it," he said — and instead joined the Maple Leafs in St. Louis.
Ron Wilson, the coach of the American team and the Maple Leafs, who has been Burke's friend since they played alongside each other at Providence College in the 1970s, said, "Brian has normalized himself as quickly as anyone I've seen, under the circumstances of how broken his heart was."
Burke spoke about his son.
"He was a courageous kid, a gregarious kid, a compassionate kid," Burke said of Brendan, who was the manager of the Miami (Ohio) University hockey team and had revealed he was gay last year; father and son marched in a 2009 Gay Pride parade. "He was very bright and cared a lot about people. The saddest part about it was that his future was so bright. The sky was the limit for this kid."
Burke said that Brendan had interned last year for Representative Bill Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, and wanted to go to law school. He was returning from a visit to Michigan State law school when the accident happened.
Burke still owns a house in Vancouver from when he was general manager of the Canucks, from 1998 to 2004, and he said it helped to come home to Vancouver, which was also Brendan's birthplace.
"He was born on Dec. 8, 1988," Burke said. "He was 8 pounds 8 ounces. And 8 is a lucky number for people of Chinese descent. So he was in the nursery the day he was born, and the nurses kept rubbing his head. So I said to one of the nurses, 'What's the deal?' And she said, 'Oh, that's a very lucky baby.' So I said, 'Rub his foot - he's going to go bald.' "
The reporters laughed at Burke's story. He did not look quite as drawn as he had earlier, and his voice was no longer breaking. He kept talking about Brendan.
"He was born with a lot of lucky signs around him," Burke said. "He was just a magnetic personality, a wonderful kid. I feel fortunate I had him for 21 years."
