Burke was harsh, but consider the context
It has been said many times before, but the difference between hockey media relations in the United States and Canada is that south of the 49th parallel, the idea is to provide access, whereas in the Great White North, it is to provide cover.
It’s the difference between a country that needs all the hockey media attention it can get and another country that’s got more than it needs, and way more than it — or at least its NHL component — wants. One country that knows it needs the media to help sell the product and one that takes a rabid following for granted, with total justification.
So have no fear. Anyone worried that the Team USA/Brian Burke/ Bobby Ryan flap could ever happen in Canada is fretting needlessly. No one will ever get that close.
The idea of All-Access that sprang from the fertile mind of NHL chief operating officer John Collins and led to HBO’s supposedly ultra-revealing 24/7 Road To The Winter Classic documentaries was mostly a New York concoction — and very likely was the inspiration that led USA Hockey to agree to let ESPN.com’s Scott Burnside and USA Today’s Kevin Allen either attend or listen in on every meeting or conference call leading up to the selection of the U.S. Olympic team on New Year’s Day.
It was in Burnside’s wonderful account of the ebbs and flows in the selection committee’s opinions on various players over a 171-day period that Brian Burke’s now-infamous Nov. 25 observations on Ottawa Senators forward Bobby Ryan were reported: “(Ryan) is a passive guy. He’s not intense. That word is not in his vocabulary. It’s never going to be in his vocabulary. He can’t spell intense.”
Coming from Burke, whose Anaheim Ducks picked Ryan No. 2 overall in the 2005 draft, right behind Sidney Crosby, that was quite a statement — and so, when the ESPN story came out the same day the U.S. Olympic roster was announced, was Burke’s revelation at another point in the discussions that he had wanted to draft defenceman Jack Johnson but had lost an argument with the scouts, and that’s why the Ducks got Ryan.
Predictably, the fit hit the shan when Ryan, who had been left off the team, got wind of the quotes. He was wounded, as anyone would be, and said so to the Ottawa media. Friday morning, when the U.S. management and coaching staff held its first formal news conference, one of the first orders of business for GM David Poile was to abjectly apologize to Ryan.
Denigrating a player “was not what any of us signed up for,” he said, but then the Nashville Predators GM opened a whole other can of worms. He said “what goes on in the room should stay in the room.” He said that allowing Burnside and Allen to witness the inner workings of the selection process had been an attempt to popularize the game in the U.S. and that he was “happy to have them part of our team, if you will.”
First mistake. No self-respecting reporter — and Burnside and Allen are both respected pros — would ever be “part of our team.”
Poile said Team USA thought it had editorial control over what Burnside and Allen reported and could ensure that no objectionable comments ever make it to print, similar to the NHL’s control over HBO’s 24/7 series.
Second mistake. Newspapers don’t do “editorial control.” If you invite a reporter to a meeting, he’s going to report. Anything that’s off the record had better be said upfront.
“Unfortunately the comments were a little harsh,” Poile said. “It caught all of us off-guard. And again, that’s on us.”
It certainly is. Burnside and Allen would have turned on their heels and walked if they had been told in advance that they were only being allowed in to make the GMs look brilliant, or that things they heard said by team executives or coaches were potentially off-limits.
Poile said that Burke, Team USA’s director of player personnel, was “absolutely the biggest supporter of Bobby Ryan on our staff” and, in fact, had Ryan on the final list he submitted to Poile. The crusty Calgary Flames president of hockey operations simply got out-voted.
That doesn’t seem to pass the sniff test, given his comments about Ryan’s lack of intensity, but never mind. Burke is Burke — and even if the rest of the committee didn’t know reporters were there to report, he surely would have known. He’s colourful, and he loves a stage, and it is precisely those qualities that have made him a media favourite.
So he was quoted on an honest opinion. Big hairy deal. We get so much of the other kind from mealy-mouthed GMs, actually getting to hear them being honest in a frank discussion of players’ merits is not only refreshing, it must be the very reason Poile and his fellow executives OK’d the reporters’ presence in the first place.
It was supposed to be an inside look, after all, and that’s what it was. Through the reporting of Burnside and Allen, we got a glimpse of personalities we might otherwise have never known existed: the passion of L.A.’s Dean Lombardi, the hard-headed defensive concerns of Pittsburgh’s Ray Shero, cogent interjections by Florida’s Dale Tallon and Chicago’s Stan Bowman, the contributions of Don Waddell and Peter Laviolette and head coach Dan Bylsma.
And through it all, the consensus-building hand of Poile, who never let go of the reins. In fact, at one point in Burnside’s account, sensing a degree of discomfort about Ryan’s status, Poile asked for a show of hands: “Are guys nervous about Bobby Ryan?” A flurry of hands went up in the air. “That’s a lot of guys,” Poile said. It was fascinating insight — the discussion around Ryan was one of many, it was just the sexiest — and it was the kind of intelligent give-and-take the NHL should be delighted to have out there for its fans to chew on, and digest.
That’s why it was so disappointing to have Poile apologize “for the umpteenth time” not, apparently, for Burke’s comments, but for the fact that they became public.
What he ought to have said was: “We wanted to give people a look at the rough-and-tumble that goes on in these meetings, and to know how difficult the decisions were. Inevitably, some feelings were going to be hurt when the various arguments were presented, but we’re all big boys in this game.”
Instead, it was, no doubt, a teachable moment for all such future endeavours.
In Canada, it was a lesson that never had to be taught. You’ll notice that Toronto Maple Leafs coach Randy Carlyle couldn’t wait to get HBO’s cameras out of his life after Wednesday’s Winter Classic.
NHL people don’t do candour up here. They do control. Because they can.