Requiem for a Coach

Pat Burns was what any hockey coach should be. The son of a fireman, Burns was a disciplinarian and tactician as a coach, but he was a humble, bright, beautiful person. Pat Burns was a hockey coach, but for four cities, he was OUR hockey coach. Burns was the only man to win the Jack Adams Award (for coach of the year) with three different teams. Not only did he win it, he won it in his first year in each city, in Montreal in 1988-1989, Toronto in 1992-1993 and Boston in 1997-1998. The one time he didn't win the award in his first season was in New Jersey in 2002-2003. He won the Stanley Cup instead.

The Devils franchise has never been the same since Burns had to prematurely retire after the 2003-2004 season due to colon cancer. The franchise is in disarray, having lost almost all the veterans except for Martin Brodeur. Burns was a rock, and I know that if not for the realities of life, he would have been coaching, and coaching successfully in New Jersey even today. But life is never that easy. Life is never that simple, and never that easy.

Pat Burns had to retire due to colon cancer, and after he successfully beat it, much like the 501 teams he beat in his coaching career, another opponents was lined up: liver cancer. He beat that too. Burns was a winner on and off the field. Finally, unlike his NHL coaching career, he met an opponent that was unbeatable. After being diagnosed with incurable lung cancer in 2009, Burns realized that his shift was soon to be over. Deciding to forgo treatments, Burns made the choice to live out the rest of his life in peace, and do what he did best, help people.

Pat Burns was a police officer before making the move to coaching hockey, and if ever there was a man that could patrol the streets it was him. He was outwardly serious and dour. He rarely cracked a smile while standing over the bench on the ice. On a team that had the league's strongest physical presence, Scott Stevens, Burns was arguably the most intimidating. And I loved him for it. The Devils coach was a very transient situation, with Larry Robinson being fired two years after winning a cup after being hired right before the playoffs. Burns should have been the anchor for the Devils, and he would have. His image was all over the 2002-2003 title team. That was my team, our team, because it was his team.

The one thing that Pat Burns had not accomplished in his first 12 years of coaching was being able to lift the Stanley Cup. Other than maybe football, there is no sport where winning is truly the only thing any player dreams about. Stats aren't that important in hockey. Lifting the most beautiful trophy in sports is. For Burns, it was one chance he had thirteen years earlier that haunted him. In just his first season of coaching, he had his Canadiens holding a 2 games to one lead against Calgary in the Stanley Cup Final. Three losses later, Burns' chance to hoist the cup was gone, and it would be a long time until he got another one.

The Devils in 2002-2003 were a very good team. They had the third best record in the NHL, and the second best in the Eastern Conference. Unluckily for them, they had to play the team with the best record in the Eastern Conference in the Easter Conference Finals, the Ottawa Senators. They played a game seven, in Ottawa, in about the hardest environment for any road team. To add to the odds, the Devils gave up the first goal of the game about six minutes in. Somehow, down a goal, on the road, already having squandered a 3 games to 1 lead in the series, the Devils pulled it out, winning 3-2. Burns had his shot again.

Two weeks later, after Marty Brodeur's 3rd shutout in the Stanley Cup Finals, the Devils won their third Stanley Cup in 9 years, but more importantly, a hockey lifer realized his dream. Pat Burns won the Stanley Cup. His hockey trophy case was full. If nothing else, I am so glad that Pat Burns got the chance to hold that gorgeous trophy above his head, because he deserved it as much as anyone.

Pat Burns died a week ago, and it was a death that resonated loudly in the hockey community, but it also resonated with me. I have not seen one of my sports heroes die before. Yes, there was Sean Taylor, and other football players whose lives were cut short by horrible acts of violence. This was different, this was a sport icon dying because of a disease. Pat Burns, and all other coaches and athletes alike are supposed to be the ones that can beat all comers, but cancer does not discriminate. If it can take down the toughest people on earth, and Burns was certainly one of them, it can take down anyone. Burns beat every NHL team there is, and he was strong enough to beat cancer not once, but twice. But asking for him to do it a third time was too much.

