Coach: The Pat Burns Story (41 page)

Anaheim battled back from the brink in game six, humiliating the Devils 5–2 at the Pond, captain Paul Kariya surviving a patented body slam from Scott Stevens that left Kariya unconscious and motionless on the ice for nearly three minutes. “I didn’t know if he was alive,” said Brodeur. “He just didn’t move for a while.” With 11:23 remaining, Burns pulled Brodeur in favour of Corey Schwab. Brodeur was, er, jiggy with it, assured he would be starting game seven, Burns simply anxious to give him a little extra rest.

It had been a complete home victory series. “All year, Pat had preached about being good at home, dominate at home. This is where we were going to win. And that’s what happened,” said Brodeur. To the media, Burns presented a modest but confident face, focusing attention on his players. “This team has accomplished a lot. I haven’t accomplished a thing. It’s ‘we.’ That’s the way we’ve done it all year long.”

Nine months of labour had boiled down to one deciding game for the Stanley Cup, in an arena lacking in charm and, often, patrons. And Burns, the softie, pulled out one last trick: he reinserted Daneyko into the lineup. “The most important game and Dano came back,” says Brodeur. Informed at a team dinner that he’d be playing—but cautioned by Burns to keep that under his hat until game time—Daneyko had to leave the room so he could burst into tears privately.

Game seven was New Jersey’s exclamation point to the playoffs, an imperious 3–0 triumph, Friesen contributing two goals and twenty-three-year-old rookie Michael Rupp, filling the void left by injured Nieuwendyk, scoring the first, which was the winner, a kid’s hockey dream come true. Before the opening faceoff, Burns had gazed up at the crowd and then taken his own emotional pulse. “I thought I would be a lot more nervous than I was. I thought I was going to be a nervous wreck, and I wasn’t.” It
was his ninth game seven in a thirteen-year coaching career, pulling Burns into a tie with Scotty Bowman and Mike Keenan.

Yet even in the greatest moment of his professional life, Burns didn’t shake his signature scowl. Someone asked him about the “beauty” of a game seven. “You call it a beauty? I don’t know how pretty it is. I don’t know if I’d go out on a date with it very often.”

Brodeur’s third finals shutout notwithstanding, the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player went to Giguère, who didn’t smile upon accepting it. Nor was Burns even nominated for a fourth Jack Adams. But, at last, he’d won the only silver hardware that mattered. Off to the side during the on-ice hoopla, hands stuffed in his pockets, Burns wondered why he didn’t feel a surge of elation. “Gee, it doesn’t look like this on TV.” He watched Gary Bettman present the Stanley Cup to Devils captain Scott Stevens, who hoisted it overhead and began the traditional handoff, player to player, including Niedermayer, who’d changed into full uniform. This was the embodiment of all their toil, the hardest trophy to capture in professional sports. Finally, the jug reached Burns. He planted one tender smooch on the Cup, then lifted it in the direction of his family in the stands. “I was glad to see them up there,” he said later. “My son Jason and my daughter Maureen came in from Montreal, drove all the way down. My wife was there, friends and family from Quebec. I pointed the Cup at them because sometimes you forget the people who are behind you, who were there when things don’t go so good. The last couple of minutes, it was really exciting, not for myself, but because I was afraid to disappoint people, disappoint my family, disappoint the fans. I owe a lot to Lou.”

In the dressing room, drenched by champagne, amidst the hoots and hollers, Daneyko gave full credit to the coach. “He just kept the pedal to the metal all year long and didn’t let us get complacent. That was probably what was missing from the club the last few years. He came in from day one and was a no-nonsense guy, did some things that sometimes you don’t understand. I guess that’s why he coaches and we play. Probably one of the toughest coaches I’ve played for, but well worth it.”

Addressing the media, Burns allowed himself a bit of triumphalism. “There are a lot of people in this room who counted me out, who said I was old-fashioned and couldn’t coach anymore. I was out of hockey for two years and you said I would never be back. Well, I’ve won something now.”

After a long night of revelry, Burns drove his family to the airport. In a candid coda, the coach acknowledged that, many times across the seasons, he’d pretended the Cup was a coup he didn’t need to validate his career. He’d lied. “I said it often. No, I never believed that.”

