Podcast (Audio) Brian Burke - A Life in Hockey with Stephen Brunt
- Thread starter SportsLit
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Smirnov2Chistov
EEK!
Sweet! I'll give this a listen to on the ride home.
Bit OT, but I often wonder how received Burke and his tenure was in Anaheim. All I have is based off of these boards really since I live in Massachusetts. I really feel like he did well here by bringing talent in, but his drafting pedigree and giving players like McDonald away often left me frustrated. I wonder what could've been if he stayed for another year or two instead of jumping to Toronto.
Bit OT, but I often wonder how received Burke and his tenure was in Anaheim. All I have is based off of these boards really since I live in Massachusetts. I really feel like he did well here by bringing talent in, but his drafting pedigree and giving players like McDonald away often left me frustrated. I wonder what could've been if he stayed for another year or two instead of jumping to Toronto.
Paul4587
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He got us a cup and was the perfect GM at that particular point in time so I would hope most see him in a positive light. The game did pass him by though and I think we are lucky he left when he did. He was kind enough before going to lock up Getz and Perry to really good value contracts (and then Murray was able to extend both) which gave us two key cogs to build around for the next decade.
KaseMeOutside
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I will try to make a fair assessment
Within 12 months he brought in Chris Pronger AND Scott Niedermayer. at the time they were at worst the 2nd and 3rd best dman in the league. In 2007 Pronger was the heavy favorite to win the Norris before he had some injuries. Anyways I don't think you will ever see a GM be able to execute something like that again it wasnt just that they were top 3 they were already 1st ballot HOFers and both top 30 dman of all time before that cup win. Niedermayer changed the team that is why he is still held in such high regard by everybody.
Infact the perfect example was game 4 of the SCF when Alfredsson shot the puck as hard as he could at him and the lockerroom was heated amd wanted blood. Alfredsson's trolling attempt almost worked, except Niedermayer at intermission addressed the team and told them to calm down and direct their focus on winning the game. They did. And the rest is history as Anaheim completely obliterated Ottawa for the remainder of the series after that incident.
The following off season Niedermayer and Selanne were thinking of retiring. In reality I think they just wanted to give their bodies a break as they were getting older. Burke brought in Bertuzzi and Schneider which at the time were good deals. Bertuzzi was very inconsistent and Schneider was ok but the hope was Selanne and Niedermayer would return amd they'd have the depth to try and repeat.
But for whatever reason that team was just up and down and Burke made 1 giant mistake. He traded Andy McDonald who was our number 1 center for 2 years and had Kariya like chemistry with Selanne for the carcas of Doug Weight. Anaheim NEVER recovered from that trade it was incredibly stupid to do because the trade was made before Selanne ever came back. I firmly believe this trade cost Anaheim the cup in 2009. Why?
Perry and Getzlaf were emerging as elite players. Selanne, Niedermayer, Beauch, and Pronger were all still excellent and Bobby Ryan was starting to become a factor. Burke was not the GM of that team but that disaster was still being felt.
He did not draft well but he took over after a lockout and the previous GM Bryan Murray over his time worked on trying to overhaul the infrastructure of the team and I'm assuming Burke continued to try and do the same. He did take heat for picking Bobby Ryan over Jack Johnson. Anze Kopitar was also in that draft and there was alot of talk about him and its one of the great what it's of our history...what if Anaheim had Getzlaf and Kopitar as it's top 2 centers starting in 2008? Hard to imagine them not delivering a cup.
Overall the good outweighed the bad but the Andy Mac trade was indefensible I don't remember a single duck fan liking that trade and as I said earlier it probably cost Anaheim the 2009cup
I agree with all of this except the Bertuzzi part. That was a horrible and overpayment from day 1, and most on here said as much.
Terry Yake
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wasn't burke forced to deal mcdonald to create cap space for selanne/niedermayer?
Paul4587
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He needed to clear tagging room for Niedermayer, yeah. In fairness to Burke, McDonald was having an awful year. That said, the return he got for him was awful.
Terry Yake
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mcdonald was having an awful year because teemu wasn't there to finish his passes. and without mcdonald, kunitz's production dropped as well. that trade pretty much closed their cup window
and yeah doug "dead" weight playing as bad as he did made it 10x worse
The Mighty Duck Man
R-E-L-A-X
IIRC it didn't have to be McDonald but that was just Burke outsmarted himself. They could've given away a lesser salary but didn't want to subtract from the team in any way so they thought swapping Mac for another scoring center was better.
There was some logic, like that maybe Andy Mac wasn't worth the price tag and was buoyed by Teemu, but yeah in hindsight that wasn't good at all.
KaseMeOutside
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Yes but you don't sacrifice the guy who was your number 1 center for 2 years to do it
Terry Yake
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yeah, you won't find anyone defending that trade. i was pissed off when it happened and it's still frustrating to think about
who else could burke have dealt to create the necessary cap space though?