Pat Burns will be remembered as a great coach in four different cities. Toronto and Montreal are the biggest of rivals on the ice, but even they can agree that Pat Burns was an amazing head coach, and a more amazing person. The image of head coach, someone who should be stoic and poised and domineering and smart, fits perfectly with that of Pat Burns. But it was those rare moments when Burns cracked a smile, or Burns calmed the bench down that let us all know just how special this man really was.

Pat Burns Tribute

The #5 Athlete of the 2000s: Martin Brodeur

There have been six transcendant players in the last ten years, Federer, Duncan, numbers 3-1, and the simple doughy man from Quebec. Martin Brodeur is that good, the best really. For the last 15 years, he has done everything that has ever been asked of a man in a team sport, simply put, to lead a team devoid of tangible, long-term offensive talent and continiuty, and make them not only good but Stanley-Cup good. Brodeur has answered the bell, and answered it to the tune of 13 thirty win seasons (most all time), 7 forty win seasons (most all time), 591 wins (most all time), 108 shutouts (most all time), 23 playoff shutouts (most all time). He has backstopped New Jersey to eleven, and soon to be twelve straight playoff appearances, and all of this with a franchise that has let every good player they had, save for Patrik Elias, to leave. He's seen hall-of-famers retire or be shown the door out of Jersey (Scott Stevens and Scott Neidermayer, Bill Guerin, Dave Andreychuck), and seen other all-stars join them on the NJ Transit out of the Garden State, and the Devils have stayed not only afloat but also thriving. Brodeur is the reason, the reason that New Jersey cares about hockey, that three glistening large cups from Stanley sit in the coffers of the Prudential Center, and that Lou Lamorriello is hailed as a genius. Marty is Zeus in pads, with a lightning fast glove.

This decade has seen Marty at his best, dominating two different NHLs, the pre-lockout years when he led the Devils to three Stanley Cup finals in four years, and the post-lockout, where he was asked to play better and more often than any goalie in history. All the while, shots were stopped, points were gathered, and opponents left the rink feeling the same thing, "Damn, how is he that good?." Statistics cannot truly explain Marty's greatness, although the stats are there in earnest, with the fifth-best Goals Allowed a Game average (The NHLs form of ERA), and a top-10 Save Percentage for his career. Marty's greatness resides in one single stat: wins. Goalies are truly the only position in any team sport that wins should matter statistically. Sure, pitchers have their W-L record, but as seen by the BBWAA giving Zack Grienke (16 wins) and Tim Lincecum (15 wins) the Cy Young awards, it seems obvious that the wins for Starting Pitchers are terribly inaccurate ways of judging a pitcher's performance. Even Quarterbacks, who get too much credit for wins and too much blame for losses, are not as solely important to the success of their teams. Nothing is quite like a goalie. Goalies can single-handidly win games, series and Cups. Marty has done all three. He's a winner above all. In less games, he has more wins than any goalie ever. Sure, he's had the luxury of playing the last four years in an NHL without ties, but he's also had the unfortunate instance of missing out on 1.5 seasons due to strikes and lockouts over his career. Simply put, there is no better winner, and no better player in the NHL in the last decade.

Marty Brodeur's ability to play great every night, and play inspired is all the more amazing. He is not a butterfly goalie, eschewing the robotic goalie style that was popularized by Patrick Roy, where the goalie essentially only cares about taking out the bottom half of the net. Marty was different, unique, brilliant. He had no style, no method. He just did whatever it took to stop the puck from hitting the twine behind him. Whether it was going in the butterfly, kick-saving a puck away, flashing the quick glove, head-butting the rubber out of the air, going ground and stacking pads, or sprawling in a gymnastic routine to stop the puck. Whatever was needed, it was delivered. It wasn't necessarily graceful, but it was majestic, as the underratedly athletic Brodeur was flexible enough to assume any position if it allowed him a better chance of stopping the puck. This was only enhanced in the playoffs, where he turned his contortionist act into a Michelangelo artform. Every time a player took a shot, they had to know, I have very little chance, because if Marty had to stop the puck with his toes, he would. There is a reason hy Marty Brodeur is the best shootout goalie in the NHL. It is because there is no formula for beating him. He has no weakness, and he is equally good at stopping every shot. It is over before it starts. Marty will make the save, the Devils will win, and deep into May, New Jersey will have an active hockey team.

If anything can highlight just how brilliant Marty Brodeur is was his magnus opus, the 2003 playoffs. Marty was criticized for his "lacluster" play in the 2001 Stanley Cup Finals, losing head-to-head with Patrick Roy's Colorado team (the team that was all-around better, the favorite heading in, and in no way needed their goalie as much as the Devils did). Despite winning two Stanley Cups and taking the Devils to three, all in the previous 8 season, Brodeur was seen as a player fighting for the title of "best in the NHL" (which is more ironic since now he is pretty much the consensus "best ever"), fighting to overcome playoff demons. In the proceeding 24 games, Marty was unbeatable. He won 16 games, accrued 7 shutouts (a playoff record), with a .938 save percantage and an absurd 1.67 GAA. He was truly playing at a level never seen before. What was more interesting was that in those playoffs, there was another goalie playing at such a level through three rounds. Jean-Sebastian Giguere was carrying the 7th seeding Mighty Ducks on his back, doing his best Joshua Jackson routine with the quack-attack, culminating in the conference finals where he posted back-to-back-to-back shutouts. J-S Giguere was on top of the world when he entered the old Continental Airlines Arena for Game 1 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals. Little did he know that he was helpless, Marty was here.

In the seven games series, Brodeur gave up 12 goals, total. Three times, in Game 1, 2 and 7, he shut out the ducks, becoming the first goalie ever to record three shutouts in the Cup Finals. He was never better. Nothing got buy him. Even after he let in a soft, hilarious goal of his dropped goal-stick to help lose Game 3, he came back with 38 saves in an eventual 1-0 loss in Anaheim (the only game where he was outclassed by Giguere). Giguere stole Marty's MVP of the Playoffs trophy, but Brodeur had the most important trophy, and had it for the third time in 9 years, and the second time in the 2000s. Brodeur was king, and although the team has never gotten to those heights since, all Brodeur has done in the years since is win 38+ games, set an NHL record for wins in a season, and win four Vezina trophies as the league's best goalie.

Brodeur cemented his place as a Canadian hero, and also as a performer for the ages for the 2000s, in the 2002 Olympic Games. As the goalie for Canada, a team that had not won a Gold Medal since 1952, Brodeur was under massive scrutiny. Never a fan-favorite in Canada, except for in hometown Montreal, Brodeur unleashed his mastery on the world in Salt Lake City, giving up just 9 goals in the five games, ending it with allowing two to the hometown USA team in the Gold Medal Game. More than any of the acheivements that he ammassed with the Devils, however numerous and amazing they may be, nothing compares to that moment. Canada is the country where hockey means everything. For 50 years they had nothing in the Olympics to show for all of the hall-of-famers they had produced. Then, Brodeur comes along and all of that changes. He was St. Marty, and it has never really left him. Even after ridiculously being benched in the 2010 Games (for Luongo, a goalie who ended up playing like a nervous wreck in the Gold Medal Game), he still got the second loudest cheer in the Medal Ceremony for the Canadian faithful. He was complete, he had acheived it all: Three Stanley Cups, Two records that will never be broken (wins and shutouts), and a Goal Medal. What a decade it was.

Marty is the rare transcendant player, the one that gives every fan of the opposing team the feeling of "Man, if he's on, there is no way we win this game" and more importantly every fan of his team the feeling of, "It's okay, he's on our side". Devils fans have thought to themselves probably millions of times, "We got a chance, Maty is in goal" and really that is the highest plateau in athlete can achieve. Brady briefly reached it in 2004, Duncan reached it from 2003-2007, and Manning is there right now. Marty has been there for a good 15 years, but never moreso than this decade. He has carried a franchise on his back. The roster turnover in New Jersey is incredible. There are precisely three other players still left from the 2003 Title Team, and none of them play defense. Marty is the defense, Marty is the team and in many ways he is the greatest goalie of all time. Every Devils fan distinctly remembers a certain cheer that was elicited from the Continental Airlines Arena faithful late in Game 2 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals, with the Devils cruising to a 2-0 lead and a 2-0 series advantage. It was a simple chant, but one that was endlessly meaningful. The opposing goalie was the one getting all the attention, the goalie in red and white was the one that was better. "Marty's Bet-ter... Marty's Bet-ter... Marty's Bet-ter". It reduced J-S Giguere to solemn tears after the game, because he knew it was true. "Marty's Bet-ter" and who then knew that it wouldn't only be J-S Giguere that the chant was aimed at, but all but three athletes in the 2000s. Marty was, is and will always be "bet-ter".

