Coach: The Pat Burns Story (33 page)

The squabbling NHL sides mustered for three days of meetings in Chicago with a news blackout imposed. Fletcher repeated warnings that a deal had to be reached by the end of the first week in January to salvage a half-season. “I’ve never felt so useless in a situation in my whole life,” Burns moaned. “It’s getting scary. I’m almost starting to think like a fan, where I don’t care anymore. Just tell us if we’re playing or not.”

At the eleventh hour, plus about two thousand, they settled it. Camps reopened January 13, 1995, for five days of manic preparation before a
truncated forty-eight-game season, within the conference only, and regular playoffs that could stretch into July to follow. Leaf players anticipated a reign of terror from their boss. “We’re just going to have to hack and whack our way through it until we get in shape,” said Burns. “My focus is going to be on a playoff spot, nothing more. There’ll be no chance to think of where we finish—just get in there and pray we’re healthy and ready. Patience is out the window. I can’t afford to wait. Somebody not producing—sorry pal, you’re gone. We coaches have had a mess dumped on our laps, to be fixed in a hurry. There’s only one way I can do it here—to be more demanding than ever.”

Contract stipulations restrained Burns from whipping his charges into shape with Simon Legree fury; workouts for Training Camp II were limited to three hours a day. At the first afternoon session—Leafs on the ice minutes before Bettman formally declared “Game On”—the coach winced and shook his head. When players were slow on line changes during scrimmages, he barked: “C’mon! This is for the playoffs, the third period of the playoffs!” Skaters gasped, but didn’t gag. “Actually, it wasn’t that bad,” summed up defenceman Jamie Macoun. “He didn’t kill us.”

Twenty-six teams were entering unknown terrain. For the Leafs, with so many new faces, there was the added issue of trying to revive the chemistry that had served them so well over the past two years. They put their faith in Burns, though concerned about his threat that laggards would be heaved over the side. “I don’t have a magic formula. The only good thing is that everybody is in the same boat. I hope nobody takes it easy. You can’t go pacing yourself in a forty-eight-game schedule.” In Vegas, bookies pegged Toronto at 4–1 odds to win the Cup.

The players looked awkward and sloppy in the first game against L.A., a 3–3 draw on the coast. Then they lost 3–2 in San Jose. Burns juggled his lines maniacally, searching for instant alchemy. At one practice, when sticks went up between Todd Gill and Dave Andreychuk and they exchanged gloved jabs, Burns smiled. “That’s good. Maybe the brotherly love will go
away a little bit and we’ll be a little meaner.” In the Gardens opener, Toronto spanked Vancouver 6–2, Mats Sundin superb, selected as first star, if not yet forgiven by fans for the crime of not being Wendel.

There was no sense of continuity or cohesiveness, however, as the season sprinted by. Toronto’s expected offensive prowess wasn’t evident. The sked was front-heavy with road games for Toronto, and Burns claimed he was aiming for merely a .500 record by the All-Star break and somewhere in the region of .700 after that as the team bore down. But this team was clearly having difficulty gelling. Players were also afraid of making mistakes that would get them benched. “Maybe we’re not as good as everybody thought we were,” Burns whined. He was perplexed that the distinctive Leaf passion, the one-for-all ethos, had gone AWOL. “They hesitate to crack jokes or say the things that develop chemistry among a group of men. The togetherness isn’t there yet. Camaraderie is just building.”

Burns no longer had a reliable checker-wrecker line. Gilmour was having trouble getting untracked: The defence had maddening lapses. It quickly became apparent this Leaf squad would go as far as Sundin could take them. After a dispiriting loss to Los Angeles, the dressing room door stayed closed for longer than usual as the players held a team meeting to air out feelings, leaving the Chancellor of Austria—waiting to pose for meet ’n’ greet photos—to cool his heels in the corridor. Burns’s postgame pressers got shorter and brusquer. “It’s got to come from them,” he argued. “For the last couple of years, this team has been finding ways to win; now we’re finding ways to lose.” Twenty-six games into the abbreviated season, Toronto was a middling team. “We have to win our share the rest of the way because the bottom’s coming up,” said Burns. “We don’t want to risk devastation. I hope the players understand that. This is getting to be a life-and-death situation.” As the trade deadline approached, a rather bitchy Burns put his players on alert: “I wouldn’t buy any groceries this week.”

It was a line stolen from Tie Domi, who’d made the observation in Winnipeg, where his status was a subject of debate. Leafs had just played the Jets in Winnipeg. Domi, a right winger, was lining up for a faceoff, back to the Leaf bench, when he heard somebody yapping at him. He turned around,
glaring. “Nobody’s mouth was moving. Then I looked at Pat. He said, ‘Yeah, you heard me. I’d like to have you on my right side.’ ” Why Burns coveted Domi was unclear. He already had a proven enforcer in Ken Baumgartner, who famously shouted “Daddy’s Home!” when wading into a scrum in support of teammates. But Baumgartner got little ice time. “We had toughness, but in a lot of games Pat wouldn’t use those guys,” says Fletcher. “He wasn’t comfortable putting them on the ice because the games were too important. Pat’s feeling about Tie was this is a player who can skate, who can play in all situations.” Fletcher made the deal, sending Winnipeg Mike Eastwood, and pulling off four other trades that revamped the lineup. Burns had presented his GM with a shopping list, and Fletcher got to it.

Domi received the call from Burns at 3 p.m. “Told ya.” Huh? Who is this? “It’s Pat Burns and you’re a Leaf. Get on a plane. I want you in the lineup tonight.” Domi caught the first flight available, gleeful at being returned to the franchise that had selected him twenty-seventh overall in the 1988 entry draft, though appearing in just two NHL games before being dispatched to the Rangers. He made it to the Gardens minutes before game time. “I never even saw Burnsie before I got on the bench. I was in the dressing room, changing, and he was on TV doing an interview.” It wasn’t until the next day that they spoke one on one in the coach’s office. “He’s sitting there in sandals and boxers, wearing glasses. I started laughing. ‘What’s so funny?’ I said, ‘That’s quite the sight, Pat.’ And from that moment on, he loved me.”

There was only one month left to get the reconfigured Leafs sorted out, right side up. Burns had his replenished assets, more skill and speed on his roster. Yet he didn’t ease up on the reins or adjust a defensive system designed for the players who were there before. “We had a different team, and we needed to play a little bit of a different style,” suggests Ellett. “I think Pat had trouble coming to grips with that. I mean, that’s why we’d traded for Sundin, right, to open up? But Pat wouldn’t let us.”

In a blur of fits and starts, the Leafs lurched to the finish line, no more disoriented than other clubs. While Montreal was being eliminated from postseason contention, Toronto finished fourth in the Central Division,
which meant another first-round tango with the Blackhawks, who had home-ice advantage. Burns didn’t give a rat’s patootie about that, but first rounds always scared him, as they did all coaches. “It’s the toughest round of the playoffs. If you can get by the first round, you’re all right.”

When the playoffs opened, they certainly seemed all right, taking the first two games of the Western Conference quarter-final, Potvin stealing the second with a shutout on forty-two saves, a tall glass of water. “Not much makes me nervous. My dad used to tell me, ‘You’ll never die of a heart attack.’ ” The team stayed overnight in Chicago after game two. And that’s where the trouble may have begun. “Some guys went out after,” says Sundin, who wasn’t one of them. “They got back late. Pat heard about it and was not very happy.” There was more to it than that. A group of players who hadn’t dressed came back to the hotel and got raucous—to the point that there were complaints to management. Burns was roused from his sleep in the wee hours by the night manager. “Please tell them to stop.” The coach was outraged, and not just about having his beauty sleep interrupted. Did these fools not understand what was at stake? He seethed during the charter flight home and ordered the squad directly to the Gardens. “He bag-skated us,” says Sundin. Domi: “That was the first time I’d seen him really pissed off. Old-school bag skate, no pucks, and here we were two games up. He made his point.”

Toronto was halfway there, halfway out of the chaotic first round. The S-word—sweep—was verboten. “The only advantage we have right now is that we have to win two games and they have to win four,” said Burns. “The ’Hawks are a proud team. Nobody’s dead until they’ve been buried and the funeral rites have been given.” Chicago didn’t lie down for the Leafs to kick dirt on them. Led by Eddie Belfour, they went tit-for-tat on Toronto and swiped a pair right back. The series was tied, all Leaf cockiness having vanished. When the ’Hawks won their third game in a row, at the United Center, it felt like the Leafs had fallen down a manhole. Now the underdog status Burns embraced was no longer an act. “We play better when we’re desperate. There’s no one here who’s laid down their guns and said, ‘We surrender.’ The big question is, how much pride are we going to
have?” Typically, Burns had stripped the situation down to bumper-sticker platitudes, as if self-regard could compensate for execution and discipline, which had gone down the flusher. And the team did respond, though they were fortunate to escape elimination with a 5–4 overtime win in game six after blowing a 4–1 third-period lead, the crowd bellowing boos. Journeyman spare part Randy Wood—a Yale boy, actually—popped the winning shot ten minutes into OT, after Sundin swung the puck out front on a wraparound attempt. “It’s nothing to be proud of,” admitted Burns, wiping perspiration from his brow, shaken by the third-period collapse. “We found a way to win even when it seemed we were dead as doornails.” The Leafs had merely earned the right to play their fifth game seven in three years. “The pressure is on them, not us,” Burns insisted. There was just enough time between games for him to get clocked speeding by photo radar on Highway 427, his third violation since moving to Toronto.

The deciding encounter was a nightmare for Todd Gill, a reprise of what had been his worst moment as a Maple Leaf—the final game of the ’88–89 season, when his giveaway at Chicago Stadium resulted in a goal that put the Blackhawks into the playoffs ahead of Toronto. This time, fate cruelly revisited at 11:53 of the third, Leafs trailing 2–1 but pushing hard for the equalizer. Gill attempted a backhand pass to defence partner Dmitri Mironov that an onrushing Joe Murphy knocked down and turned into a breakaway, flipping the puck over Potvin. Twenty-six seconds later, Chicago scored again to remove any chance of a miracle comeback, an empty-net goal added to wipe out the Leafs 5–2. Toronto, a club conceived to win it all in the wrangled wreckage of a mutant season, had not survived the first round.

“Everything unravelled,” says Potvin. “To be honest, I don’t have many memory souvenirs from that season. It felt like we were just running to make the playoffs and then we were out.” Ellett: “Of all the losses, that was the probably the most disappointing, for Burnsie and for everyone involved.” Nobody could figure out what had gone so catastrophically wrong, how the Leafs could have relinquished a series that had been under firm control. “Up 2–0, you should be able to prevail,” says Fletcher, as flummoxed as anyone else, even years later. “We got beaten.”

C
LIFF
F
LETCHER WAS URBANE
, suave and cultured. Pat Burns was unrefined, blunt and coarse. One was cut from cashmere, the other from broadcloth. Two more diametrically opposed natures could scarcely be imagined. Yet, in hockey terms, they complemented each other. With apologies to Tom Cruise in
Jerry Maguire:
“You complete me.” It wasn’t a buddy-buddy relationship, hanging out together on the road, because Burns always remained somewhat diffident about suits with GM honorifics in front of their names. He was the employee and Fletcher “The Boss.” Away from the game, they had nothing in common. Inside the game, they were intuitively bonded, while allowing each other space to operate in their divergent jobs. “Pat was very independent,” says Fletcher. “He wanted to run things his way, which was my management style. I was never a frustrated coach.”

Their rapport was thus easy, never fraught. Over the occasional drink, in airport terminals, Burns continued to regale Fletcher with stories from his cop days. They make him crack up still in the retelling. Like the time Burns was on a drug stakeout in a gay bar, semi-dressed in drag. He was dancing with a male partner and hissing into his lapel microphone, urgently
calling in the raid by police waiting for the signal outside. Except his colleagues took their sweet time entering because they were laughing so hard at the image of Burns swaying in a man’s arms. “The scariest time was when they put him in undercover as a convict at Kingston Penitentiary for a month,” Fletcher remembers. “The only person in the world who knew he was there was the warden. Pat said he kept having nightmares that the warden was going to have a heart attack and die. He was never so frightened in his life. You hear these stories, and it’s easy to see how Pat developed the personality he had—think fast on your feet. That served him well in coaching.”

Were all the stories true or were some inventions? Does it matter? Burns may have buffed his cop resumé, but the coaching biography was for real, self-evident, and that’s what counted. The rest was amusing backdrop. Fletcher certainly valued the “instant credibility” Burns had brought to the Leaf franchise. “He got the whole town buzzing. From that point forward, things just got better and better—for a few years. He was everything the Maple Leafs could have asked for in a coach.” But Fletcher had been around hockey for three decades and recognized the underlying traits, strengths that could become weaknesses, in so peppery and zealous a bench boss. The pattern of diminishing returns became more starkly evident later in Burns’s career. “Pat was the type of coach who would never have a long tenure in one place because he was so demanding and got so much out of everyone,” says Fletcher. “After a number of years, if he had that same group of players, they just collapsed. They had no more to give.”