Mike Milbury, prototypical Bruin and no trembling faint-heart, tells a story. “I’m coaching my first year in Boston and we get to the All-Star break, two games left to play. We play in Hartford, win that game, now we have one left before a four-day weekend, and we’re in first place overall. It’s my first year coaching and I’m feeling pretty good about myself. We get back to Boston at one o’clock in the morning. I call off the morning skate for the next day, but I go in to look at some tape. I get a call from Harry: ‘Come up and see me in my office.’ So I walk in, first place, won the night before, nothing really to worry about. I sit down and Harry says, ‘You fucking think it’s over, Mike? You think the break has fucking started, don’t ya? You think you’re gonna come in here tonight and win this fucking game, two points, but you’re on vacation already, just like the rest of these fucking guys.’ I was sweating bullets. I left, came back at five o’clock, locked the dressing room door, kicked over chairs, screamed at everybody. And wouldn’t you know it—that was one of the best regular-season games we had all year. See, one of Harry’s favourite expressions was, ‘Hockey isn’t like bridge; you can’t pass. You have to show up and play.’ He was an outstanding coach. But he came in talking like a guy who had coached a Stanley Cup championship team and a guy who had coached the Canadian national team over the Russians in 1972. Harry was demanding on his coaches because he felt—and with good reason—that he knew the right approach to coaching. And Pat Burns was not one to shy away from a confrontation, either. He did not have, shall we say, a politically correct nature.”
That they joined forces in 1997 took hockey people aback. “It would have been unthinkable forty years earlier,” says Serge Savard, recalling the playoff-driven hatred between Montreal and Boston that all but precluded coaching in one franchise and then the other, even with a Toronto stop-off in between. “I don’t know why Pat went to Boston,” says Cliff Fletcher, shaking his head. “It was ridiculous what happened there.”
There was no mystery to it. Burns was a supplicant, driven to distraction after spending an entire season on the sidelines, with his thumbs up his arse. After getting the hook in Toronto, he’d retreated to Magog, content to sit tight for a while, thoroughly anticipating that job offers would be plentiful over the summer. It appeared likely there would be vacancies in San Jose and Vancouver, to name just a couple of possible destinations. To keep himself occupied in the interim, Burns accepted a six-week contract to provide daily hockey commentary on a Montreal French radio station, CKAC, during the playoffs. He also leapt at a short-term gig to express his thoughts in English during intermissions of first-round playoff games for The Sports Network. Encroaching a tad on Don Cherry’s domain as king of the two-cent coach’s corner opinion, these rhetorical sessions provided a nice temporary focus for Burns’s energies and kept him in the loop. To his own bemusement—because he’d crossed over, however fleetingly, to the media dark side—the unemployed coach proved adroit at extemporizing and opinionating. The time-filler cameos expanded so that eventually Burns was making use of his vocal cords on several AM stations. “You can do radio with your hair messed up,” he snickered. “You can be lying on your couch with a beer.” Radio also led to his encounter with a divorced mother of two adolescent children, Line Cignac, who was working in promotions. Burns fell head over heels. “I’ve met someone,” he told close friend Kevin Dixon.
Where real hockey was concerned, Burns thought he had the luxury of being choosy, cheques still coming in from that one-year-outstanding Toronto salary. Perhaps vainly, he considered himself a hot commodity. Surely another club would come knocking? As the months flew by, however, GMs were not beating a path to his door in the Eastern Townships. He started to squirm. “What happens if the phone never rings? What happens if no one wants you?” When the next season got under way, Burns wrung his hands over maybe being yesterday’s man. He had to accept the fact that his road back to the NHL now depended on some other poor coaching fraternity mook getting canned.
There are always in-season firings. Perplexingly, overtures to Burns were more of the just-looking, not-buying variety. In February, he popped up in Toronto to promote a new line of snowmobiles and provided sound bites for the local press contingent, refraining from making any negative remarks about the chaotic Leaf franchise. “Brother, do I miss hockey, the scrap and challenge of it? I can’t wait to get back at it, and I will, but only if the situation is right.” In fact, Burns was regularly on the blower, urging his agent-cousin Robin Burns to shop his services around at any whiff of an opening. As a between-periods commentator for Montreal’s RDS game broadcasts, he kept himself close to the franchise where his NHL career had sprouted. When the Habs were ushered out of the playoffs by New Jersey in five first-round games and sophomore coach Mario Tremblay was given the heave-ho, Burns expressed interest, with reservations. “I’d have to think about it. I want to coach again in the NHL, but do I want to coach here? I’m on television now; I’m nice and popular. You become the coach, you become a target.”
