Latest / Chirping Zebras / BRIAN BURKE | Chirping Zebras Podcast | Ep #100

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BRIAN BURKE | Chirping Zebras Podcast | Ep #100 · Chirping Zebras

• Josh Dolan: you ⁓ you you you Welcome everyone to tripping zebras episode 100 we hit the century mark Mark Riley virtually alongside Gino Benda jr. And Josh Dolan and we want to ⁓ thank our sponsors right off the hop the referees crease and Gino has that logo right behind him today for reason the zebra won't come up all right. Love the referees crease to one stop shop for all your refereeing needs from scheduling. and development to paying and all the things you need. Referees, creases, want stop shop for all that. Also want to thank Damon Financial LLC. For over 24 years, Damon Financial has helped families and business owners grow and protect their wealth with clear trusted strategies from retirement planning and investments to tax efficient solutions. They deliver no nonsense advice focused on your goals. You can give them a call at 508-321- 2101 today to schedule your meeting with Damon Financial or visit them at damonfinancial.com. Also want to remind you to like and subscribe on YouTube and also follow us on all the social medias, the Instagram, the Facebook, and of course, the TikTok. The kick-talk. Gino's on a five-second delay because he doesn't want to swear in the first five minutes. him say it. ⁓ you did? maybe it's my thing. didn't hear it right away. All right. All right. ⁓ And I also want to let you know on the website, CharpingCivus.com, our online store is up, running, and full of ⁓ Products, shirts, sweatshirts, hats. We got it all out there. So please check that out. And if you want to get your zebra gear, you should do so. you know, sport that around town. It's a great logo. And thank you to Josh, who designed that. you know, episode 100, cool to begin with. But. To have the legend that we had on today for episode 100, just incredible. Yes. It was awesome. Yeah, Brian Burke. Brian Burke, know, ⁓ GM. mean, he's been involved with hockey forever. ⁓ Played, ⁓ you know, the GM Hall of Famer. We were we were at his ⁓ USA Hockey Hall of Fame induction. How'd you sneak into that? But well, my father bought a table, so yeah. We're on scholarship. ⁓ He needed someone to fill the seats. That's how he gets his friends. Yeah. Hey, I bought a table. OK. That's how we got in there. And that was a cool night, too, because Brian Murphy got inducted, too. Yes. Yep. And Joe Bertagna was recognized as well. Yeah, I told the, I know I always say it wrong. He told the, the bird story that he told here. I'm happy to bring it up with him. Yeah, we should have. was Zabriska commented. What kind of person kills a bird? You're one sick individual. But and you know, someone like Brian Burke, mean, what he's meant to the NHL, not only as a GM, but he spent many years. Yeah, the director of hockey operations and the head, you know, had a discipline for the NHL. Yeah. I mean, he's done it all. I was trying to think of a good word for him, like the godfather of it. But that's too much because that's I don't know. He's just hockey royalty. Maybe me go. ⁓ I would say hockey royalty for sure. Not only what he's done, you know, in his GM roles and winning the cup with Anaheim, what he's done for women's hockey and the W HL and really. getting behind that and making that league what it is today as opposed to what it was when Gigi Marvin played where you didn't have all the bells and whistles that most pro hockey teams have. just an honor to have this guy on. Hall of Famer, Stanley Cup winner. All around great guy and we want to thank Frank Simonetti for making the connection as he was Frank's first agent. So we appreciate Frank. Yes. Thank you Frank. Yeah, appreciate all your support with the show and all the connections you made it. Yeah, we owe a lot of a lot of thanks to you. So appreciate it. Yeah, Frank's awesome. Huge fan and supporter of the podcast. So we appreciate that. We also want to throw a shout out to AOA Studios as well, even though we're on the interwebs today. They do such great work when we're in studio and we'll be back there soon. So without further ado, ⁓ let's get to our conversation on episode 100 with hockey royalty, Mr. Brian Burke. Zebra on the ice bill. How did he get on the ice? They still can't get him off the ice. is crazy. Here comes all the zebras. It's a zoo out there. You can't do that. Doesn't matter. Get in the box. We welcome everyone to Tramping Keepers. Maybe we'll all embrace the zebra side. ⁓ All right. Perfect. can start whenever. Yeah, so we're just going to do the intro and stuff after. But yeah, you guys are good to go. All right. And Brian, when we're done, when I say, you know, thank you for coming on, we're just going to stay on for a minute so that everything uploads. And it doesn't take long. Josh will let us know that everything's good. Not my first story, Omar. All right. Really? I've done this before. You've done everything before, so that's true. Right? All right. Here we go. Brian Burke, welcome to Chirping Zebras. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me on, guys. Yeah, thanks for joining us. This is awesome. Yeah, it's an honor to have you on, for real. Thank you. I was in charge of the referees for five years when I worked at the NHL. I was their boss when I ran with the director of hockey operations with the NHL. So great group of guys. Yes. I worked in the East Coast league under Brian Lewis, who was a former director of officials there in the national hockey league. was, he was great, great to work for. Brian Lewis was in charge of the official state of day when I was the senior vice president. He is a great guy, wonderful man. Yeah. He comes in the room and he tells you, Hey, if you know the rules and you you apply them, I can back you. If you don't. I can't back you. can't support you. So it's up to you to know the rules and apply them accordingly. you know, he was, he was good. And, know, I remember training camp, opened that book where he read a coveted coveted and make sure we, covered it. I remember one year Brian was in charge of assignments and Billy McCreary was the best referee in the NHL for a lot of years. And we had good referees. He wasn't alone, but he was the best. And your pay scale, your salary for the year is based on 80 games or 82 games, just like a player. Poor Billy McCurry, we had him flying all over it the last two weeks of the season. He'd get overtime, but he'd fly and do one night in Colorado, next night in Boston, next night in California. However, there's a hotspot because he was such a top guy. Absolutely. As long as the check didn't bounce, I'm sure he'll go. Right? And that was back with one referee, two linesmen. So he was skating every night. yeah. And those were wars too. skates on the plane back then too. I worked for Andy Van Hellemande when I was in the East Coast League. Good guy. Good referee too. Yeah, he was great to learn from. you know, he was the best for a long time and ⁓ he taught me a lot about how to... how to handle communication, which, you know, we always say is probably the most important thing when it comes to refereeing. Well, was Billy McCurry's one battle I had with him. He did not like talking to the officials. He felt he was referee and not a teacher. And he talked to them after games sometimes, but he didn't like talking to them during the games. He said, Billy, you can calm everything down if you just go over and bark at both benches. He said, I'm not a school teacher. I'm not a referee. I'm a referee. I worked with his son. I worked with his son in the USHL and then some college hockey. Like he was, he was an unbelievable communicator. Like he diffused stuff like you read about just cause I mean, the pedigree came from, and it was like, just, just awesome to watch. Like I got coach going crazy and then him just diffusing it and skating away and the coach is smiling. Good guy. Yeah. So, so Brian, I mean, you, you've had that position as an official and then you were a president GM. All that I said as a supervisor of officials for Atlanta cocky and division one and you know typically Saturday Sunday mornings You're dealing with you know Friday Saturday night, you know games and situations and and all that kind of stuff Do you want to you know call in the league when you know something as a president or a GM? I'm like a Saturday or a Friday night or what was like the worst or? thing you called in the league for or you want to calling if official missed a call or situation. I learned at the knee of the great late great Pat Quinn, wonderful man, and Pat hated referees. He call into the league, not so much when he's coaching obviously, but after. And so I resolved when I went to the league and went to my first team in Hartford, I was not going to call the league until the next morning until it was something really problematic. So I was not a yell or a screamer. other people do it and I don't think it works. Like I find best like ⁓ I have our coaches call us the next day you know after the game it's emotional and all that kind of stuff so you know usually next morning you know sipping over coffee and you have a conversation and it's more like hey what can we do better or what happened and from the referee sight line or this is what the referee saw and this is how they executed it and this is what they should have done and you know because it's it's not a perfect science like we can't perfect the game and you know you strive for perfection but you can't do it. Well, not only do calm down, but you get a better look at it too. Right. So to me, it's like you write a screw you letter to someone. I always let those sit overnight before I mail them. I said, know, Mark, rather you're dishonest son of a bitch. hate you. Okay, Mark, we can disagree on this one. You're right down. I think it's smart. We, Gino and I were. fortunate enough to be at your USA Hockey Hall of Fame induction. ⁓ And my favorite part of the speech, and I love him, Paul Stewart, he was actually our first guest here on The Zebras, my favorite part of your speech was when you said he's a horseshit ref but a great ⁓ guy. One of my most embarrassing moments in pro hockey was I tried to fight Stewie in a game and he went right around me, just ignored me. He wanted to the late great, ⁓ the hammer we called him, drawn a blank out, but I went to fight him and he ran around me because it was his orders