BRIAN BURKE NOT A FAN OF THE LOTTERY WHIMS
Flames president could have had Crosby in Anaheim — until he didn’t
It’s not exactly a secret handshake. But for two men, the greeting hints at the story.
A nod at history, a lesson in fate.
“To this day when I see him,” says Brian Burke, “I hold my index finger and my thumb about a half-inch apart — ‘Sid, you were this close to playing for me.’”
Nowadays Burke is president of hockey operations for the Calgary Flames. Saturday, he represents his employers at the National Hockey League’s draft lottery in Toronto.
But back in July 2005, he was in charge of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim — and part of an unprecedentedly bizarre game of chance.
In the aftermath of the lockout, Burke, like all of the NHL’s general managers, had been anxious to learn his draft-slot status. Scrubbing an entire season meant that the league needed to cook up a way to determine the order.
It was decided that — using a formula based on the three previous playoffs and the four previous drafts — teams would be allotted bingo balls. One or two or three.
Which put everyone, to some degree, in the running for wunderkind Sidney Crosby.
Four outfits received the threeball max — Buffalo, Columbus, Pittsburgh and the New York Rangers.
Ten, including the Ducks and the Flames, got two balls apiece. The rest, one. All that remained? To watch a generational player’s destiny unfold.
Starting with 30th rung and working upwards, the order was revealed with made-for-television dramatics.
“They kept drawing teams and we kept surviving,” recalls Burke. “They’d pick another team and we’d survive that.”
In Burke’s head were the voices of his bird-dogs who, the previous night, had begged him to get into the riches of the first half-dozen picks.
“I’m like, ‘Guys, it’s a lottery. Just say your prayers.’”
Blessed, the lucky Ducks did crack the much-ballyhooed top six.
“So I take a real deep breath — I can relax,” says Burke. “Then we get into (the final) four and you’re like, ‘OK, that’s Jack Johnson or Carey Price.’ Then you get down to two and you’re like, ‘We’re going to get Bobby Ryan or Sid.’ I was convinced that we were going to win. I thought I was getting Sidney Crosby. I had this premonition. I don’t know why, because at that point, it’s 50-50.
“I walked up (on stage) ... and (TSN host) James Duthie said, ‘We’re going to find out who gets Sidney Crosby right after this commercial.’ And I turned to him and said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’”
Stalled by Duthie, misled by his hunch, miffed by the format, Burke watched as the Pittsburgh Penguins — 30th overall in 200304, by the way — got the right to grab No. 87.
“We were perfectly content to draft Bobby Ryan,” says Burke who, thanks to 2003’s stockingstuffer of a draft, already had teenagers Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry in the cupboard. “It’s just that you’re talking about drafting a real good hockey player versus a franchise player. Just the notion of having Sid on your team ... you salivate over that.”
Understandably, that topic, even years later, is not a particularly joyous one for Burke.
In 2012, while he was at the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs, some unfortunate soul wondered if perhaps his floundering club should adopt the “Pittsburgh model.” Whoops-a-daisy. “They won a goddamn lottery and they got the best player in the game,” Burke barked that day. “Is that available to me? Should we do that? Should we ask the league to have a lottery this year, and maybe we pick first? The Pittsburgh model? My ass.”
His appetite for bingo has not increased.
This weekend — with general manager Brad Treliving manning Team Canada’s tiller overseas — Burke will be on site to monitor the Flames’ fortunes. (“We’re sending the big lucky Irishman,” reports Treliving. “I don’t know if we can get more lucky than that.”)
Burke, however, is hardly titillated, even if his group does own a slim chance — 8.5 per cent — of landing the first overall holler.
“We’re not happy about being part of this,” says Burke, whose club tottered to 26th overall. “This represents failure, which we’re not good at.”
Hockey people bleat non-stop about being able to control their own fate, so it must be unsettling for the Flames — and the rest of the post-season’s no-shows — to have their futures dictated by chance.
To this, Burke offers a verbal shrug: “It’s like worrying about the weather.”
But isn’t it sad that anti-tanking measures have to be deployed in the first place?
“It is disappointing, but it’s sensible,” he replies. “I think a lottery is necessary because of actions that have taken place in the four major sports.
“But how deep the lottery should go? How many spots should it determine? You can argue that over a pint of beer in every bar in Calgary.”
To this day when I see (Sidney Crosby), I hold my index finger and my thumb about a half-inch apart — ‘Sid, you were this close to playing for me.’