The Man at his very finest.

What Hockey Actually Means

     Here is a statement: There is no sport that can bring the country together like hockey. This is not 1980. The USA Hockey team was not playing a bunch of men from a hated country that supported everything America hated. This is not 1980. The USA puts professionals on the ice, and so do every other country, including Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland and Czech Republic who all put more NHL players than non-NHL players on the ice. Yet, yesterday's game was seen by 30 million Americans, which was more than any non-NFL sporting event in 4 years. Why? Hockey still means something, and only because America is not the best at it.

    The only other two sports that America cares about to some extent that have an international tournament (Olympic or not) are soccer and basketball (The World Baseball Classic can go beat its head with a maple bat). American's will never be the best at soccer. It can put 10 billion dollars into youth soccer programs every year from now until 2020, and the US will not win the 2022 World Cup. It is not, and will not, happen. America watches the World Cup, and will watch it in large numbers if the US does well, like in 2002, but it will not garner 30 million. The Americans aren't good enough to care. In basketball, it is the opposite, as the USA Basketball Olympic team will be the prohibitive favorite for the next infinite Olympic competitions. If the US loses, it will bring shame and darkness to the collective pride of the country, but will not have a lasting impact, or draw nearly as many eyes to the TV sets. Hockey is the perfect mix of, "we are good enough to win" that soccer lacks, and "we still are underdogs, and the US should never be underdogs" that basketball lacks. Hockey is a perfect sport in many ways, but most of those ways are lost on Americans, such as its incredible physicality, end-to-end flowing action and pressurized moments, but the ability of the sport to captivate and bind a nation is not.

     The US loves to be the underdog, because in its mind, it never is and never should be. There are few things that the US is an underdog in, is a pitiable party. The greatest example is 9/11, where scores of countries that usually make fun of, in disallusioned envy, the US's pop-culture, ethnocentric obsession, came to the support of a scarred, fallen nation. Hockey is the other example. For once, America wasn't the bully, wasn't the bad guy, wasn't the favorite. The Canadians were all these things, the simple, docile, friendly Canadians (so friendly, their "own the podium" motto was met with terse laughter, rather than fearful spite) were the team that was so sure of itself, was so cocky. It was 1980 all over again, except with the fact that both teams were being paid millions, and the simple fact it was in Canada. That is also the difference between yesterday's classic and 2002's forgotten Gold-Medal game, where the Canadians waltzed into Salt Lake City, and behind the old guard (Marty Brodeur at his peak in goal, Joe Sakic, Paul Kariya and Mario Liemuiex flying around the ice, Wayne Gretzky GM-ing) and crushed USA 5-2. This was different, it was special. The US had the world behind them, had an entire nation that usually reserves the hieght of ambivalence towards puck, glued to their TV sets. They were the innocent lamb entering the slaughterhouse of Canada Hockey Place. This was all true, even though the US beat Canada on that same ice just seven days earlier, beating them so badly and sending Canada into such a state of abject panic that Canada benched a goaltender that led them to their first Gold Medal in 50 years and is the winningest Goalie in NHL History, for a guy who is .500 in the NHL playoffs for his career. The sides were already dealt, each team knew their place. Canada had the hopes of a nation, the US had the interest of a nation, for once.