for the fight. Someone else. Sounds like Stu. I was so embarrassed and the coach is Bob McCammon. He's yelling at me. What are you afraid of? I said, grabbed him. I grabbed him. squirted off with him like we're going to fight. So he just went around me. That sounds like Stu. Now, the refereeing in the NHL now is a lot different than back in the day with one referee, two linesmen. And the way they're finding refs is a lot different, pulling players out of the America League in Europe. What's your opinion on kind of where the NHL refereeing is right now? as far as compared to back in the day when you had the McCreary's and the Van Alamans and the, you know, the Frazier's and guys that everyone knew and knew what they were getting. Most of those guys played up to at least junior C and some to junior B. Most of those guys had playing backgrounds like Billy McCreary, Kerry Frazier. They played up to a certain level. ⁓ Cole, all those guys played up to a certain level. So. I think the league, Mr. Gregory started it going after former players and approaching them. That was 30 years ago. It took a while, but we started to get more guys. think if you have played to a certain level, you have a better feel for it. There are a number of guys who haven't played to a certain level and still are good referees. think in general, if you have a playing background to a certain point, not to play in NHL, but or the AHL, but if you played, you know, even up to junior hockey, you have a feel for how the game is played. The in NHL is the best it's ever been. With two referees, it's much less work. They see more, they huddle more. Replay is better. It's all better. Now, replay is something that's discussed a lot. What's your feel on replay? Because back in the day, there wasn't replay. Now, it's pretty extensive. Some guys love it. Some guys think it slows it down. What's your thoughts on it? Well, we all fought replay. All sports did. Football fought it, baseball fought it, we fought it, the NBA fought it, we all fought it. Because we thought it would delay the game. And the most important customer is the person who bought a ticket to that game. Most important person in that game is not the person on TV, it's the person at the game who paid 400 bucks and is sitting in the Golds in Toronto, and he doesn't want to sit and watch a replay for eight minutes, nine minutes. So that's why we all resisted it. But it's coming gradually, and I think it's... Well, I've been too intrusive. We have some replays that are too long. I think this should be a time limit. Not in the finals, but any other time. If you can't resolve it by two minutes, always make the call on the ice. You know, I say to the referee, what's your call? Before we look at replay, what is your call? What are you going to call? If the replay goes down, if we lose power, what are you going to call? So there's a call on the ice. It's made. They all agree on it. And now we're going to look at it. They can't come up with a meaningful resolution in two minutes. The call on the ice stands for me. like that. But he's been terrific. No, I agree. I agree. We coach our officials not to go running into the, into the replay booth, you know, cause like in college hockey, can, you can get yourself in the booth to go look at a play. doesn't have to be challenged. And it's only a timeout risk for the first one, for coaches. I think it should be a minor penalty, but, ⁓ you know, we, we teach our guys the referee, the game. And you know, if you have a minor penalty in the ice, force the coach to challenge it. Don't go in and. You know, start second guessing yourself. That's what you saw. Keep it a minor, right? And if you have a major, go in and confirm your call and get out. ⁓ but we don't want to be running in and cross the coast to challenge it. Cause like we human, right? And things happen quick. I agree. Yeah. And that just happened in the, ⁓ the Canadians game with Martin St. Louis losing his mind. Cause the, did you see that one where Foligno got tripped or he didn't get tripped. He's tripped on the blue line. then, well, here's another question too, right? Well, the. the video on the bench, right? So Martin St. Louis sees that right away and now he can lose his mind when the referees only have one shot on it. And like what y'all take with that video instantly ⁓ coach referee relationship? I think it's actually hurting it a little bit because they're seeing it and then, you know, they have the answers to the test where the referees don't. Well, they have better replays than the coaches do though. They've got the Hawkeye. better look at most things than the coach does. So Marty's down the way. I saw the replay lot, losing his mind. We've all done it. I think if you ask Marty the next day, he'd say, wish he'd calmed down a little bit and looked at it again. with replay, lot of, mean, my biggest thing is, and I love getting the call right, but when there's a close off side and the rush, ends and the defensive team gets possession, then they have a chance to clear it and they don't. And then, you know, a minute later, a goal scored and they challenge it. What do you think about that? Because I just think if it's not scored in the rush, then it should end there. It's so rare, Mark. I don't have a problem with it because it happens once every 20 games, maybe. I think I want to get as much right as possible. I do think we have lines and blowing off sides. on a preventive basis, a precautionary basis, because you're not sure. That's a mistake. just make the call. If you made a mistake, can live with it. it's scored on, you can go back and challenge, but make the right call. We have defensive whistle blowing right now on offsides. I agree with you. I mean, it's like when you work with it and you have that like, you know, cushion or that, you know, secondary. factor in it, it's only human nature to rely on it. You got to go out there and act like, the camera's down today and I got to be on and make sure you get every call because you can't relax for one second and especially how fast that game is. Like you got to be on it. But that literally is my only complaint. I do think the two are from works well, the guys don't have to skate so much. They get a better look at things. I do think we still call too many penalties. My one criticism of officiating is there's too much Especially the first call. used to harp on the guys to get the first call right. You get the first call wrong or it's a tiki-tac call. Happened in the Leafs game the other night. Power play scored on a tiki-tac call. Now the referees are feeling a score, even the score at some point. And the whole game descends into a series of questionable calls, not bad calls, but soft calls. And so we used to say to ice, tell guys, get the first call right. The first call has to be a call that everyone in the building agrees, even if they hate, even if they're Leaf fans, you have to agree everyone in the building has to agree that call stands. Then you're starting on a good foundation. But the first tiki-taka call, once you do that, you start it down with a swamp. Absolutely. Once you lose the trust in the building and the players and the coaches, it's tough to gain that back. And, you you just hope for a couple easy ones right away, just to gain it in. And then, you know, you let a couple of good ones go and... And hopefully it's the game takes care of itself. But yeah, once you call a ticky cack one, it's tough to rein it in. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm not. to me all the time and to all the referees, don't look for penalties. Watch for. Don't look for calls, don't manufacture a call in your own mind. See it if it's a call, call it, make the call. Don't look for penalties, just watch for them. Part of my pregame speech, let the game come to you, don't go looking for it. Yep. One thing that ⁓ we've discussed and I've discussed it with a few different officials. So with two referees out there, something happens and one referee sees a hook. The other referee is sure it's not. Picking up the flag. It's a slippery slope. But with two guys out there, is it something that we should be kind of considering? I've seen it a couple of times where they waved off a penalty. I don't mind it because I want to get it right. want to get as much right as possible. don't like the fact consistently one referee says that was not a call. I'm overruling you. I don't like picking up the flag as a rule. But that again is very rare in the NFL. Obviously, they pick up a flag maybe once a game. Probably once every three. I can live with that. And like we're talking probably like a high stick that, you know, was a pocket and not the stick. Puck out a play, did it hit the glass or not or things like that. Those are the ones that you can most likely pick the flag up because it's, know, did it hit them or not? Yeah, they're few and far between. Right. Very real. The game has changed quite a bit and especially over the course of your involvement with hockey, which has been your whole life. Fighting is a big... you know, bone of contention or a topic that a lot of people think it should be out of the game. A lot of people think it's part of the game. What's your thoughts on fighting? Is it part of the game or should it be eliminated? You know, what's your thoughts on that? If you don't like fighting, watch something else. I love it. I mean, we have fighting, we always have. It's been reduced systematically. I think there should be more fighting and like a little more, not a lot. don't want to go back. I'm not a dinosaur. I don't go back to when I played in the American league. We had three hour games, bench, clean, brawls. I don't want any of that. You see the excitement, the goalie fight caused two nights ago. It's an important part of the game in terms of keeping the playing field level and letting the officials not be the sole arbiters. What's wrong in the game and what's not. I love the fact that the player will stick up for another player. I don't like clean hit fights as a rule. But if it's a vicious enough hitter, you think it's important enough for you to I think that's commendable. So I like the amount of fighting we have. I'd like it to go back up. I like the way Florida plays right now. I think it's coming back a little bit, which is nice for me. I don't want a big wave of it either. What did you think of that college fight the other night with the B-U-U-U Lowell kids fighting in college hockey? I