Quietly, he did throw his hat in the ring, formalizing his candidacy. Simultaneously, other vacancies arose—Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Jose and, most enticingly, Boston. The Bruins, finishing dead last in the NHL and missing the playoffs for the first time in three decades, had fired phlegmatic coach Steve Kasper. Another Original Six team, however currently sad-sack, had Burns licking his lips. But he was not Sinden’s first choice. The GM was wooing Boston University’s Jack Parker, the most highly regarded coach in the U.S. college ranks. Only when Parker rebuffed the offer did Sinden turn his beady eyes towards Plan B—Burns, who was on his way back from a Florida vacation when Sinden invited him in for a feeler chat.
“Pat reminded me a lot of a couple of coaches that I’d had—I’m referring to Don Cherry and Mike Milbury—in his attitude, his demeanour, his personality,” says Sinden, recalling that long meeting in May 1997 that took place in the Bruins dressing room, assistant GM Mike O’Connell also present. “He wasn’t a tactician or strategy guy as they were, but I thought Pat had handled his teams the same way. His background was similar to mine. He grew up in the city streets and had been a cop; I was a guy who’d worked at General Motors. It seemed to me that he would be a good fit for us. I just had this feeling that he could be a Bruin.”
Burns later recounted that interview conversation to his pal Chris Wood, who was flabbergasted at the career choice. “He called me up and said, ‘Woody, I’m going to BAWWSTON.’ I told him, ‘Listen, I was a big Montreal fan and I became a Toronto fan because of you. But the Boston Bruins? Love you buddy, but no way can I be a Bruins fan.’ And Pat chuckled, ‘You know, Woody, neither can I.’ But, honestly, why wouldn’t he have gone to Boston? It had been a long period between Toronto and the Bruins’ offer. All coaches second-guess themselves, worry about never getting another job. I don’t think Pat had any other serious offers. And it was a lucrative deal for him, his first (almost) million-dollar contract. But Harry turned out to be a tyrant.”
Others tried to dissuade Burns as well: Get a grip, Pat. This is so not smart. He pooh-poohed the negative advice.
For the interview, he arrived in Boston with Robin Burns and Kevin Dixon. Robin, former NHL journeyman and successful entrepreneur—his hockey equipment company, Itech, became third largest in its specialty—had taken over from Don Meehan when rule changes prohibited agents from representing both coaches and players. “Harry had put us at a hotel on the other side of town. Pat signed in as Patrick Jonathan. We were really being hidden away. I guess Harry didn’t want people to know that he was talking to us. But the first guy we run into in the lobby goes, ‘Hey, Burnsie, you here to sign with the Bruins?’ Big secret.”
Burns enjoyed a degree of celebrity in New England, at least among those who followed the game. Dropping into a Lake Placid bar during his sabbatical from coaching, a ballsy waitress once beseeched Burns to autograph her bra. “So he signed, right on the hooter,” Robin laughs.
Following the d
iscussion with Sinden, the Burnses and Dixon retired to their hotel suite and promptly got pie-eyed. Dixon dipped into Burns’s bag, removed all the underwear, soaked the skivvies in water and tossed them out the window. “Pat’s yelling at us—‘You fuckers! You better have kept a pair for me to wear tomorrow!’ ” It was Robin who hammered out the contract details. “I told Pat, ‘We’re going after four years because Harry will fire you after three.’ ” Burns pulled a face. “I’m not going to be fired.” Robin warned: “Listen, Pat, I’m telling you the truth. Harry will fire you.” So Robin Burns pushed for that deal and got it, with seasonal raises that brought the contract to $950,000 in the fourth year. “I knew Harry didn’t want to break the million-dollar barrier, psychologically. But we had what we wanted. And that first year in Boston for Pat was … magical.”
