NHL.com has a great interview with Burke and one more way to help raise money for charity.
Imagine you just bought an NHL team and your sole ambition was to bring the Stanley Cup to California for the first time.
OK, maybe you wanted to make a boatload of money on the deal, too, but as long as you were in the hockey business, you wanted to win. And suppose the hockey gods granted you the ability to bring in the person of your choice to assure your dream came to fruition. Who would you choose?
Wayne Gretzky? Joe Thornton?
The correct answer, as we now know, is Brian Burke.
Just two years after Anaheim owners Henry and Susan Samueli came up with the right answer and rescued Burke from television analyst purgatory, the Stanley Cup was posing for photo ops from Newport Beach to Burbank.
Now that Burke has assured the Ducks’ place in history, new questions are being asked in Anaheim, such as this one: Who do you need on your roster in order to keep the Cup in California? No one knows for sure, but the answer to the latest question might be Scott Niedermayer and/or Teemu Selanne.
The follow-up question asks how far you go to accommodate the pair in order to make sure they’re around when Cup defense begins in earnest come April?
Burke is the only person that can answer that one, and he seems willing to bend plenty in order to keep one, and maybe both, of the two stars who are currently flirting with retirement around for another kick at the can.
“Both players,” Burke said, “deserve and are entitled to some patience on our part.”
A year ago, the Ducks were the meanest Stanley Cup champs since the ’70s heyday of the Broad Street Bullies, leading the League in both penalty minutes and fights. Toughness is a trait that seems to be a direct reflection of their no-nonsense GM But is Burke going soft? Even the dog whisperer knows the pack leader needs to establish boundaries and provide discipline. Niedermayer and Selanne are both absent from the club’s training camp, and neither player will accompany the Ducks when they cross the other pond to open their season against the Kings in London.
Read the rest here - Link
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