thought it was outstanding. Any place for B who apparently has some training as a fighter, right? a box. Yes, I guess he was a boxer. Yeah. But the other kid looked pretty good too. It good. Good fight. It was a good scrap. I got kicked out of college hockey for one game for fighting. I didn't even fight, but I got kicked out for fighting. So that rule was good. I don't mind the fact that the players get ejected and bounced for a game. I don't want to wrap it in flux of fighting, but once in a while, that's good for the game. I agree. With college hockey, another thing that we've discussed a lot is going to half shields in college hockey and thinking that it would change the game. What do you think on that? I think half shields are way better than cages. There's a positive development. Still protecting the eyes, not. Ed Rostow, you guys all remember Ed Rostow, little center played for BC. Tough kid. But he has face, he was fearless with a full cage on. I used to say to my players, take that cage off and see how he plays. I'm not mad at him for that, I really admired him as a player. I don't want to get in trouble with him. But remember standard players at Providence, know, take that cage off, see how he plays. So I like the half shield better. think everybody's in. the college lacrosse, where they wear eye guards. They look too silly. No, I mean, that's a good. Well, hey, listen, no, that's a good point because the reason why the NCAA college hockey doesn't go to half shield is because of dental record, because all the numbers went up in junior hockey and everywhere else that has that they play with half shields that the dental records go up. that's the that's the main reason why college will not go to the half shield is because of the dental records. You know, last year, I last year in Pittsburgh for three years, I'm still getting teeth fixed. It's all for you. Hey. No, you brought up a good point with the goggles, right? What's the difference? I don't know. It'll never happen. No. My brother's a dentist, so he kind of enjoys... He was actually the Bruins dentist for 31 years, and now my nephew is. And I know he's all for the half shields. I'm always saying that they should allow the pro women players to have the option to have a half shield too. Like they're... You know, they're at a high level, but I feel like they should have the same option as the men. know the reasons why they don't, but. I don't want them. I told them, I was head of the union for the women for two years. I told the women, I don't want them to look like me when they get to be my guard. He's fixed and both shoulders down, knees. I don't want that. No, no, the, mean, the big thing would, now we're on the subject with the checking with the women's game, um, the PWHL, I think it's excellent in how they're calling it. They're not calling the big blow up hits and I just think checking in general and I just want to see your thoughts on it is I think it should be checking from you six on up, right? And introduce it right away because we're already doing it now and checking is not, I think we're introducing it as a bad thing when checking is not a bad thing. A big blow up hit is, you know, when checking is introduced, kids feel at 14 now I can go and kill somebody. And you know, they're all doing it wrong. They're all walking around, you know, with broken wings. But there is a proper way to throw a body check. And if you learn it at a young age, I think it could be, you know, executed throughout. And, you know, think you'll reduce injuries and, you know, I think the game would be better for it if we just introduced checking not as a scary thing, but as a positive thing for the game. Well, the reason we got rid of checking up until Phantom was because of the drop off of numbers. Number of players. dropped out of hockey at 13 was frightening. Two thirds of the people, or one third dropped out, one, two and half in some parts of the country. So we put checking back, we took checking out through Peewee for a reason and put it in an introductory period. So what you're saying is true. If we had checking right through, yes, they'd learn it better. But my experience has been once kids hit, at a age, my girlfriend's sending me a note to point out that PWHL did teach checking. They had experts come in and teach body checking to women to do it safely. So that's a good point. But I'm not smart enough to read the note and not tell my girlfriend she's showing me a note. That's why we got rid of hitting up till Bantam. That's why I supported it. I remember when it happened. We're losing 30 to 60 % depending on what region you're in of young players saying, I don't want to hit. I don't want to hockey with hitting. That's why I continued up. We have less attrition at Bantam. We still have some, but they can teach it then. It's a compromise if you will. So what you're saying is it has merit. I think this would be a compromise. And I think if they, if they mirror what the PWHL is doing right now, like those big blow up hits, like those are getting penalized. It's like. The ones along the boards and you're rubbing them out and it's a bump and I just finished my hit and I'm not, you know, trying to put them in the third or fourth row. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I don't think if it's taught right. think that the big thing is educating our players and our coaches how to, you know, do it properly. It's a really hard line to walk. I think we've got to walk harder. And they've got to call a few more penalties and a few more suspensions. don't think there's players will, you know, this, you guys all know this. players will go as far as the referee lets them go. If you give them an inch, they'll take an inch. If you give them a half a mile, they'll take half a mile. So it's important that the referee set that standard and the league set that standard. I think we're walking too close, there's too many big hits that should be penalties and or suspensions, but I think the league will sort that out. I think one thing I'd be a proponent for is introducing it in peewees as opposed to banthums. And the, you know, cause I understand Mike and Squirt, there's still kind of a lot of them aren't steady on their feet or whatever, but that size difference, you know, you hit Panthems and some people have that growth spurt and you got 140 pound kid going against an 85 pound kid. think in Pee-wees, there's less of that discrepancy with size and that might, you know, kind of calm down some of that fear of those kids, you know, that, that don't want to get hit. at size discrepancy with peewees. So I think it's compromised. It's never going to be perfect. Some people say, well, introduce it in Bantam. Some will say introduce it in Midget or wherever U18 is now. You can't say Midget, I guess. ⁓ Sorry. We still do. We still do, Brian. go with this podcast we do. Yeah. So some people say put it up to U18. I think that's too late. I think it's a good compromise. think it's keeping players in the game and not taking them out too soon. You mentioned not enough is being called. I know a lot of people, non, not completely non-hockey people, but those casual fans in the playoffs for the NHL, everything is allowed. And I'm not talking about the hooks and holes and trips, but a lot of cross checks and a lot of violent stuff. And people always ask me, Why don't they call that? And I'd like to see more of the violent stuff called during the playoffs and not just let them kill each other. Well, I'm going correct you on one thing, Mark. You said I said not enough is called. I'm saying too much is called the tiki-tac stuff. Right, right. All of the hits on the women, not on the men. I think too much called, too much tiki-tac stuff called. Not a lot. Not saying there's an avalanche of penalties, but There's at least two or three calls every night that I say, Jesus Murphy, that can't be a penalty. It can't be a penalty, especially with tie game 3-3. People say, why don't they call it the same as they do in the regular season? Because it's the playoffs, that's why. We've always called a higher standard. We've always had better referees. You don't get to work the playoffs unless you're a better referee. Those guys all get washed out before. So they're all senior referees. They know the standard. They know what's at stake. The stakes are higher. They call less. I come up with that. I've always been able to live with it. I think the players adjust too. I don't think the players are doing anything stupid as well. I think they play, they get their sticks down, head down. They just play hard and aggressive. And if you're playing hard and through things, nine out of 10 times is not going to get called. So I think the game dictates too. Supplementary disc funds the same too. The stakes go up. One game suspension in October. is probably a five minute major, if anything, in April. And like in the first round of the playoffs, you get a four game suspension, that's the equivalent of eight games, regular season. So there's a sliding scale that goes up in the playoffs, officiating does too. I don't have a problem with that. It's always been that way. We always say, you know, Chris Rooney is a good friend of ours. know, think, yeah. Great referee. referee. Him and Wes McCauley. for our money are the two best. I said last year, they should just do every game in the finals. ⁓ you can't do that. The NHLPA has a union, no, you won't see that. But I agree with those two. They're excellent. But I the league has a lot of top guys. Really do. we ask everyone this, that's won it. What's it like to lift the Stanley Cup? Well, I mean, it's a tentacle. ⁓ I can't, I'm not sure you can explain in words. It's a relief, first of all, for all of us. We've been trying so hard to win the cup when you finally do win it. Like I remember asking Ray Bork, what was the biggest sensation you felt when you grabbed the cup? Cause he tried so hard, was a star player for 20 years. Then he had to go chase it in Colorado. Did not win his first year. Won his second year in Colorado, I think overtime in game six. I think they came that close to getting bounced in game six. So I asked him, he said, relief. He said, look at my face. I'm just relieved. I can't believe I finally did it. I asked him with Solano the same thing, Chris Brower, same thing, just relief. For me, was a comment. I'm an American kid. didn't start playing hockey until I was four, sorry, 13. So was a real, real late and