The sensitivity these days. Yeesh.
I just found the context pretty alarming. When you're the manager of a hockey club and you pay guys to play for your team, then being hard on them and criticizing them publicly absolutely has its place. When you are needlessly slandering a player after cutting him from a team, that is a completely different matter, in my opinion. I mean, generally, the sentiment around cutting players is to soften the blow as much as possible. Ryan never did anything to draw any kind of animosity from the USA organization, he's not an underperforming player on the team, he's not taking money out of their pockets, he hasn't even played an game in these Olympics in their sweater, and yet here is Brian Burke, representing team USA, completely dumping on a player after already being responsible for cutting him from his Olympic dream. I don't think it's about sensitivity, I think it's about professionalism.
..trying to convince the other gm's present Ryan didn't belong on the team, which is his job as part of the committee.
You're misunderstanding what went on. Burke made these comments behind closed doors; it was hockey usa's understanding that they would get to vette what burnside was writing when clearly that didn't happen. It wasn't Burke slandering Ryan (publicly or otherwise) but rather him trying to convince the other gm's present Ryan didn't belong on the team, which is his job as part of the committee.
“What goes on in the room should stay in the room. This is a characterization that on whole wasn’t actually what happened. Brian Burke drafted Bobby Ryan. Brian Burke when I asked all of our management to give me their final roster he had Bobby Ryan on his team. I’m not disputing what was said. A lot of it intense and passionate.
"For all the things that were said against Bobby Ryan there were many things that were said great about Bobby Ryan. I’m just sorry that this got out.”
"The problem, and the communication breakdown that we had, was we thought this was similar to HBO 24/7 situation where we had editorial review on what was going to be said. It caught all of us off guard."
If true, Scott Burnside should be ashamed. Its bad for team USA, its really bad for Bobby Ryan, and its bad for the game in terms of relationships with players and management/ownership. Taking things out of context is bad journalism and gives reporters and media a bad name.