Interesting Quotes from former GM Brian Burke about the Ducks

Brian Burke, Ducks Stanley Cup Winning GM, was on Spittin Chiclets recently and spoke about the team for a bit. Interesting quotes:

Keith Tkachuk was nearly a Duck. Burke was asked if there was any player signing that he had lined up but a GM ever stopped. Burke’s response paraphrased: I had an owner kill a deal over money, which I think they’re entitled to do. I wanted to pay someone a million dollars over budget. The owner told me that they weren’t going to tell me not to make hockey deals and that they could make the money line up, but that I had no right to spend that money. So I said “you’re right.” When asked what guy? “Keith Tkachuk, my first year in Anaheim. We might have won two cups in Anaheim!”

Az biztos, hogy a lockout (2004) után Samueliék nagyon, talán túlságosan is fogták a pénzt, így sok potenciál maradt a csapatban kihasználatlanul. Aztán Samueli adó-ügye sem jött jókor a csapatnak kb. 5-6 évvel ezelőtt.

When Burke was asked about when Getzlaf and Perry were rookies and when Burke decided to pull them up to the NHL. Specifically asked if at some point in their junior years of 04-05 if Burke and the org were thinking ‘oh we gotta bring these guys up ASAP, they’re the future of the franchise.’ Burke’s response paraphrased: “No, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I didn’t like our dressing room that first year. And Sergei Fedorov was a great player but he was not into our team at that time. He spent lots of time in LA and we just had wrong leadership group in the room. So I called up Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf and I said ‘I’m about to do the most unfair thing, but I’m sending you down. You cannot learn at the knee of someone who’s not focused on our team. You cannot learn from someone whose top priority isn’t to win games.’ So I told them that they need to go down, tear it up if they play hard, and I told them ‘I will bring you back when I get rid of this guy’ so I sent them down, they tore it up, I traded him, and I brought them back. And I think part the reason Perry and Getzlaf have had such great careers is because I set that stage for them. Where when they came back the voices they were listening to were Scott Neidermeyer and Teemu.”

Így már értem, hogy Fedorov miért is ment el anno sz*ré-húgyé'...mellesleg Burke egy nyomorult varázsló ha ez ennyire tudatosan fel lett építve...

One last comment is one that tickled me: “I made some horrible trades. And you’re gonna if you ‘swing for the fences’ and if you’re gonna make great trades. And if you don’t run horrible risks to make great trades, then you’re not ever going to get burned on trades and are gonna be stuck making mediocre or average trades your whole career.” I can think of a GM that has stuck to making mediocre trades and never swinging for the fences when it mattered and was needed..

Egy mondatban leírta GMBM egész tevékenységét...színtelen, szagtalan cserék jellemzik az öreget évek óta, soha nem mert meredeket húzni. Ha belegondolunk abba, hogy a szezon előtt Kase maradásáért imádkoztunk....állatbarom Burke meg anno odaadta a még szinte kiforratlan, de remeklő Lupult és minden egyebet Prongerért...meg is lett az eredménye. Murray meg túlértékeli a játékosainkat, és csak a közepes, langyos vizet preferálja. Már mindegy.