    The game was hockey played at its highest level. Unlike the first contest seven days earlier, it was evenly played, with both teams fighting for every piece of ice, throwing shot after shot at the two goalies, hitting, skating and passing at high, high levels. What made the game perfect, though, was it mirrored the US's strange perspective as a country in hockey. The US were the underdogs, the team with less talent and ability, and it "showed" as they fell behind 2-0 halfway through. The team that already possessed less talent and 17,000 less fans than the other was behind, the ultimate dog. The USA has rare opportunities to play the ultra-underdog card, but for the first time since 1980 (a game the US trailed in 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2) they had the card in their hand, ready to spring it out. 18,000 Canadians on maple-syrup-highs were chanting "Ca-Na-Da" over and over again (The Canadians are a fearlessly creative people), the building was rocking and the US was dead, David was sprawled on the ground with Goliath standing on its neck. Then a strange thing happened, as the viewers started switching to NBC (the viewership of the game was around 18 millions when the Canadians scored to take a 2-0 lead, and rose to 30 million by the end of the third period), the Americans fought back.

    Americans never have to fight back; they are always in a state of being a eternal front-runner. American's never have to scratch and claw their way through adversity, as they emit glitz and glamour in every step they take, but here were 23 white-washed kids that did all of those things Americans never seem to do but always seem to love. They scored a soft lucky goal, as Luongo let a shot trickle by, one that the benched Brodeur never would have let get by him, and the place entered a stunned silence. The Americans were here to upset the day. That goal, and the silence it caused was nothing compared to Zach Parise (a handsome Devil, literally) knocking a rebound (something Luongo seemed to give up on any shot) past the Canuck goalie, tying the game with 24.4 seconds to go. The decibel level dropped a near 100 decebeliters (not sure what the exact term is there). Faintly, chants of U-S-A escaped the chasm of millions of Canadians shocked gasps. The Americans had ruined it all, and nothing makes American's happier. Sure, the Canadians ultimately won, with their Golden Boy scoring the Gold-Medal winning goal, a perfect, seemingly scripted ending to a great game (redeeming Kid Crosby, after he played soulless hockey for most of the game). However, America won, as in the country's collective people and spirit.

     It is the underdog mentality that makes sports great, and for a country that is rarely fitting of that bill but seeks it so badly, hockey is a welcome sport. The second the letters "U", "S" and "A" are put into the equation, the sport becomes secondary. The respective ability of the country is all that matters. Since the USA is at best the second best hockey-playing country in the world, the sport immediately means more. America is the ultimate underdog story. It is the country that fought the World's system, fought colonialism and targeted its greatest son, Britain. It was the country that made the first dent in the British Empire, it was the country that showed anything is possible. Ever since the real fall of Europe, the USA has taken its place at the top of the world, seen as the Gold Standard by many (and the country most despised by as many, with the hate being a chemically-religiously-altered form of envy), but every so often there are times when the USA is catapulted back to 1776. Every now and then, the USA becomes the scrappy underdog, fighting the redcoats (which ironically fits with the truly scrappy hardworking players of the USA Hockey team fighting the Canadians brilliantly skating in their red uniforms). It happened in 1980, with the USA Hockey team doing something so magical that it still elicits teary-eyed admiration 30 years later. It happened in 2010, when the USA Hockey team allowed the country to cheer collectively for once.

    The USA is in a time of political partisanship that has only been passed by the Civil War times (just to distance the comparison, the Civil War era partinship is about 10000 times more partisasn). Every vote in Washington can accuratel be predicted by just going with the party numbers. It is a fissured country, with two sides going in two opposite directions. And hockey, if only for a couple of days, brought that nation together. The sport that is generally seen as some novelty game played by Canadians and Americans who physically and linguistically resemble Canadians (the American team definitely says "eh" alot), is the sport that can connect, that can rebuild the burnt bridges. Hockey allows the USA to be the underdog, to believe in men whose destiny will most likely be failure, to believe that the country that already slayed Goliath in the form of the British Empire can slay Goliath in the form of a lithe, brawny hockey team. Hockey got its rebirth, its second chance with that game. Many think hockey will take a huge step back into its corner for the next 4 years, until the team travels to Russia and can fight "The Soviets" on their ice, but that might be an assumption too easy to be true. After the 1980 Miracle, hockey became more and more popular for the next 14 years that in 1994, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, there was a legitimate debate as to what is the country's third favorite sport, and the game was more underground in 1979 than it was in 2009. Hockey has a chance, because it gives Americans a chance... to love their country, one born as the ultimate underdog.