In Boston, Burns was no longer the son of a French-Canadian mother but the son of an Irish father, his cop cred the cherry on top. What could be more seductive for Beantown, with its romanticized Irish working-class ethos and police-shield stock characters? At his introductory press conference—held a week after Slick Rick Pitino was anointed Celtics coach and Svengali—Burns even revised that off-told childhood anecdote about crying over the Chicago Blackhawks sweater a relative had bought him. Now it was a Boston Bruins jersey with Johnny Bucyk’s name on the back. “This was when Rocket Richard, Montreal’s No. 9, was the hottest thing since sliced bread,” he told a local media corps instantly charmed. “I had to fight my way on the ice, off the ice, and all the way home. But it was mine.” Whatever. He went so far as referring to his off-season home “in Vermont.” Magog hadn’t moved across the border, but Lake Memphremagog did dip partway into the U.S. state.
With his four-year pact, Burns became only the second man (Dick Irvin the other) to lead half of the NHL’s six traditional teams. In a city of dynamic Big Coaches, Burns could more than hold his own. He affixed a black-and-gold Bs licence plate to his Chevy 4×4 and slapped a Bruins sticker on the side of his Harley. Red Sox pitching ace Roger Clemens had just defected for Toronto. It was only fair that Boston got charismatic Burns as compensation.
Pshaw, Burns scoffed to media queries that he might come to grief with the club president. “Everybody is afraid of the myth of Harry Sinden. Harry Sinden believes in one thing: being loyal to a team and winning. He’s an old-school guy, and I like that. I think it’s important to be loyal. Don’t you think it’s about time we started getting back to that?” Sure, he was schmoozing the boss, but Sinden was glowingly approving in this first-trimester phase of their relationship. The notoriously skinflint Bruins organization had assured Burns they’d loosen the purse strings and sign quality talent. Sinden was agreeable when his coach quickly reached out to Dave Ellett, a favourite from Toronto days. Ellett was a free agent. “It was the first call I got, Pat phoning me directly. He said, ‘I want you here—what’s it going to take?’ I was nervous about going to Boston. The organization had a bad reputation and my agent tried to talk me out of it. But I had discussions with Pat and he assured me that things had changed there.” Ellett became a Bruin. Then Burns coaxed Ken Baumgartner—enforcer with the face of a damaged angel and part-time MBA student—into the Boston fold. “You guys are gonna love the Bomber!” he crowed to reporters.
The Bruins had just come off a ghastly season in which they’d committed the double crime of being both bad and boring. In Burns, Sinden had banked on a persona who would help fill the seats at the new FleetCenter and staunch the bleed of bailing season-ticket holders. A high-profile coach was part of the blueprint to rebuild the franchise. The other pillar of Bruin rejuvenation was a seventeen-year-old by the name of Joe Thornton, Boston’s salve for finishing last in the then-twenty-six-team NHL. The six-foot-four-inch teenager was the first-overall selection in the entry draft and the most highly touted hope since Bobby Orr. With their second pick, eighth overall, the Bruins took Russian mini-bull Sergei Samsonov. “I patted him on the shoulder,” marvelled Burns. “It was like patting a rock.”
So, the Bruins had legendary defenceman Raymond Bourque, a couple of projected stars who could just as easily flame out, and a bunch of other guys Burns admitted he’d never heard of. Assembling his new charges at training camp, a chaw of tobacco shoved beneath his upper lip, the coach declared, “Unless you’re Raymond Bourque, I don’t know you.” As an aside, he added: “I have ties and underwear older than some of those guys out there.”
Rapped as a coach who cleaved to veterans and couldn’t manage youngsters well—as if he’d never developed kids in juniors who stepped directly into the NHL—Burns pledged to be patient with his fledglings and balance sternness with praise. There was no doubt at camp that he had his players’ attention. They were obedient and energetic, glad to have someone in charge who brought structure to their game plan, even though Burns could never be described as someone who excelled at Xs-and-Os instruction. As one columnist observed, “Burns is the kind of coach, who, when he senses a lull, refers to the front and back cover of his playbook; either side will suffice when used for hitting someone upside the head.”
