You don't find many men better than Pat Burns.
The last time Pat Burns and I talked, at first, it was about anything and everything.
We talked about movies and motorcycles, his time as the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs and my time as a beat writer for the Buffalo Sabres. We talked about how Lou Lamoriello and the New Jersey Devils had been so good to him and how the game we both knew and loved had changed and, like old school guys often do, howled about how some of the changes were not necessarily for the better.
But Pat Burns knew why I had called and after awhile he brought the conversation around to the subject that had ruthlessly brought us together one last time. He had cancer; he had been battling it for years. It was a fight he would not win and he knew the end was near. I had been recently diagnosed. I needed help and he knew it.
"Well we've gone and got ourselves into one hell of a spot haven't we," he joked. "Who would have thought it would come to this."
His voice was weaker than I remembered it, but still strong. It was just a few days after he had returned from Stanstead, Quebec where friends and supporters were kicking off a drive to build a youth hockey rink and name it after him. That trip had taken a toll and he knew that too.
He knew when he was there and when he spoke to me that he wouldn't live to see that arena completed, but he was fine with that. He had lived his life and was content with the knowledge that he could see how the end would play out. I don't want to make this a column about me, not on the day of his passing, but he helped me more that one day than I could ever begin to imagine. He told me what was ahead, how it would impact me and how important it was to deal with it on my own terms.
It wasn't a game plan for dying, it was a blueprint for living with cancer and it was put together by someone who had done it to the best of his considerable ability.
"It's pretty much like I used to tell my players," he said. "You can't complain about the circumstances, about the hand you're dealt. You just get up every day and you deal with it. It's hard, it's hard on you and it's hard on your family, but you can't change any of that. You get up, you look in the mirror and you say 'not today, you're not going to beat me today'. Sometimes you win that day, sometimes the cancer knocks you down and takes its day, but you get up again tomorrow. You keep getting up until the day comes..."
The rest went unspoken.
All his life Pat Burns had been a fighter. If he admired anything about me or at least about my writing I like to think that I had always done the same. I called him out once when he was in a playoff series with the Sabres and his somewhat rough and tumble Canadiens were something less than that iconic club of days gone by.
The next day he fired right back, addressing my comments in a press conference and making the point that these Canadiens were his Canadiens and that this time was his time and their time and that the past was exactly where it belonged, in the past.
I was fairly young back then and I took it personally, but I didn't back down. Much later he told me in an e-mail that he respected that I had stood my ground. He said he had been reading me regularly after I had moved from Buffalo to FoxSports and, later, to ESPN and other stops and that I reminded him of him.
"You tell people what you think and don't worry about the consequences," he said. "A lot of people don't like that, but I think the people who hear it, in the long run, are better off for hearing it. I always tried to do that with my players. I think they respected me for that."
Believe me Pat, it wasn't just your players.
In this business we often talk about hockey as not just a game, but a lifestyle, and that's what I admired most about Pat Burns. He lived his hockey life like he lived his real life, both with and without cancer. He did it on his terms.
In that last conversation he told me about how he had eventually resigned himself to his fate. He sold his beloved Harley Road King to his longtime friend Larry Robinson, but not until he was certain he couldn't ride it anymore.
"I told him he was getting a great bike at a great price and if he didn't take care of it I would come back and haunt him about it," he said.
He told me how he had stopped taking chemo treatments because he just didn't see the point anymore, and then he changed his mind, went back for one more, and then stopped again.
"I guess I was afraid that I was giving up on hope and I was worried about what people would think, but then I talked with a few doctor friends of mine and they said, 'Pat, this is about what you want to do, not about what other people think you should do.'"
He told me that was important to him, that he had lived his life to the best of his ability and that he should be able to see it through to the end on his terms as well.
"I have no complaints," he said. "Do I wish this hadn't happened to me? Sure, who wouldn't, but looking back I went from being a cop walking a beat to being a coach in the National Hockey League and I had some success with both."
I've often thought about that and how it paralleled my own life.
I was a kid from South Buffalo who grew up in an era when life's options seemed to be limited to steel working, fire fighting or police work. Somehow I stumbled into a real newsroom, used it to work my way through college and ended up covering the Buffalo Sabres and, later, the National Hockey League.
I think that's why we both connected like we did. We were about the same age. We knew one life and then we were exposed to and eventually became part of an entirely different one. We had our friends and our critics, but we got to where we were largely because of hard work and a commitment to doing what we thought was right.
That was the bond between us; back then it was forged in the cauldron that was the old Adams Division of the NHL. It was tested at times, but it never broke.
And that's the way I will remember Pat Burns.
His record is a good one. Three times he was NHL coach of the year. In 1019 NHL games he posted a 501-353-151-14 won-lost-tied-overtime loss record that, in my mind at least, is worthy of consideration for the Hockey Hall of Fame. He won a Stanley Cup with the Devils in 2003 and is considered a turn-around specialist of the highest order.
All well and good and certainly something to be proud of, but the Pat Burns I'll remember was more than just a good coach. He was a good man who battled a wicked disease and he did it with conviction and courage and with the idea that even while dying he could help others live with both dignity and understanding.
You don't find many men better than that.
He will be missed.