The Mighty Duck Man
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There's a few options but OD should've been easy enough to move while also creating enough room on his own.
Terry Yake
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wow that's some interesting stuff
i'm assuming burke wanted to make the ryan/tkachuk swap in 07-08? man that would've been a terrible deal. tkachuk was not gonna put that ducks team over the top in any way, shape, or form
love seeing that stuff about scotty and teemu. nieds was the most quiet, reserved, "let my play do the talking," kind of guy but behind the scenes he was the ultimate leader
i think we've always figured that burke dealt fedorov because he didn't want getzlaf and perry developing in the same locker room as him. also, no surprise reading that stuff about penner. makes you wonder why they even bothered bringing him back in 2013. he probably swore he had changed or something like that and got votes of confidence from getzlaf and perry
the part about his departure is interesting. sounds like the samuelis took it personally that he was leaving them for toronto, but still pretty messed up to keep him from addressing the players
and carlyle hating rich kids and americans? just....lol. since most NHL'ers come from upper middle class-wealthy backgrounds. plus, the ducks had a number of american players have success under him. marchant, ryan, fowler, kesler, gibson
i'm assuming burke wanted to make the ryan/tkachuk swap in 07-08? man that would've been a terrible deal. tkachuk was not gonna put that ducks team over the top in any way, shape, or form
love seeing that stuff about scotty and teemu. nieds was the most quiet, reserved, "let my play do the talking," kind of guy but behind the scenes he was the ultimate leader
i think we've always figured that burke dealt fedorov because he didn't want getzlaf and perry developing in the same locker room as him. also, no surprise reading that stuff about penner. makes you wonder why they even bothered bringing him back in 2013. he probably swore he had changed or something like that and got votes of confidence from getzlaf and perry
the part about his departure is interesting. sounds like the samuelis took it personally that he was leaving them for toronto, but still pretty messed up to keep him from addressing the players
and carlyle hating rich kids and americans? just....lol. since most NHL'ers come from upper middle class-wealthy backgrounds. plus, the ducks had a number of american players have success under him. marchant, ryan, fowler, kesler, gibson
The Mighty Duck Man
R-E-L-A-X
Two sides to every story and I'm guessing the Samueli's not letting him do those things had to do with Toronto, which Burke apparently left out of that story. I'm not sure what he could've done and I'm sure his intentions were pure but I dont think I blame them for not letting a soon to be rival GM of an opponent address the team privately.
I find it very interesting that ownership vetoed a deal over $1.5 million a year after winning the cup and while chasing another. That's just really disappointing, but not surprising.
The Mighty Duck Man
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I think Burke said on Chiclets that it was 06 and he just assumes that they'd win another cup the year before with him there while also still winning in 07.
Paul4587
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Yeah that’s what I thought. Which makes more sense that it would be vetoed for financial reasons as we hadn’t won a thing at that point and IIRC we were barely in a playoff spot before the deadline that year.
Have to wonder if we made that deal if we could still swing the Pronger deal. Things could have been completely different. As much of a good player Tkachuk still was at that point I far prefer that we ended up with Pronger.
Smirnov2Chistov
EEK!
In retrospect, if Johnson was picked and panned out like the top2 defenseman that he was supposed to develop into, maybe they don’t draft Mark Mitera and they pick up anyone else.
The thing about Carlyle ‘hating’ American kids is so funny, but typical at the same time. F’ing Dinosaur. I always thought back then that Carlyle hated European players if they didn’t ‘buy’ into their system. The list really decent: Besides Fedorov and Sykora, you had Prospal, Havelid, Salei, Vishnevski, Chistov, Gerber.. Only one they kept was Pahlsson because he played a gritty two-way game
I still don’t understand why years later as to getting rid of Salei and Vishnevski. I still prefer them over O’Donnell, but it’s been many years.
The thing about Carlyle ‘hating’ American kids is so funny, but typical at the same time. F’ing Dinosaur. I always thought back then that Carlyle hated European players if they didn’t ‘buy’ into their system. The list really decent: Besides Fedorov and Sykora, you had Prospal, Havelid, Salei, Vishnevski, Chistov, Gerber.. Only one they kept was Pahlsson because he played a gritty two-way game
I still don’t understand why years later as to getting rid of Salei and Vishnevski. I still prefer them over O’Donnell, but it’s been many years.
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Terry Yake
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burke had an awful draft history with the ducks but i won't blame him for mitera. he might've had success if it wasn't for the ACL injury
KaseMeOutside
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The owners offered him basically a lifetime deal. If he wasn't going to take it then there was no point keeping him around. I can understand the owners being pretty offended by it
He wanted to be in Toronto if you're Team President or whatever title he was going to have he wasn't going to have to be around everyday so the travel would have been cut down anyways and his replacement was firmly aligned with his vision
He wanted to be in Toronto if you're Team President or whatever title he was going to have he wasn't going to have to be around everyday so the travel would have been cut down anyways and his replacement was firmly aligned with his vision
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