Ex Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke Is a Living Legend
You're a Legend Burkie!
Once upon a time Brian Burke was my favorite thing that ever happened to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In 2008, I'd barely even ever used the internet, didn't know what an advanced stat was, but I did know Brian Burke and I couldn't have been more excited when the Toronto Maple Leafs hired him to correct what was a disastrously insane decision to return to Cliff Fletcher.
Several years later I found myself working as a hockey writer covering the Leafs and took the opportunity several times to criticize the job Burke did as the Leafs GM. I renounced my old ways and could not believe I was the once Brian Burke's biggest fan.
Now I can see it both ways. Burke was a great GM and an awesome presence, but is possible that he was a little too old-school to navigate the salary cap and make use of statistical revelations.
Looking back though, I think Burke understood something beyond statistics. The idea that if you always make the correct statistical decision you will win over time makes sense when you have unlimited tries, like in poker.
In the NHL, though, there is such parity and such variance, that the high-risk high-reward style of Brian Burke likely works better than the Kyle Dubas / Eric Tulsky model.
Sure the Brian Bruke Era ultimately ended in failure, but was it any worse than the Kyle Dubas Era? Burke didn't have the advantage of starting with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, and ultimately both managers failed in their ultimate goal, no matter how they chose to go about it.
To me at least, the contrasts are very interesting.
Dubas played it safe, and Burke gambled like a maniac. But at the end of the day, both were subject to the whims of pure luck, so it seems to me that there really isn't any downside in what Burke was doing and that in fact, the NHL is set up to reward high-risk plays and punish teams for playing it safe/smart.
What follows is my thoughts on Brian Burke and how I came to think that he is the best GM the Leafs have ever had.
You're a Legend Burkie!
In 2016, years after buying a Dion Phaneuf jersey and renouncing the Brian Burke school of hockey thought, I wouldn't have believed I would look back positively on the Burke years, but here we are.
Because Burke knew something I didn't realize and I don't think people think enough about:
The only path to success outside of pure luck is to hit big on a high risk high reward play that no one else would even think of.
That, unless you get insanely lucky and draft well five years in a row, you have to try to succeed in an all-or-nothing sport (no one cares about the regular season or being runner up in the SCF) by operating in a cap system that more or less guarantees parity while being completely at the mercy of injuries and the NHL's nearly random playoff tournament.
The reason I assume Burke knows this and believes it is because on every team he managed he tried to orchestrate a massively high-risk high-reward move, and yet, he's clearly one of the smartest and most educated people to ever be involved in hockey.
If he thinks this, I think it's worth considering.
On the Ducks, where he won a Stanley Cup, he traded for a 32 year-old Chris Pronger by paying 2 firsts, a second, Joffrey Lupul and Ladislav Smid, two players recently drafted in the top 10. It's a massive deal that would have been roasted on Twitter, had it existed then.
Instead Bruke won the Cup. But how many times would it actually pay off to trade what amounts to four first-round picks for a 32 year old in a sport where most 32-year-olds shouldn't be playing?
The Vancouver Canucks never won a Cup but they were perennial contenders for a decade because Burke orchestrated the massive trade that ended with him drafting both Daniel and Henrick Sedin with the second and third picks of the 1999 NHL Entry Draft.
This brings us to the Leafs.
Burke knew that no one would have the patience for the Leafs to bottom-out, and he knew that even if they did, he'd have to get insanely lucky for it to work out.
He was right, by the way. Just look ask any Leafs fans what they think of Kyle "the best five regular season period in the history of a 100 year old team" Dubas.
Dubas built a team that basically did everything right and then proceeded to lose 11 elimination games in a row. Not even sure how that is possible, but the end results didn't make him any more popular or successful than Burke, who shot from the hip and achieved the same result in a drastically more entertaining way.
What worked in Vancouver and Anaheim could have worked in Toronto. It just didn't.
Burke paid two top ten picks and a second rounder to get Phil Kessel. Then in a subsequent move he turned around and traded for Dion Phaneuf.
That is his legacy in Toronto and it didn't work. He took two massive swings, and though you can argue he at least hit a triple with Kessel, Phaneuf was a single at best.
But, here's the thing: It could have worked out. There wasn't some fatal flaw in the plan.
The difference between the Phil Kessel we saw and the Phil Kessel that could have been a more rounded Franchise Level Player is microscopic. Had the team been better around him, I don't doubt Kessel would have found and exceeded that difference.
Phaneuf is a different story. His was so, so good in his first three years in Calgary that buying low on him a couple years later and hoping he really was a Chris Pronger Clone wasn't an unreasonable hope.
It just didn't materialize. If it did, we'd likely be in year 17 of the Brian Burke Era right now.
Unlike Kessel, I think Phaneuf's early success set unfortunate expectations that he just couldn't ever hope to realize. He would have been a killer #2, but he was acquired as a Franchise Player 1B.
That didn't work out. After so many years of the Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner Era, I realize that there is just so much luck involved that playing it safe just doesn't make any sense. When no one cares about the Leafs having six-plus years of contender status and setting tons of team records because they didn't win a Stanley Cup, why play it safe?
In other words, if the rewards for finishing last outweigh the awards for finishing second-best, there is no upside in playing it safe. In the NHL if you want to set your team above the fray, you need to hit big on a big risk.
Burke knew this, and that is why he went big. It didn't work for Burke, but in retrospect, would the Leafs have won by building through the draft with Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton? Probably not.
Current Leafs GM Brad Treliving knows Brian Burke well. Burke was the President who hired him as the GM in the first place. So far, I haven't seen anything resembling Brian Burke in Treliving, but he's only been here a while.
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Maybe this summer will see Trelving channel his mentor and actually make a move worth remembering. High Risk High Reward is the Brian Bruke way. The Toronto Maple Leafs current GM would do well to take note.