CALGARY – It always starts like this, a veritable deference-palooza with everybody holding the door for each other, each man promising to play nice in the sandbox.
As much as we respect Brian Burke as a National Hockey League manager, what we cannot claim to know is his ability to share the cockpit; to allow others to front the massive rebuild that awaits the Flames while he stands in the back row, as he claims will be the case in Calgary.
We’re not saying he can’t do it. We’re saying it is a trait of Burke’s with which we are unfamiliar – like Teemu Selanne coming to Ducks camp saying he’s ready to start playing the game the way Tomas Holmstrom used to.
We’ll believe it, but only after we see it.
“I am not the general manager of the Calgary Flames – Jay Feaster is,” Burke declared in his opening statement Thursday at the press conference where he was unveiled as the Flames new president of hockey operations.
“I don’t intend to be the spokesperson for the team. The day-to-day guy will be the coach, Bob Hartley. The transactional guy … Jay will talk to the media. I intend to have a background role.
“I know people think I need to drive the bus all the time. Well, I’m a pretty good teammate too.”
We know that to be true, as those who Burke comes to trust will attest that he is loyal to a fault. Those who cross him, however, get the ol’ invite to a barn fight.
Make no mistake: There is a chain of command here in Calgary, and Burke heads the hockey department. Much discussion will take place on the litany of moves necessary to make this Flames team a contender, but if Feaster wants to be around to see the finished product, he’ll have to acquiesce more than once along the way.
Feaster, as one would suspect, was fine with the new relationship.
“If you get somebody who … doesn’t want to buy into what the position is, then it could be a problem,” began Feaster. “If it’s someone who, quite candidly, I don’t respect, then I think it could be a problem.”
Burke fits neither of those descriptions, Feaster insists.
“I love the concept (of Burke’s new position),” Feaster said. “And I think, in Brian Burke, we got the right person in spades.”
Burke went the entire press conference without trotting out the word “truculent,” a term that his opponents in Toronto used as ammunition throughout Burke’s last rebuild, a job he was not allowed to see to the finish. He did, however, make clear his three pillars of building an organization, tenets that have not changed since he took over the Leafs back in 2009.
o Calgary will play “An entertaining, physical brand of hockey,” Burke promised. “Successful teams are big. We’re going to get bigger.”
o He’ll run this team like a business. “Ownership is prepared to spend to the cap, that’s not the issue. We want to spend the money wisely, and until we see value, we’ll stay where we are.”
o Community service: “On my teams the players give back, or they play somewhere else. It’s real simple.”
The hard decisions have yet to come in Calgary, and when they do, the man they invented this new position for will do what he does. In the case of his last rebuild, that meant trading two first-round picks and a second-rounder for Phil Kessel, a trade Burke said “I’d do again today.”
But Feaster and the rest of this organization just got the word “rebuild” out of its collective mouth about four months ago, after a long period of avoidance. The Flames waited two years too long to deal Jarome Iginla, and should also have cashed in on Miikka Kiprusoff, who Burke expects to officially retire soon.
The Flames are all but guaranteed a top 3 draft pick in 2014. In a hockey savvy market, can Burke get away with dealing draft picks again, in hopes of expediting a rebuild?
Feaster is on board with “speeding things up,” but says there is more than one way to accomplish that.
“We’re sitting with $13 million worth of cap space, and by the time it’s all said and done we’ll be at about 45, maybe 46 NHL contracts (out of 50 allowed),” he said. “There are teams that will still have to do some things to get under the cap. There are other ways to go about it other than trading draft picks.”
Yet, struggling franchises do not attract ‘A’ free agents, as Flames Jiri Hudler and Dennis Wideman would attest.
So there’s the rub, the first rub.
Don’t worry.
With Burke involved now, and a massive rebuild ahead, the fun has only started in Calgary.