remote dream for me. I never dreamed of playing in the Stanley, for Stanley Cup. I was a kid growing up. never dreamed I'd a chance to play, let alone work for a team. Relief, elation. And then right away, I remember two days after we won the cup, was booking a flight to Montreal, trying to extend a 10-year contract. And my ex-wife went nuts. She says, can't we just enjoy this for a couple of days? I'm like, no. Want to do it again? You want to do this again, right? Right back at it. Yeah. I never did it again. Still dream I might be able to, but I never did it again. I only got one shot at it. We played in the conference final the year before we won the cup in 06 and we won it in 07. Never got close after that. That bugs me too. ⁓ I'm sure. Once you get there, you want to get back. Your playing career was kind of interesting because like you just said, you didn't start till 13, but yet you played D1 college hockey. and went on to play pro hockey. And that's unusual for someone who starts that late. Yeah, I started and we moved to Minnesota when I was 12. I lived in Boston before that. I lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, Springfield, Pennsylvania, outside of Philly. I was born in Providence, Rhode Island. So we moved around. My dad was in sales. We didn't move to Minnesota until I was 12. Started playing hockey at 13. So I started very late. First year was Batham House, second year Batham House, third year Midget B, fourth year Midget A, fifth year playing high school hockey, he died in West. Walked on as a freshman at Providence, made the team, ended up being a full scholarship athlete, graduated as captain and played the record number of games played at Providence College when I graduated. So I had a pretty spectacular career considering our way they started. And the fact that I'm not a natural athlete, like a lot of these guys, like you look at Mason West. He's just a great athlete. I'm not. He would watch me play basketball and some of laugh. He'd say, what a clutz. So an international athlete to come out, you had to do it all the right way. Do it all hard. Thank God for outdoor ice. Now Minnesota, we've, we've talked to, we've had a few people on from Minnesota. Uh, Andrew Alberts, Gigi Marvin. Um, Minnesota seems to do it right. Uh, in the sense of kids start with their town, play all the way through high school. There's great rivalry where we are in Massachusetts, it seems like club hockey, actually all in New England, club hockey is kind of taken over and there's really no ⁓ pride in your town or playing for your town anymore. And I finally admitted Minnesota does it right. They're a better hockey state than Mass. I've always argued that, but I think now you can't really argue that. think it's a great program the way they do in Minnesota, but it's under attack as well. There's kids now leaving to go play junior that didn't before. A of guys wouldn't leave before they played high school hockey, and now they are. So we'll see what happens. With the new development to CHL and everything, we'll see what happens. But yeah, it's a great model right now. It's the Minnesota State High School Championship. Amazing. Yes. Dad, so it's, I liken it to football down south, you know, in Texas and those states where football is... You know, that's religion. you know, football down south. One thing there, most of those guys are multi-sport athletes too. Most the top football players are track and field guys or baseball players or basketball players. Multi-sport culture in Minnesota is very strong. Same in the south. That's one thing I think we're getting away from and it bothers me. Yeah, that's something we've discussed a lot. ⁓ Gigi Marvin was a great softball player. You know, that I think is kind of one of the problems with youth sports right now, and not just hockey, but every sport they want kids to play year round, you know, at age nine, 10, 11, when they should be off kind of rounding themselves off as an athlete. talked to Gigi Marvin her first year in the league when I was my first year. I said, are you one of the Marvins? At the Marvin family from Minnesota, Marvin Windows. They're one of the most famous families in Minnesota. Osha is related to them, think. Worrow guys are all there. Marvin Windows is a famous company and a famous family. So, Gigi Marvin, I know she was a multi-sport athlete. I she played three sports, not just two. Yeah, she did. And we had fun because her and TJ Osha had a little dust up in high school during a stick and puck. Yeah, they had a scrap, didn't they? Yeah. Bet on Gigi in that one. ⁓ 100%. know, and Gigi was kind of, she was one of the four forefront players in the PWHL or at the time it was the two leagues. ⁓ She talked about how, you know, they'd have to go get their skates done in pure hockey and, you know, they didn't have the equipment guy and they didn't have all the things that they have now. And so the progression of Professional women's hockey has been fantastic. Well, I've been a fan of women's hockey since Nagano. I'd never watched women's hockey till Nagano. Then I got the bug. I saw the same thing happen once in Calgary with the Inferno, before that once in Toronto with the Furies. I watched three women share one roll of tape getting ready for a game. One woman taped her shin pads, handed the roll of tape to the second woman. who had the roll of tape to throw in. They had to share a roll of tape for God's sake. No money, they had to pay to get their own equipment done, they had to buy skates, it was nuts. So what the PWHL has done is funded it properly, staffed it properly, at a huge cost. Like the players are getting paid fairly, they're getting a living wage, but they're not making serious money because the league is funding everything. There's a coach and assistant coach on every team, there's a trainer, massage therapist, equipment trainer. It's unbelievable what they've done. Travels first class, I they bust, we all bust when we play in the American League, we play in the no big deal. They fly when they have to, but it's been, the Walter family's been a godsend, the women's hockey, they've been unreal. It's a great product too. I take my 10 year old daughter, she loves it. I love it. I love Walter. We just went to the women's bean pot last night actually. Yeah, Harvard won it ⁓ on a penalty shot, yeah, in overtime. I have a, still have four season tickets even though I'm no longer involved with the league. I still go, I love it. I think the women are amazing. What they, what they had to do to get to play and how hard they had to work and how hard they had to fight for their rights. It's a testament. So I would encourage anyone. You don't watch women's hockey, start watching. Yeah, we watch on TV. It's great. It's great product. So my youngest daughter ⁓ was my hockey player. finally got one. Geno's daughter plays. I've always been huge on women's hockey and I coached her all along. And I always said coaching girls hockey or women's hockey was so much easier than boys because boys are stupid and you had to tell them 15 times what to do and they wouldn't do it. Girls would apply at the next shift. I think it's a pure goal. I asked Sam Bennett asked me one time at Maple Leaf car or not Maple Leaf car or whatever is there a Canada center. What is it now? And it was coming by me at the rink. said, Berkey, I was a woman talking to him. said, great. He said, what's the biggest difference? I said, they're grateful, Sab. They thank you. They listen, tell them how to do a drill. do a, we used to have guys who called drill killers. Never change a drill with that guy in the front line. Never have that with women. Whatever you tell them to do, they do it well, they do it right, they work hard. They're wonderful. the skill level, mean, some are, I'd say as skilled as, you know, some of the better men's players. Yeah, there's physiological differences. It'll always be there. Size and strength differences. It'll never go away. But the actual skill of women, if you watch women playing and you're not, you don't really pay attention. You go in and squint a little bit so you can't see. Ponytails. You think it's a junior-aged boys team, not a women's team at all. They're so good. They're so much fun. They shoot the puck so well, they make good plays, they work hard. They get defensive schemes. They're so smart. It's just a joy to watch. they don't shit talk the referees as much. I know that. They do, but with compliments. It's growing. It's getting better. The NHL is the... only league left out of the major four that don't have a women, a woman official. They've had one linesman worked at AHL, right? Yep. They got a couple. Yeah, they got a couple that do both referee in, lines. but nothing, yeah, nothing in the national league yet. Well, we'll get there. Yeah. They've done like exhibitions and things like that, but I don't think they've ever done a, an actual game yet. We'll get there. There's a couple that are working the Olympics that this is coming. ⁓ February, think that can. One or two might have a shot. Cook, one of them? ⁓ yeah, Kelly Cook is going. ⁓ Kirsten Welch, she's a line person and I think she, if anybody has a shot. And there's one from Rhode Island going too. Yeah, I made it to Sony. Which is, and speaking of the Olympics, I the Olympics, I can't wait. And I love women's Olympics because there's just that rivalry, that... You know, not that there's not rivalry in the men's there is, but, you know, when Canada plays the U.S., it's just a war. Don't get me started on the Olympics. I the Olympics are a joke in terms of how many teams there are, how many distances there are. Compare the Olympics at Lake Placid, 1928, wherever it was, and the Olympics in Berlin, and compare the number of events they have. They've bastardized it, they've expanded it. It's too big. It's crazy. the Olympic hockey is still spectacular. I love it. you agree with best on best with NHL players playing in it or should they have kept it amateur? No, the best on best. And the leaving Russia out makes perfect sense for me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with everything going on in the world right now, the, you know, it's interesting that like the Olympics are just, it's Kind of wild that, you know, just politics. I don't want to get into politics, but it's just going to be interesting. Well, it's a shame Russia players are not there, but it's the right thing to leave Russia out right now. The best on best minus of top Russian players is outstanding. That's like the ⁓ Four Nations tournament I thought was fantastic. Right from the get go. Right from the face off. I laughed because I was doing a podcast a week before the Four Nations. Someone says they're going to be intense or they're all buddies. I said, there's no buddies. International hockey has no friends. I wouldn't even talk to someone on the other team. That's kind of unique to hockey, isn't it? Especially like baseball now, there used to be that hatred between the Yankees and the Red Sox. It was legit. It wasn't like they only hated each other when they played. And in hockey, it's kind of like, you don't see that the friendship ends as soon as the puck drops. And it's like, I'll stab you even if you're my best friend. Or brother. The original, there were only six teams that traveled by train. They would not speak to one another. If someone had to walk through one train in the car, pass the other team, they wouldn't speak. And there were fights on the train. Glad we've progressed past that part. But the lack of... The lack of liking for each other is really cool to watch. Now, do you think the four nations should expand to like six or should they keep it a four? No, this should go to a World Cup, I think, every other year in between the Olympics. So every like this year would be an Olympic year, two years from now would be a World Cup year. I like that. Play the World Cup in the summer like we used to. The season really wrecks the season. The number of guys who are hurt right now, it's because of compression, mainly because of Olympic schedule. Yeah, that was one of the drawbacks for the four nations in that there was a few key guys that were hurt in that tournament. And they will get hurt. They get hurt every Olympics too. John Tavares got hurt. Matias Olen got hurt. It's like 10 players got hurt in Torino. Like six players got hurt in Vancouver. It's going to happen again. That's not a fun flight coming back with your arm in a sling from Italy. Oof. Yeah. And when you were involved with the US team, what was that experience like as far as kind of representing your country? Well, being a kid from Minnesota and not playing hockey until I was 13, I never dreamed I'd get a chance to play in the Olympics, let alone represent my country in any way. So in 1993, at the end of my first year in Hartford, Art Berglund called me, a late, great Art Berglund from the USA Hockey Conference, said, would you be willing to represent Team USA at the Olympics or at the World Championships? I told him I will fold towels, I will drive my Class A license and drive the bus, I will fold towels. And JJ, the late, great Jimmy Johansson, made a poster of me folding towels. So that's how strongly I felt any chance I had to represent my country. So with USA hockey asked me to be in the Olympics, 09 being the world championships in 2010, being the GM of the Olympic team, it was a great opportunity. It treasured, I worked at Sochi as well, director of player personnel. Great, great experience. And we obviously won a silver medal and we lost in overtime to a great team, but we were picked as sixth. If you look at the pre-tournament prognosticators, no one thought we'd play for a medal at all. Yeah, that was an exciting Olympics because of that, because no one expected the U.S. to kind of even compete. Well, Ronnie Wilson was our coach. He did a great job. David Poyle was my associate GM. He did a great job. Torz was an assistant coach. He did a great job. had a great staff. Chris Drury was important on that team. ⁓ Zach Friessing, Jamie Lang and Brenner, all key guys. I love that group. I love being around that team. That was a fun team to watch. They worked. They wouldn't quit. Now as a GM, you know, the one of the, pulling off, getting the both Sedenes. I mean, that was just, I think one of the, one of the best, cause I can only imagine if they played separately. you know, if they went to two different teams, but you were able to kind of work it so that you were able to get both. There's two guys that deserve the most credit for that deal. One is Mark Crawford who turned them into players, but the more important guy is Thomas Grudine, our Swedish scout. Because Thomas Grudine came to me that fall and said, we got to try and get these two brothers, these twins. And I said to him, they're both going to be top five picks. No one's ever picked twice in the top five before. No one's ever picked identical twins. How the hell am I supposed to get two kids? He said, that's your job. And then the world juniors were in Winnipeg that year. And if you guys recall, the Swedes weren't very good in that tournament. They got knocked down a lot. USA ran the shit out of them. Canada ran the shit out of them. And I left the tournament, I told our guys, we're not making this deal. We're going to trade our pec, we're not taking. I didn't like that. If you look at the first round, you Google it right now if you want. Look at the first round out here. It's the worst first round in the history of the NHL. The worst first round by a mile. That's the only reason teams were willing to move guys. So that's the reason we got in. I didn't like it. I told our guys we were going to trade the pick. We weren't picking. I didn't like anyone in the group. And then Thomas Grineen begged me to go to Oslo, to the world championship, so I watched the twins. So I said, okay, Thomas. I'm going to go, I'm going to watch him play three games and we're going to drop this nonsense. One shift, the first shift of the first game, they played it on Marl, they didn't play in Oslo. Two and a half hour drive to see him play, so I'm pissed off. Our city's too stiff. First shift, the first game, Enric City made an area pass like 60 feet away, pass or pass to nobody. And Daniel skated right onto it. And I saw the bad joke for the first time, said, Now Thomas Green knew it at the start. It took me a whole year to figure it out. Now I see it. I said, I gotta get him. We got him. Could you tell them apart? best part was the fifth game they played that year, Daniel got cut in his lip, got like six stitches on his lip. We're all going, yeah, yeah, he's got a scar. That healed instantly and completely. I'm like, God damn it. ⁓ Like, yeah. That's great. So like being a GM, obviously there's a lot of pressures coming to that. And we just had, think Ally Afraidy was just talking about it on the podcast about the pressures of being in Toronto, like as like a player and just with the media and everything, being an executive in Toronto, is that like, is it really just like a completely different level of than being an executive anywhere else in the NHL? It's the scale that that's daunting. the scale. So you look at a Minnesota Wild Game after a game, say a Tuesday night. Or, yeah, say Tuesday night in Minnesota. You might have 50 people in the room, in the players room. People milling around, doing interviews, talking to people. Maybe 60. In Calgary, we have 45 on a Tuesday. On a Saturday, we probably have 50. Toronto has 100 every night. That whole, the reason the dressing room is so big in Toronto is to accommodate the media. There's a hundred people in there every night. So the scale is what's daunting. I think the coverage overall is fair. People would that. Not get the job done in Toronto. People wrote that. we played well, they wrote that. If we played poorly, they wrote that. If I made a good deal, they wrote that. If I made a bad deal, they wrote that too. I could live with it because it was fair. Now the scale is what daunts you and that's what gets the players is. Everyone, when you're not playing well, everyone picks up a rock. So 10 guys pick up a rock and throw it at the MFNF. 10 guys pick up a rock and throw it at Phil Kessel. 10 guys throw it at me. 10 guys throw it at Ron Wilson. That was 40 rocks in the air. So the volume can get on you. But I thought the coverage overall was fair. I think it's way, mean Montreal's tougher because you're stupid twice. Stupid in French and English. Cooper's got a vicious social media side that I don't like. It wasn't there when I was there. came up after I left. But otherwise, I thought the coverage was fair. It's nonstop. Even now, I've been out of the game in Toronto for, I know, I left in 13, so 12 years. I still get stopped everywhere for pictures, autographs. People give me shit about how we, the, or whatever. But it's a hockey market. It's not for everyone. I love living in Toronto. Yeah, I would say Toronto hockey, like the Maple Leafs is similar to what we have here with the Red Sox and the intense media coverage and the scrutiny. But it's interesting to hear you say it's fair because there's plenty of guys that, you know, might say otherwise. Well, I felt it was fair when we played well, they wrote that. Well, they were fair. They wrote that. There's some negative people. There's people like Steve Simmons. I don't talk to Steve Simmons. Never will. But there's some negative people. But overall, the coverage is fair. We played well. They wrote that. I made a good deal. They wrote that. I made a bad deal. They wrote that. That's all you can ask for. And they're knowledgeable. They're a very knowledgeable fan base, a very knowledgeable season ticket base, and a very knowledgeable media base. I have... I look back on my time in Toronto. I failed to get the job done. I got fired, the team got sold. I can live with all of that. I was proud to be a Maple Leaf. Proud of the time I spent here and I loved it and I still love the city. By the way, Riles, you gotta stop saying it like an American. It's not Toronto. It's Toronto. Toronto. Toronto? No, it's a second T. See, that's my Boston accent. We fuck up words we shouldn't. like saying New Orleans, it's New Orleans. Yeah. Well, I'm not saying Toronto, because usually we put an R on the end where they don't belong. I'm always like that. What was your fate? Because you've been in so many different cities. What would, I mean Toronto. Is that your favorite or was that your best experience as a GM or? My favorite, my best experience was one in a cup and then on. So that's up. But my favorite city to live was Calgary. Calgary is a great city to live. It's so beautiful, so many wide open spaces. But what I loved about it was I do a lot of charity work, as you guys know. in Calgary, everyone has a second vocation for charity. So you say to someone, what do do for work? I said, well, I'm an accountant. but I'm on the board of the Mustard Seat, which is a food bank. Or you say, what do you do? I'm a school teacher, but I'm a Special Olympics coach. Everyone has a second calling to benefit someone in the community that's less fortunate. It's unbelievable. I've never lived in a place where people gave back so much so often. So that's what I loved about it. I fell in love with the place right away. My favorite stop on the tour. Now you bring up charity. ⁓ you can play that whole ⁓ organization or I don't know what you call it, but that's an awesome thing that you do. Well, you're being very polite, Mark. You don't have to be. ⁓ I lost a son. My son, Brennan, passed away in a car accident and he had come out gay not long before. and his name, my son Patrick really was the guiding light behind it. But me and the other kids formed a charity called You Can Play. And that's basically the premises. If you're gonna play here, you can play. You can play, you can play. Doesn't matter if you're black, doesn't matter what your color is, doesn't matter what church you go to, doesn't matter if you're gay. You can play, you can play. So the notion that ⁓ we turn with something awful into something good. on behalf of Brendan. So it's good. Thank you for being polite. Thank you for asking about it. I really think that it's fantastic because, you know, in the world we live in, acceptance, you know, I have a daughter. ⁓ you know, ⁓ I think it's so important and it's such a good example as far as, you know, all the major sports. Yeah. It's really important work. I'm proud of it on behalf of our family. And I think inclusion is really important, especially today, because it's going back the wrong way right now. Taking a hard right turn for no good reason. Yeah, it's really unfortunate. I wish there was, you know, other sports would kind of take, like, you know, more action with that. Yeah. Well, I think it was going that way, then it went back prior to tape and everything got cut back. So we've taken the right turn back and kind of people would say, got back more to normal, but I think it's the wrong turn. I think it's the wrong mistake. We'll get back to what we need to do. But in the meantime, just everyone's got to vote and everyone's got to speak their voice on this stuff. It's very important. Speak up for the people that need help. Absolutely. A hundred percent. you know, back to normal, what the fuck is wrong with people? Like that's. To me, acceptance is key. And if we got away from all the bullshit, all the stuff like bullying and all this stuff would be minimal as opposed to what it is now. Yeah, and they're all linked. All those issues are linked. And acceptance really is a key to all of it, not tolerance. You tolerate rain, you tolerate cats. Acceptance is key to society moving forward as a whole. one thing with hockey is that camaraderie, that family kind of feel like we've all been part of teams where you don't look at them as teammates, you look them as brothers. tomorrow I'm heading to, I went to Curry and played at Curry and one of my teammates, Kevin Joyce, unfortunately passed away a few years ago and they're inducting him into the Hall of Fame. And all the guys from that year, are going and you know, and it's just a, think a different feel with the sport of hockey. Yeah, it is. I just went down to Providence College for May reunion. We saw them beat Maine twice, which was fun. And then they beat BC twice. next week. I was going say they just swept BC this weekend. Yeah. Oh, we were there the weekend before the bunch of guys I played with. It's such a special bond. And I played for Lou Amarello, who was a special guy. I didn't love Lou every night, but I really enjoyed playing for him. It was a great thing. you're right. It forms a bond that never changes. Never goes away. And time falls away. You don't see something for 10 years. It's like you were playing with him 30 years ago. That's so true. Yeah. And you could even see it in the, the two, or not the whole team, but the 2011 Stanley Cup Bruins just played an alumni game against ⁓ Navy SEALs and Marines. here in Boston last weekend and like just seeing those guys see each other again, it's like, it's like they grew up together. It's such a close bond. It's cool to see like the difference between like a Stanley Cup team bond and then just like people who played together. I went to Afghanistan to visit the Canadian soldiers three different times. I went six times. The only three we made it to Afghanistan into the war zone, the Kandahar and Kabul. And that shows you, think we have important jobs to get overseas. People have important jobs. the Navy, the Warrior for Life Fund is the organization that the Bruins alumni are very involved with. And Josh and I have been able to get involved with it too through, you know, refereeing games and we did some comedy shows for them. And the Navy SEALs all talk about how the teams their teams are so similar and it translates so well to hockey teams. There are lot of similarities. The stakes are so much higher. Once you go to Afghanistan, you're in the war zone, you see the difference. An important decision for us is someone scores a goal, important decision for them is someone gets shot. So it's very different. It teaches you a great deal of humility and respect. We think we have important jobs and we do. but we don't compare to what soldiers do and airmen do and Navy SEALs do. So it was a great experience for me to be able to go over there and spend some time with those men and women. I'm very humbling and very grateful for the time, chance to see that. And if you think you swear a lot, you'll go somewhere at the North Bay Master. That's so true. One similarity I'd find is You know, the Navy SEALs, we had, we've had three on this podcast, three retired Navy SEALs, and very similar to hockey players in that they're so humble, they're so accommodating, you know, where ⁓ a majority of NHLers are the same way. I mean, we see it with the Bruins alumni, you know, even a guy like Chow or Bergeron who are huge. are so accommodating and never bothered by people asking for autographs or anything like that. And it's kind of, I've seen that similar approach with the Navy SEALs. And that's, think, another connection they have. Where in other sports, it's not the case where a majority of them are like that. Yeah. I had both my knees replaced a couple of years ago. I went pheasant hunting after I had the first one done. I wasn't ready to walk. went too soon. There were eight Navy SEALs with me in North Dakota, South Dakota, sorry. I had it with these eight Navy SEALs. Like you said, they could not have been more accommodating. Guys like, Perky, you shouldn't be walking. We'll move you up here, get in the back of the car, back of the pickup truck, we'll move you over, you can block. So you just have to stand someplace and shoot. So their humility, their kindness was very evident. They're so humble. They don't talk about anything they did, even though when guys were telling me later, some of the actions these guys were in, scary, tough, but so polite and so nice. And, ⁓ and they can shoot. can tell you that. He burst through past me. I mean, Riley knows better than anybody how hard they can shoot. I got shot by a Navy SEAL. it was a slap shot, but broke my ankle and, back in the alumni game last year when they played. ⁓ But I can't imagine hunting with And he hasn't stopped talking about it since. Do seals play hockey? There better seals than there are hockey players. Well, yeah. That's true. Although there's a few on that Warrior for Life team that can, you know, a couple of them played in the American League. ⁓ There's a few, there's a few players on that team. I didn't know that. Yeah. Aaron Berdozhin is one of them. He played in the American League and I had a pretty good career, ⁓ but ended up on a SEAL team. Talk about a guy who you look at him and you're like, this guy could do some damage to this whole fucking room. But nicest guy you'll ever meet. They are special. In hanging with those guys, I realized how much I complain about everything. I kept going to complain about stuff. was like, not in front of these guys. Now, we ask everyone, and I know it's kind of a shitty question or a difficult question, who's on your Mount Rushmore of hockey? I have to think about that, but a couple people come to mind right away. One's easy, Sid. One of the great joys and reasons I went to Pittsburgh was to meet Sid. I knew not to meet him, but to work with him. What a treat that was. So I'd say Sid, I'd say Temu. Temu Solani is one of the finest people in my life. I'd say De'Ampfeneff was a great captain, great guy, great player. I love De'Ampfeneff. I'd say, and I'm kind of partial to the defense, and I make fun of the defenseman all the time because I'll die there. But you can't win without defense. So I'd add Scott Niedermeyer and Chris Pronger to that list. Marcus Nazem maybe is the last forward. Now, Tmoo's, Solani's kids both played at Curry. My alma mater. I got to referee him and Timo, it was kind of cool. He was there with Mike Arruzzione because Mike's nephew was playing on the team and Timo looked like he could jump right back in. mean, you know, knows. Just incredible. ⁓ What was cool was I asked Vinny Arruzzione, Mike's brother, if, you know, they'd come down and say hi in between periods. So I say to the other guys, yeah, I got a couple of friends coming down to say hi and. You know, they don't know who's coming and then those two show up and I look like a freaking rock star to them because you know, the two of them came. I played four years against Mike Maruzione. I was a right winger. He was the left winger. Played that with him. I never talked to players unless I was going to fight. I didn't like talking to players. Got my mouth shut. Riz talks all the time. Hey, Berkey, how are you? ⁓ I got the Boston accent. Hey, Berkey, how are you? ⁓ I wouldn't talk to him. Finally, in the third period, I'd say, would you shut the fuck up? He'd say, see, I got you to talk. got you to talk. He talked. He me nuts. He was such a good player. Such a good guy. He's not a good player. He's a great player, Michael. Yeah, he was. mean, that that 80 team was just it was incredible. Did you ever get to work with Herb Brooks? No, but I knew her well. Great guy. We played summer hockey. I used to play summer hockey in Minnesota. I used to go back to Minnesota in the summers and play summer hockey, which is very important