Burns was insistent, however, on bringing “Jumbo Joe” Thornton along slowly, with baby steps. “I will not make the same mistakes some teams do with their number-one draft choices.” But he forgot who was really calling the shots. Here was sown the seed of his initial contretemps with Sinden. For the same reason Sinden had peeled open Boston’s clammy wallet to pay Burns, he wanted full bang for his multimillion-bucks investment in Thornton. Just eighteen now, the curly-haired youth would put fannies in the seats and surely provide goal production spark. Burns wanted him to ripen in the minors. “Is it better to keep him here and not play him?” Burns asked, making his case in the media. “Or is it better that he go down, play in the World Junior tournament? We’ll all have to sit down, management and the coaching staff, list all the fors and againsts. What’s the best and proper decision for Joe Thornton?” Coach and GM argued heatedly about it, but this wasn’t a battle Burns could possibly win. “We had this big stud, number-one pick,” says Sinden. “He was the next Eric Lindros in everybody’s mind. Pat looked at him and said, ‘He’s not ready.’ But I felt that we couldn’t send this kid down.” The kid broke his arm in an exhibition game, slashed by Pittsburgh’s Stu Barnes, so that deferred the issue for a bit. But he was in the lineup by game four of the regular season. Sinden—and his assistant, O’Connell, who concurred—could foist the youngster on Burns, but the coach controlled Thornton’s ice time. Turning a deaf ear to Sinden, he eased the youth in gently, usually deployed on the fourth line, occasionally scratched entirely, such that, by his twenty-first NHL game, Thornton didn’t have a single point. This was not going to earn the putative Boston saviour rookie-of-the-year laurels. “We kept him here but he didn’t play much,” says Sinden, reflecting on poor choices. “He was ready in some ways, but Joe was still a kid. Some of them come in at eighteen and they’re fairly mature. Joe wasn’t.” With the wisdom of hindsight, Sinden concedes that Burns was on the button. “Pat was right on that one.” It was Samsonov, with a year in the International Hockey League under his belt, who provided the buzz that year—and copped the rookie award at its conclusion.
The ’97–98 Bruins came charging out of the gate, Burns, as was his forte, squeezing the most out of marginal players. “Pat’s strength was that he got everyone in their right roles,” says O’Connell. “It’s really what he does best—gets people to become a team. He motivates each player to perform his role for the betterment of the team.” It was big-yawn hockey, rigid and risk averse, but, in the coach’s defence, he didn’t have much to work with, and defence could be taught. A newspaper cartoon depicted Burns hypnotizing fans by dangling a puck like a watch fob. Queried about the merits of “The Trap,” dead-zone hockey, he got his back up. “We had to give it a name, that’s the worst thing we ever did. The positional play you’re talking about? We don’t play the trap. We play a positional game, and that has been going on for twen
ty-five years.”
O’Connell fails to see the difference, as practised by Burns, while acknowledging management had known exactly what they were getting. “It was a trap mentality. Pat liked big, bruising guys but his was not a style that forced the issue. It was more of a classic ‘let’s wait, get in our position, and wait, and wait, and then we counter.’ He’d done that everywhere he’d been. The trap was developed in the Montreal system, and that was Pat’s belief. Everybody knew he was going to do it, but still, he was very good at getting them to do it, better than anyone else. And we won playing that style. Some of his ideas you might not agree with, but it’s a very successful way of playing which many teams have adopted. It does enable teams without talent to win. It gives them a chance because of how it’s structured. The NHL today, the way I look at it, there’s five not-so-good teams and the other twenty-five are about the same.”
On New Year’s Eve 1997, Boston tied the Leafs 2–2 in Toronto, the first time Burns had graced the Gardens since packing hastily in the night. The Bruins were 17–17–7, vastly improved from the squad that had finished in the cellar eight months earlier. Their hockey may have been wincingly dull, but it was adequately effective because players had bought into the coach’s vision. At the All-Star break, they ranked a solid sixth in the Eastern Conference, light years removed from the pitiful lot that brought Burns in as Original Six fix-it man. The postseason beckoned again. “You want to get to that ‘Spring Dance,’ ” Burns enthused, “you’d better bring your Kodiak work boots and not your patent-leather shoes.” A 4–1 win over the Islanders clinched the playoff berth on April 9, and Burns’s name was touted once more for a Jack Adams award.
“The best coaches are the ones that keep people on their toes, keep players honest in terms of knowing what’s expected of them,” says Ray Bourque. “Pat made what was expected of us very clear from the beginning. He was a coach I learned a lot from. I’d never realized how detailed he was as a coach. This was a guy who believed you had to play defence—not just defencemen but centres and wingers too. He kept harping on it, and that’s how his drills were set up. These are the drills I’ve brought along with me, coaching my sons’ teams, and if I were ever to coach in the NHL—not that I would—the drills I would use. We practised them two or three times a week. Every single forward knew exactly what he had to do in the defensive zone. We were very, very well coached.”
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