The victory parade—which in New Jersey was a tailgate party in the parking lot of the Meadowlands complex—had to be put on hold for a day because the Nets were still contesting the basketball playoffs and traffic control was an issue. When staged, upwards of twenty thousand gathered to enjoy the “Devils way” spectacle. Thereafter began the Cup’s summer odyssey, a sweet NHL tradition whereby each player gets to have his way with the trophy for a day. It travelled to Alaska with Gomez, was transported in a thirty-two-foot Hummer on a team outing to Hoboken, appeared as guest on
The Late Show with David Letterman
and
Live with Regis and Kelly
, opened the New York Stock Exchange one morning, nestled in the lap of a giant Buddha statue at an upscale restaurant, went on a three-hour cruise around Manhattan Island, and attended golf tournaments and the NHL draft.

When his turn came a month into the summer, Burns stood Stanley in the back of his pickup and drove it to a yacht club in Magog, where a shindig for family and friends was held. A frail Louise Burns, matriarch of the clan, attended. “My ninety-year-old mother was sitting there, touching the Cup with her hands shaking. It choked me up.” Son claimed to have seen the trophy reflected in his
mère
’s eyes.

That’s when the joy finally overwhelmed.

I
T WAS POURING RAIN
, miserable, when Pat Burns went on his last motorcycle run with the Red Dogs. He and his buddies were huddled under a bridge on the New England seaboard, shivering, waiting for the downpour to ease up a little, enough to at least see the pavement ahead. But Burns, brooding, was gazing into an even more bleak immediate future, just down the road. He turned to his friends. “This is my last trip, guys.”

Late spring of 2010, it was, and what a tortuous road it had been: six years of sickness, hospitals, debilitating medical treatment, chemotherapy and radiation and surgery, tentative hopes for recovery, then the demolishing verdict that he hadn’t outrun cancer, that he wouldn’t beat it. Once, twice, Burns had fought back valiantly, summoning all his physical and mental resources for the battle of his life—the battle
for
his life. And each time, after a period of apparent remission, the invasive cancer cells had returned, from colon to liver to lungs.

Burns was terminally ill. He was dying.

“Even then, he didn’t show his hurt,” says Martin Brodeur. “You had to really know him to figure out what he was feeling inside. He gave
it everything he could, but it came back again and again. That last time, I think in his own mind, he probably thought: ‘Just take me.’ ”

How abruptly priorities change when confronted with one’s own mortality, the finiteness of it.

The Stanley Cup glow lingered over the club at training camp in September 2003. They were guests at a reception in the Rose Garden at the White House, and President George W. Bush had even given them a peek at the Oval Office. Less happily, Burns’s name had popped up in the Montreal murder trial of two Hells Angels when police testified that the coach’s unlisted private phone numbers had been discovered during a search of the suspects’ homes. He brushed off the controversy, claiming to have no idea how the defendants had obtained the numbers. In fact, Burns had once left a couple of tickets at the Gardens’ will-call office in Toronto for a Hells chieftain. But the story, when it trickled out, caused no significant damage to his reputation.

By midseason, Burns was far more concerned with his club’s mediocre play, yet confident they would rediscover their pith in the playoffs. As early as January, however, he’d been feeling unwell, unusually tired, dozing off immediately on team flights, which was not at all his normal tendency, so enervated that Lou Lamoriello noticed and asked if everything was okay. Fine, said Burns. For a few months, there had been alarming symptoms of something seriously amiss, but Burns ignored the early warning signs, as many people do—avoidance, not wanting to know, to have their worst fears confirmed. That stalling infuriated Robin Burns when he learned of it later, and makes him mad still. “Pat, you’re an asshole,” he spits out at the cousin who’s no longer around to hear. “Never said a word to anyone.”

After a trying, lacklustre season—for Burns, however, on March 30, 2004, his 500th NHL win—New Jersey was preparing to meet Philadelphia in the first round of the playoffs. Players were baffled when Burns missed a practice, a morning skate, a team meeting. “Personal reasons,” they were told. “We asked, ‘What’s going on?’ and they told us, ‘Oh, he’s
seeing a doctor about a problem,’ ” says Brodeur. “Nobody thought it was anything serious.”

