Fear the beard, for good reason
SPECIAL SEASON: Burns has chance to accomplish something rare for a defenceman — win a scoring title
When they first met, Brent Burns wasn’t yet a caveman. He didn’t have hair like Chewbacca or a ZZ Top beard. His skin, which is now covered in colourful ink, was completely clean of tattoos. More than 20 years ago, the only teeth Burns was missing were the baby ones taken by the tooth fairy.
Still, as far as first impressions go, Jari Byrski thought the eight-yearold looked like a beast — and not in a good way.
“He wasn’t a very elegant skater,” Byrski, a Toronto-based hockey skills coach, said of Burns. “He was bent over like a hunchback towards the ice. A lot of people said, ‘He’s a good hustler, but he’ll never be a pro player.’ ”
Byrski, clearly, did not see the next Bobby Orr in Burns. He didn’t even see someone who could skate backwards well enough to play defence. But over the years, that changed.
Byrski, who has worked with a collection of NHL stars including Jason Spezza, Steven Stamkos and Jeff Skinner, has called the San Jose Sharks defenceman one of his greatest students. Others might have been more skilled or talented, but what Burns lacked in natural grace, he made up for with a tireless work ethic, a willingness to learn and what Byrski describes as a “zest for life.”
“The thing with Brent is he was always about energy,” said Byrski. “I’m not talking about a crazy kid not paying attention. Absolutely not. When he set out to do something, he did it the right way and didn’t go halfway. He was all in. I remember saying it doesn’t matter what he does in life, he will be good at it. If he’s a soldier, he’s going to be a fivestar general. If he’s an electrician, he will be the president of the electrical association. That’s how I felt about Brent.”
Burns gave himself to hockey. And so it’s not entirely surprising that the 31-year-old, who was drafted in the first round as a forward and was converted to a defenceman as a rookie with the Minnesota Wild, has grown up to become the best in the world at his position.
In terms of offensive production, it’s not even close.
A year ago, Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson notched 82 points in 82 games. Burns has managed to up the ante with 64 points in 60 games. Heading into Thursday, he had 30 more points than Montreal’s Shea Weber, the second-highest goal-scoring defenceman. He has more goals (27) than the entire defence corps for the Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks combined (25).
Burns has as many goals as Alex Ovechkin and was ranked third in the Art Ross Trophy race as of Wednesday — four back of leader Connor McDavid. With a plus-22 rating — 20 of his goals and 45 of his points have come in even-strength situations — it’s a foregone conclusion Burns will win the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenceman.
The only question is whether he also will win the Art Ross Trophy, the only defenceman since Bobby Orr (1970, 1975) to do so, and become the first defenceman since Chris Pronger (2000) to win the Hart Trophy.
“Do I have an appreciation for guys who do the stuff that I can’t do? Absolutely,” Pronger said of Burns at last month’s All-Star Game. “To score 20 goals at the all-star break is pretty impressive. Erik Karlsson getting 80 points in the league with where it’s at is also impressive, so the talent and skill level that takes is something else.”
Talent and skill only get you so far. And while Burns might come off a bit careless with his off-ice grooming habits, it might be because he puts so much focus into what he does on the ice. Like Karlsson, Burns has transformed the defence position into a sort of hybrid fourth forward. But he’s done it without sacrificing his defensive responsibilities.
“Right now, he’s the best offensive defencemen in the league,” Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer said at the All-Star Game. “And he’s not giving up his defensive responsibilities to do it.”
It’s not just his skating that has improved over the years. Burns, who has taken a league-high 242 shots, has always had a cannon for a shot. But in the last several years, he has shortened the fuse — “He gets that shot off so quickly,” Tampa Bay Lightning defenceman Victor Hedman said — to the point where goalies barely have any time to react to the blast.
“I tell the kids all the time that they don’t have to shoot the puck 120 mph like Zdeno Chara,” said North Bay Battalion head coach Stan Butler, who coached Burns for one year in the Ontario Hockey League. “You look at Burns and he’s throwing knuckleballs at the net and he scores, because guys can’t block them and they get through with traffic. He’s a master at that.”
The secret behind that quick release is a drill that Byrski came up with in the early 1990s that helped players with catching and releasing shots off a bad pass. At first, Byrski banked pucks off a wooden board, changing the angles to keep players off guard. Then he swapped the wood for a piece of Plexiglas, because the puck bounced off it faster.
Byrski said Burns loved the drill, repeating it until he couldn’t grip his stick.
“The players never get a perfect pass,” said Byrski. “It forces you to make body adjustments. You’ll be taking shots off balance and not in the most comfortable position. It’s a challenge to get it off as quickly as possible.”
A couple of years ago, Burns told Byrski that he wanted the passes to be even faster, more unpredictable. So Byrski found a thick strip of rubber — “like the kind that ships bump into so they don’t get damaged coming into port,” he said — that replicated passes that bounced off the ice.
“It’s interesting how he evolved that,” Byrski said of Burns’ shot. “Imagine the smarts behind that, because it’s not about the power as much as it is about placement and quick release. He’s taking the puck quickly. That’s years and years of work. A lot of guys would say, ‘Why do I do this? I will never do this in a hockey game.’ That never came out of Brent’s mouth at all. Even now, he comes up in his RV at eight o’clock and he says, ‘Let’s do some crazy things!’”