NHL Executive Legend Brian Burke (3/13/26)

0:00Hey, it's Bob Stoffer. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Oilers Now, Add Free, on Amazon Music, included with Prime. Baseball is back, and the first pitch is on Netflix. The New York Yankees, led by seven-time all-star Aaron Judge, head to the San Francisco Bay to take on Raphael Devar's San Francisco Giants. This season kicks off with one exclusive opening night game. Watch MLB, opening night, the New York Yankees versus the San Francisco Giants. Live on Netflix, tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. 5 a.m. I'm up with a crisp, Celsius energy drink, running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change, and head to work, meetings, workshops. One more Celsius, no slowing down, working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Live, fit, go. Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com.

1:21They took on the avalanche, and the others played one of their best games of the year. Win 4-3, stayed in Denver because the airport's pretty far, and ended up flying it from Denver into Dallas on Wednesday, had a great dinner with some friends Wednesday night in Dallas. It's great seeing Ken and Heather and the folks there. Others had a rough one last night, and Dallas immediately following the game in Dallas last night. Lewis got in about 1-1-15 in the morning, and here we are to take it on the blues who are playing well. They're 5-0-1-1. Let's bring a board in their last six games. Let's bring a board for our friends at Ultraschein. Commercial cleaning done smarter, request your free cleaning quote today by visiting Ultraschein.com. We welcome back to the show NHL executive legend, and a man undoubtedly who's going to have an opinion on what happened last night. We welcome back to the show, Brian Burke. Hello, Brian. How are you? Good, Bob. I'm tired.

2:22I was listening. You talk about your trip. You're too long. It's been a trip. Let me tell you. And more ways than one. It wasn't a trip. It was a knee. It was a knee on knee last night between Radco-Gutus and Austin Matthews. You've been in the chair. You were the guy that decided the term and length of suspensions. First of all, was that a suspension or the hit on behalf of Gutus? Should he be suspended by the league? Yeah. If you look at the factor to go into a suspension, his knee was extended well before the impact. Wasn't the last minute reaction or a last second reaction. He stuck his knee out about three yards before he got to the player. Okay. So definite suspension, that is the Toronto Maple Leafs best player. Was there enough of a requisite response from the Leafs? No. That's what the cranky room is really mad about that.

3:26I won't be fair. I'll be fair to the players. I don't remember one time Travis Mollon was on the ice. Someone needed a guy at our team and Travis who always responded, always did not respond it. So what are you doing Travis? He said, Birkey, but time I realized what happened. It was over. So it happens in a half second. You see Austin Matthews lying on the ice. You see Gutus over on his knees. And you're like, what happened? Mollon is not a time to players miss it. So I'm going to give him a bet for the doubt to bid and I'll see it. But someone saw it and someone should have done something. Brian, I'm going to tell you this right now. I could go into any bar and chat when BC or Grand Prairie Alberta or Waiburn Saskatchewan, right? I could go any bar across Western Canada and I could find one guy that would have been willing to go on over and cross check Gutus in the head and another guy that would have been willing to suck her up, okay? Like I was stunned at that response and maybe that's a little bit makes me a bit of a

4:29Neanderthal in old school. But if that, you know, if that happened, I played on Don Jafri Lupel's Midden's team when he was playing for the Anaheim Ducks before you ever got him, okay? And in the summer of over four. And if anybody ever touched off, all hell was going to break loose out there, okay? There would have been, you know, because he was never hot dogging and he was never trying to show up anybody. You know, he was just set guys up. I just, do you think it's a generational thing, you know, is this just a byproduct? Like we saw Morgan Riley react really aggressively to Ridley Gregg for wiring the puck in a net in a game between Ottawa and Toronto. And Morgan Riley was on the ice and he, now to his credit, he said he should have done something. You know, is, is this endemic of a bigger issue with the Toronto Maple Leafs? What do you think? I think it's partly generational. I don't think that the Earth's response is just active or as primary as it is, as it

5:31was without what we played. Five guys down there, someone should have seen it, someone should have reacted. So even if Morgan didn't see it or he didn't react quickly enough, someone should have, you should have been a scrum, don't should have taken a bunch out of them, because that makes you an antitallant soul of mine. Protein is now at Starbucks and it's never tasted so good. You can add protein, cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha. Try it today at Starbucks. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at AmericaCures.com.

6:33Pay for by Farma. Yeah, well, we'd be neanderthals together and I guess I can, you know, we had an incident in our game Tuesday night in Colorado where Nathan McKinnon did a hard, now Nathan McKinnon is a bully on the ice like he bullies himself, you know, he's fast and he's aggressive and he's not a timid player, but he's not cheap. Like he doesn't do, he's not a repeat offender. Like with, and I know goodness hasn't been called a lot lately for that. He had a lot of stuff earlier in his career, but I think his reputation is such that guys know he's out there as well and then sometimes they don't put himself conversely in McKinnon's case. It was a hard net drive and he ran right over the orders net minor Conor England, who I do expect to start tonight by the way. