Coach: The Pat Burns Story by Dimanno Rosie

Author:Dimanno, Rosie [DiManno, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Hockey, Sports & Recreation, Sports
ISBN: 9780385676373
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2012-10-30T06:00:00+00:00

As the calendar changed to 1993, on a night when smokers had to butt out for the first time at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto managed a low-wattage tie with St. Louis. But everyone was keyed up for Burns’s looming return to the Forum. His old media foes from Montreal had descended on the Gardens to bang out their dispatches leading up to the game. Burns was bemused. “You guys were turning cartwheels when I got fired.” The prodigal son’s homecoming even bumped Céline Dion’s Grammy Award nomination off the front page of Le Journal de Montréal, the city’s largest-circulation paper. Journalists did their best to manufacture a feud between Burns and Jacques Demers, comparing and contrasting their styles. Demers had been ridiculed in some quarters for his habit of greeting players when they came off the ice after a game, shaking each one’s hand. Burns, perennially brooding behind the bench, always pivoted immediately and disappeared without a word, win or lose.

Before this game, Burns walked slowly, dignified, across the Forum ice surface to the visitors’ bench. It was an emotional, pressure-packed match that he wanted desperately to win. From the moment they boarded their flight, his players were aware of the occasion’s significance and Burns’s mood; he’d paced up and down the aisle. When he stepped out of the cab at the arena that night, Burns was greeted by a phalanx of TV cameras. To the media, he professed this was just another middle-season game, of no special significance, but he was lying and nobody bought it.

Toronto came out hellbent, building up a 4–0 lead, Gilmour tallying two. And then they very nearly caved, hanging on for the 5–4 win, Mark Osborne scoring late in the third. At the buzzer, Burns windmilled his arm triumphantly and, unusually, patted every player as they stomped to the dressing room. “That was one game where Pat never said anything to us beforehand,” says Gilmour. “But you could see how nervous he was. I don’t think I ever saw him that emotional again. It was so important for us to win it for Pat and we did it. It was like a piano falling off his back. It meant so much to him, and then when he pumped his fist at the end … wow. Some guys who’d never been traded before maybe couldn’t understand what it meant, but this was like Pat coming back after being traded. It was very big, for all of us.” Afterwards, Burns admitted circling the date on his calendar. “I thought about it a lot during the summer.”

The team was now at .500 for the first time since December 1. Later in January, in the rematch at Maple Leaf Gardens, Potvin stoned the Canadiens 4–0, his first NHL shutout. He’d firmly bumped Fuhr, sidelined with an injury, as main man between the pipes, largely due to the faith Burns had placed in him. “He’s going to keep the net as long as he keeps it going. He’s got to understand that it’s his to lose, even when Grant gets back.

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