It was
very
serious. Only at the urging of his wife, Line, did Burns finally share his concerns with Lamoriello, who promptly arranged for team doctors to conduct tests, which led to more tests, which resulted in the heart-seizing diagnosis: Burns had colon cancer and needed to begin chemotherapy treatments right away. Even then, he bargained for time. “I said to him, ‘What do you want to do?’ ” remembers Lamoriello. “ ‘Because I’m going to do what you want, we’ll find a way.’ ” Burns wanted desperately to remain behind the bench for the first round. “Done,” responded Lamoriello. “One round. Unless you find you can’t do it.” Then Burns would step away, whether or not the team advanced.

The Devils, defending Stanley Cup champions, were eliminated by Philadelphia in five games. The following day, April 18, reporters were summoned to a press conference at Continental Airlines Arena, to be enlightened about “a non-hockey-related issue involving the coach.” Burns took a seat on the dais, pulled out a handwritten prepared statement, smoothed out the pages, and read the ghastly news aloud to a stunned audience. He had colon cancer that required immediate aggressive treatment.

“The last month or so, I have not been feeling well. There were signs that something was not right, but I was reluctant to do anything because the playoffs were coming up.” He apologized to the players for his distraction during the series. “I wasn’t the coach I should have been the last couple of weeks, but I had a lot of things on my mind.” Only when he spoke of his pride in the team did his voice begin to waver and he fought back tears. “My wish and hope was to see this team continue into the next round and win another Stanley Cup. Even if I was physically not there, I certainly would have loved to see this group of gentlemen do it again.” He swallowed hard. “As I learned in the past, chance and fate are a big part of winning. Neither, unfortunately, as I’ve learned in the past weeks, can be controlled. For those who know me well, I’ve never backed down from any fight. And I’m not going to back down from this one.” He
took no questions, and left, disappearing down the corridor with his arm around Line’s shoulders.

Lamoriello made it clear Burns was still Jersey’s coach and would return in that capacity the following season, health permitting. In any event, it was a moot point—there would be no 2004–05 season. The entire year was wiped out by an NHL lockout. “All my time and energy will be focused on this,” Burns had said. He returned the day following his cancer announcement to participate in the formal team photo session then vanished. He immersed himself in a gruelling regimen of daily chemotherapy and radiation sessions, then intestinal surgery in July, then more chemo. Thousands of emails and letters poured in, from hockey people throughout the league, from fans and from complete strangers.

The hospital where he received initial treatment, St. Barnabas, was in Livingston, New Jersey. Brodeur invited Burns to stay at his nearby home, and the coach gratefully accepted. “I told him, ‘Come to my house, relax, you’ll be better off.’ We became close. I have two bulldogs, and Pat loved playing with them.” Brodeur’s dogs are named Stanley and Vez—as in Vezina Trophy, the first of which he’d won in 2003, playing for Burns.

Doctors were optimistic. The malignant tumour they removed hadn’t penetrated the intestinal wall and seeped into Burns’s lymph nodes. His cancer was deemed Stage II, which has a 75 per cent “cure” rate without recurrence following surgery. Burns and his wife relocated to their off-season home on a golf course in Punta Gora, near Port Charlotte, Florida.

He continued to receive chemo twice a month for the remainder of the year, many days returning to writhe in his bed, beset by violent nausea. One of the many therapeutic drugs Burns was prescribed had the side-effect of making him keenly sensitive to low temperatures, which would have kept him out of the rinks had there been a season. He later described the horrors of treatment to Rich Chere, hockey writer at the Newark
Star-Ledger
. “The operation was tough, but the second round of chemotherapy during August, September and October was the toughest part. That really made me sick. You couldn’t touch anything cold. You couldn’t drink a cold glass of water. If you stood in front of the refrigerator and it was open, you
had to back off. It was the weirdest thing. I still have numbness in the ends of my fingers and feet. That’s going away slowly.”

It was a dreadful year, as Line underwent abdominal surgery as well. Then, while Burns was up north, Hurricane Charley struck the Florida coast in August, causing sixty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to their house. But by the following spring, Burns had regained much of the weight lost during chemo, was working out almost daily and generally feeling upbeat, buoyant. Doctors were encouraging. Burns—kept on the payroll—was scouting for the Devils, attending NHL and International Hockey League games in Florida. He rode his Harley, played many rounds of golf with Line and returned to Montreal as marshal for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, where his father was honoured. Burns had every reason to believe he would be cleared to resume coaching duties at the start of the 2005–06 season, was even fooling around with potential line combinations. And then his world caved in again.