for me development wise. It was a tough league. I fought Paul Holmward in the summer league and other fights of note. But Herb Brooks used to pack the team. So you had players from Colorado College, Dartmouth, Providence College, Minnesota, Duluth, all these kids who would come back and play summer hockey. And Herb would pack the team, he put eight gophers on one team. So Tommy Vannelli, the Fippens, Tommy Younghands, Paul Holmward all ended up on one team. And they won the championship every year. So one year we won the championship. And I went out and Herb Brooks came over and he goes, Berkey, well done. Well done. said to Herb, who packs a summer league team? Who doesn't? He goes, Berkey, always take the edge. I knew Herb well. I really liked Herb. I was sad. I know exactly how he died too. He was going home, on his way home and right at the exit, when you go to the airport, he swerved off. People say, you know, he must have been tired, but I think he just remembered, hey, wait, I'm going to the airport. Went over and rolled the car. Would you consider, I mean, what he did in 80 was just a remarkable thing, but as far as coaches, who have you? worked with that you think might be the best coach? Well, for me, and Mark Crawford was a great coach. He worked for me in Vancouver. He did a great job. He turned our team from a real struggling team into a Stanley Cup contender. Randy Carlisle obviously did a good job. He won the Stanley Cup. He's a great coach. Ron Wilson did a good job. He was kind of nearer to the end when I had him in Toronto, but he did a great job with the Olympic team and with the Leafs. There's a lot of great, like right now I'd say John Cooper is the best coach in the NHL. I think he deserves that claim right now. I'd say there's a couple of other really good ones. Paul Maurice. Mark Croft had great lettuce. Yeah, he did. He's a great guy too. We were playing Boston. played, we used to play, we had Turkey with Berkey on Thanksgiving. At one o'clock we had to lead the Bruins. And I brought Father Doyle, who's a friend of mine, he still is, brought Father Doyle to the game on Friday afternoon. And Mark Crawford, we lost in overtime because Mathias Olin, or not Mathias Olin, Marcus Nass and stumbled in overtime, wiped out Mathias Olin. And the Bruins came back around the side of the net and scored a goal that won the game. I went in and Mark Crawford had a paperclip. He picked up a paperclip for some reason, was throwing it off the wall, said yelling, fuck. Throwing it off the wall and picking it up and throwing it off the other wall. Father Doyle walks in and hears Mark Crawford say, fuck. I said, Mark, this is Father Doyle. He said, sorry, father. Fuck. Mark Crawford was a great guy. You have to have fun too. He was a fun guy. His wife's lovely. We had lot of fun as a couple. It was great hanging around with him. Well, as a lettuce guy myself, you have some pretty damn good lettuce. Yes. A couple of really good scars in my head though. If I ever go bald, it'll look ugly. So you can't, right? That's... you think... Hartford should have a team again? No. Everyone says that. I agree with Economically, Hartford was destroyed before I got there even. Pratt & Whitney used to have 10,000 jobs there. They manufacture aircraft. All the Hartford Insurance companies moved to New York. We lost all those high paying jobs. It can never recover, I don't think. It was done before I got there. The roaring 80s are long gone for me. Same with Quebec. I can't see a team going back into Quebec. So where would you expand if the NHL does expand, or should they expand? I wouldn't expand. I don't think we should expand. 32 teams is plenty. You don't get me going. I agree. Liguaya said they were gonna, right? Remember Atlanta, where else did he say? He said a couple of places. Pia did, yeah. They're talking about, we have 32 teams. We won the cup. You won the cup last year. So you win the cup, you have your parade and you look around and say, well, we're due to win again in 32 years. Gonna make that 34 or 36? I don't think so. It'll be 36. It won't go up two. Might go up two initially, but they'll go up, they have to put a team back in Arizona too when the building gets set. They're going to add four teams over time, I think. I believe, I think it's all a mistake. I've been very public about it. Talk to Gary about it. It's just the lure of the money. If a team's going to bring a billion dollars in expansion money, the lure of adding four billion in revenue base. I get it. That's too hard for the owners to say yes to, but I think they should say no. What are teams worth if they don't expand? What's an expansion team worth if they know they're not going to expand for 10 years? Guess what? I think your product will suffer from it too. Like, who knows? But be playing for the Cup at the end of July. Well, I will tell you one thing. So I'm opposed to wild card and all that stuff. But the wild card, you watch it in football and baseball, wild cards turn out to work pretty well. It's pretty... I think the same thing would happen in hockey. We'd say, no, this is terrible. All of it for this is like me. It's, they know it's terrible. They do a playing game, it'll be wildly successful. And then people say, we can't play a one team play and we have to play a best of three. And all of a sudden he sets the season out another two weeks. So I'm opposed to expansion, but I think it's coming. I think what's been lost, like I'm old school. I love that rivalry, like playing a team eight times in your own division back when, you know, you had the, the, the four divisions within the Campbell Conference and all that. Now I think that's kind of been lost and that teams don't play each other enough. Well, I agree, by the way, we have to play. We really messed it up when we agreed to play everyone every year. Everyone said it was for Mario Lemieux and for Sid. Well, no one wanted to watch Pittsburgh before Sid got there. No one wanted to watch San Jose before Sellebrini got there. So there's nothing wrong with playing those teams every other year. and get lightening the travel schedule. So you play San Jose instead of Pittsburgh every year, they'll play every other year, take out half the road games, Eastern Conference games and put them in somewhere else. So to me, it makes sense. If you do some schedule revision, I would like to get to 76 games, not to where they're going from 82 to 84. There's a way to do it. If you kept the salary cap where it is for a year and recovered the revenue that was lost for those teams. take out six games, that's three home games for each team, take out six teams, six games, replace the revenue from that from the salary cap, freeze the salary cap for a year. There's a way to do it. so with, because I think they, like football does that the right way, where like the AFC East will play one of the NFC divisions, like East or South or whatever, but then that's all they play is those teams in that division. Yeah, it'd be pretty simple, especially if they're going to go to 36 games, you get to a balanced schedule pretty easily and not play everyone in every building. Do you think you think they should go back to kind of more of a conference where you're playing like Boston, Montreal was always so freaking exciting because they hated each other. You'll have that. think it will go one through eight, but I'd like to go one through eight, not, not, not in brackets. like we're going to lose a Prime team's gonna lose in the central division this year in the first round. One of those top three teams is going out. That won't go away with the, if you went through one through eight and reseated each round, it won't go away, but it'll be better. I think doing the brackets is tough right now. Do you think it would ever work to do like maybe an original six division? Where it's just like the- I like the divisions the way they are. Who'd you pick? Right now, who's your front runner for the Stanley Cup this year? Well, Colorado has been the best team in the league all year and there's no reason to say they're any different right now. I'm still, I think they're a little thin in terms of injury, but we'll see. We'll see as things go along. Right now, Colorado is the class of the league by a mile. And it starts with the head coach, Jared Benton. He's one of the best I came across in the minors. He was in South Carolina when I was in the Coast League and I had him all through the American League. You know, his success is, is unbelievable in Colorado. He's a great guy. The path that some of those guys took toward Rella, the path that you guys worked their way up Glenn Galtz and I admire that. course I had torts on TV one time. I asked him what he made his first year coach in South Carolina. think he was making 16,000. Hard to live on 16 grand, folks. No, but I mean, you go through the process and you do everything right. You're going to, you know, hopefully reach success. Like I think nowadays everybody wants to jump, jump the process and get there yesterday instead of going through the grind and doing it the right way. And like a lot of the, like a lot of those guys you just named even in Cooper, he's one of them that I, you know, I had through the minors. Like he was just, he was awesome to deal with. And you just see how hard all these guys work and you know, you see them. at the rinks early and the time they put in and then you see them on TV behind the bench in the National Hockey League and it's great to see. was coaching Syracuse, one of the Marlies. We lost them in the Colter Cup. I remember going over to shake hands with Hoop. I was so mad at my team. We got swept or lost 4-1. I think we got swept, but we didn't play well in the finals. I was really sour. I had to go shake his hand. I was soaked as stuff. I was like, good job. And then it walked away like, God damn it. I hope I never have to do that again. I worked, I worked the league that year and I think Johnny A. Baird did that final and there was a controversial goal. Offside goal, I think in that series. Oscar goal was about 20 feet offside. was 20 feet offside. Yes. And you know, the Leisman, the Leisman was falling asleep and it was in the back of the net, but the play was offside. Well, the league issued an apology the next day. Dallas Eakins. Dallas Eakins. That's right. Yep. Dallas Eakins said to me, I'm going go out there and rip the referees. said, Dallas, we just got lost our third straight game. We're down three, nothing