Brian Burke - Burkes Law: A Life in Hockey

YOU SHOULD NEVER START A FIGHT, BUT YOU SHOULD FINISH EVERY ONE

I COULDNT SLEEP.

Objectively, there wasnt a lot of reason to be nervous. We were coming home to Anaheim, up three games to one on the Ottawa Senators in the 2007 Stanley Cup final. We had lost only five gamestotalduring the playoffs, we had knocked off the mighty Detroit Red Wings in the conference final, and we had the series under control against an underdog team that should have been happy just to be there.

But I couldnt let myself think that way, and I kept tossing and turning all night long with worst-case scenarios running through my mind. What if Scotty Niedermayer gets the flu? What if somebody blows out their groin during the pre-game warm-up? If the Senators win, then were back in their rink for Game 6. If they win that, then its Game 7, and those are always a coin toss. I was worried about everything. It was a fucking nightmare.

The truth is, the Stanley Cup playoffs arent fun for a general managertheyre exciting, but not fun. Youre cursing your players, cursing the referees, worrying about everything that could go wrong, and its all out of your control.

My wife, Jennifer, tried to reassure me.

These guys arent going to let you down, she said. Youre not going back to Ottawa.

She was right, of course, but that night, it didnt help a bit. We were so close to claiming the greatest prize in sports. Theres no championship thats harder to win, and when they engrave your name on the old silver chalice, its there forever. After the long, unlikely journey Id been on since the first day I put on a pair of skates, there was no way I was taking it for granted.

The next morning, I pulled into the parking lot at the Honda Center at dawn, which was part of my daily routine.

If you run a hockey team in Canada, everyone knows who you are, and you can pretty much do whatever you want around the arena. But not in Southern California. Not down the block from Disneyland. The security guys at the rink never seemed to figure out who I wasor at least they never acknowledged it. Theyd ask me for ID every time, and they would never let me enter through the door that was closest to where we parked, even though I had a master key that would let me in. I had to go through the official security entrance, which was a colossal pain in the ass.

Today, of all days, I wasnt in the mood to play that game again.

Ive got this key, so clearly Im somebody here, I told the security guy. Im not showing my ID to anybody, and no matter what you say, Im walking through this door. You can go ahead and call your supervisor if you like, but Im going inand by the way, Im winning the Stanley Cup tonight.

At least they didnt throw me out.

Chris Pronger got hurt in that gameso all my crazy fears werent completely unfounded. But they shot him up and he stayed on the ice, and by the third period we had a comfortable lead.

With five minutes left in the third period, John Muckler, who was running the Senators, came over to my box and congratulated me. Mucks a good guy, but in that moment, all I could think was that the fucker was trying to jinx us. I didnt start to relax until Corey Perry scored to make it 62 with three minutes to go.

This was the moment a hockey person dreams about their whole life, and I was going to enjoy it. I went down to the bench to watch the final seconds tick off the clock. The players were all excited and yelling, and our owner, Henry Samueli, was hollering as well, though mostly unintelligibly.

Our video guy came down, and when the clock hit zero, he shouted, The Chiefs have won the championship of the Federal League!a line right out of Slap Shot. Everyone who loves hockey loves Slap Shot. We all laughed our asses off.

It got surreal after that. I went on the ice and did an interview with Ron MacLean, but I honestly didnt remember doing it until I saw it on an NHL Network replay years later. The crowd was so loud that I was yelling into the mike.

And then it was my turn to lift the Cup, but I have bad shouldersI had surgery on one of them that spring. If you watch the tape, you can see that I have trouble getting my arms fully extended because my shoulders were fucked, even though the Cup weighs only about 35 pounds.

I was looking for my wife in the crowd, but I couldnt find her. Meanwhile, there was chaos all around me. What a moment. It was like climbing Mount Everest. But it wasnt like we didnt see it coming.

Its supposed to be bad luck to talk about winning a Cup before it actually happens, but with that Anaheim team, we started talking about it in training camp. We knew how good we were, and after we got Pronger, we were loaded. We had made it as far as the conference final the year before, which gave our young guys some valuable training experience. And then we started the season with at least a point in each of our first 16 games.