in the series. We're not saying a word about officiating. But that was the score of that call. I signed him the next year at a summer event. So I brought him back to Toronto. The coaches kind of, all those coaches we just talked about kind of took the same path as a lot of referees back in the day took. You you start in juniors, you work your way up to a minor pro. And then, you know, eventually if all things fall right, you make the jump to the National Hockey League and you last more than a week like I did. You know, now it's, at least with the referees, it's different because guys aren't doing that path. They're getting put right in. Well, I think they're getting put right in after a certain level. You don't have to go to these host leagues so much. But they don't work well. They get promoted from junior hockey right to the American league, like you're saying, Mark. But if they don't work well there, they fall out right away. It's not, it's not like they're getting sucked or not entitled to it. They can't work at that level. They're demoted immediately. So I don't mind that problem. I like the old system better. Going to work in the Western hockey league and cutting your teeth there. But what they're doing works, I think. Yeah. That's where I met Glenn. Um, gully, he, Gullison, uh, he, he was in Vegas. I worked the West in the East Coast league. I lived out in California for a season and you know, those guys beat the shit out of each other night in night out. And then you go out to the East and you know, on a Wednesday night skate, and then they decided to play the last five minutes. you know, those, those guys out West, they, they took it. It was a different, different style of play and they were out for blood every night. was, it was a lot of fun. You learned a lot too. A lot of fun. Yeah. A lot different. Yes. Yeah, that was down south when I was, the Coast League was only on the coast, the East Coast when I was there a long time ago and the South was like rock them, sock them. The East was kind of like a mix between skating and physical play and then the North was all skating. So when you had a North team play the South, was like, they got the shit beat out of them. One of our good friends of the podcast said to say, hi, Graham Townsend. Graham Townsend. What a great guy. Is he still in Maine? Yes. Yeah. Still in Maine, still running the hockey school, Townsend Hockey. And we see him a lot with the Bruins alumni. He came on, just a great guest. Just an awesome guy. He is a great guy. Tell him I said hello, please. I will. I will. When I talked to him today and he was like, ⁓ you got to tell Berkey I said hi. So I want to make sure I did that. Thank you. Thanks for doing that. Well, Brian, it's been an honor to have you on. ⁓ Just great stuff. ⁓ You know, we're so happy that you were able to join us. Thank you. I want to tell a quick story about Frank Siminetti since he's the guy reason I'm talking to you guys. Yes, we'd love that. Wife worked for the phone company and Frank Siminetti, his dad worked for the phone company. He said, my son plays the same Norbert's and he said, think you could come up and take a look at him. my first wife said to me, I'd really like you to do this. So we drove up and watched them play. I'm thinking, I just got wasted four hours of my life. I'll never get back. Go back after the game, three o'clock in the morning and drove back to Cannon Mast and went to watch Frank Sinetti play. And I said, this guy can play. So I signed him as a client and he played, I don't know, close to 200 games in the show. Awesome. Yeah, played four years. It's funny because He told us when we down in Virginia Beach doing a thing with the Seals, he had mentioned, said, well, Brian Burke was my first agent. Josh and I were both like, what? And he's like, yeah, maybe he'd come on the podcast. We were both like, Yeah. Frank's one of the best guys and he's a huge fan of us. He's been on a couple of times and just talk about a great guy. I mean, he won't find many better. No, I agree. Wonderful guy. Played well for the Broncs for a couple of years. They always had one guy like him. or two guys, usually a four and a D, on swing guys who were in and out of league. They were really good serviceable players. And Harrison had kept the pokes balanced by having one or two guys around on the cheap. It's funny because the Bruins and Mass have had a few guys like that. Johnny Carter was like that. Andy Brickley. You know, they were both kind of like those local guys that no one gave a shot to, but they were, you know, incredible players. Yep, exactly. But that's how I made the money work. A couple swing guys. There you go. Great stuff. And that's a great painting. I love that painting. It was the Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick's Day Parade a couple years ago in Toronto. And gentleman did that painting. I should know his name and I can't think of it, but he was making fun of my tie. I was going to say the signature tie. it. The Hartford Whip. And that's a Morgan Riley pride sweater there. Very cool. Awesome. I was a little disappointed you didn't have the tie on undone. I have no tie on when I'm not working. When I'm working, I have the tie on. Going to the Leafs team tonight, I'll have the tie on. Very good. Right on. Right on. Call it the Birk knot when it just drapes. Well, appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. This was awesome. Thank you. Well, Brian Burke, I mean, like we said, In the intro, just just an amazing guy with with such great stories and such a great history in the game. Yeah, I didn't know if it was going to. I had the thought I wanted to put on a white dress shirt and a tie draped over like untied like he does, but I thought that was too much. Yeah, I thought about that, too. I do, We should all did it. We would look like clowns. These. He would have shit all over us for sure. We're working. He wasn't. That's true. That's true. He doesn't wear the tie or somewhat wear the tie when he's not working. Still wears the shirt. I feel like he sleeps in a white collared shirt too. He dresses, I mean he's a good dresser with some great lettuce. mean his lettuce over the years. Amazing stories. I feel like there was, we got to 1 % of what we wanted to get to. You know, he's definitely a guy that, and like he said, he'd do it again. ⁓ Just the amount of, not only his stories, but the amount of knowledge he has about the game and the insight. And I found his, when we asked about the Mount Rushmore, it was interesting. His list was very interesting. No Gretzky, no Orr, no Lemieux. He brought up some names that... Definitely can be in the conversation. mean, Timu Solani, he was ⁓ the Finnish Flash. Yeah. Loved watching him play. He said, ⁓ yes, I love I love that Mount Rushmore. I was kind of getting sick of the question, but then when he answered it, I was like, was like, here comes all here. Come like he started out with Sydney and all right, here comes Gretzky, here comes all. But he was like, no, Timu. I was like, yeah, my ears perked up there, too, as it really. And throwing in Chris Pryor was awesome. And he just ⁓ a really cool and he's seen the game and those players from a different angle than everyone. Yeah, right. So I thought that was really cool. His his Mount Rushmore. Yeah, that was good. So I'll get some good clips. ⁓ definitely. Definitely. So that's going to wrap episode 100. Boys, we made the century mark. It flew by. Right? I mean, seems like we were just discussing what we should call it. Right. And I'll tell you what, I'm glad I called DraftKings and put the over on on the number of episodes we were going to have. Right. We got to we got to put that that original episode out that we did here in this room. Like right as I was moving in, was it was a shit show. It never saw the light of day. But we maybe we could put Gino and I on the couch. Yeah, what do they call it your It was a pilot episode your pilot pilot episode your dog was barking. ⁓ yeah, we drove like an hour and a half Doing this every week He said we're finding somewhere else to do this Beverly Their couch is way nicer than yours though, Josh. I'm sorry. Well, you know, you know, that's a nice couch is hiring golf. Yes. ⁓ my god. Yeah. Harm and golf is my great coaches. We'll do some more there for sure. Yeah. I've seen a few of those on Facebook marketplace and I'm thinking about it. Yeah. Well, I I would I pull the trigger. Well, it's been it's been a great hundred. episodes and We're looking forward to another hundred or more And we have where some stop and we're just getting warmed up and we had some great guests coming up. So Definitely stay tuned and and Yeah, the list is is pretty impressive. So we're gonna have some really good stuff coming up. So That's gonna do it episode 100 want to thank our sponsors the referees crease and Damon Financial LLC. Also want to remind you to like and subscribe on YouTube. Find us on the social medias, the Instagram, the Facebook, and of course, the tick tock. Thank you, Gino. Netflix. And if Netflix wants to get us on there, let us know. You know, a boss do long their trip and zebra's next. Why not? Why not? I say that's going to happen. I'm putting my money on that this year. It's the year of the zebra, by the way, on the Chinese calendar. Yes. Don't look it up. It's the year of the horse, but zebra's a horse just with fucking a shirt on. stripes. Yeah. A horse with a ref shirt on, that's all a zebra is. That's all it is. We'll take it. We got a lot of stuff coming up. The St. Patrick's Day parade. We gotta get our float ready. A float ready? We have a float? Do we have a spot? Yeah, we got a float. We're gonna go in. ⁓ yeah. We could do some things with that. Yeah. Riley's gonna tell jokes on the back of an Irish car. We're gonna get a bagpiper. We're gonna have all kinds of No, we are. We're gonna have two live zebras, you know, going down the street in front of us. knows a guy. You know what gonna say? Do you guys know a guy in Southia that deals in exotics? Gino knows a guy. We can get a couple out of a zoo. no worries. If not, we can get a white horse and paint it. So either way. Alright, well, so that's gonna do it. Again, find us on social medias, check out chirpingzebras.com for all your information and get your merch on chirpingzebras.com. For Josh Dolan, for Gino Binda Jr., I'm Mark Riley, saying so long from episode 100. We'll see you next time right here on the Chirping Zebras.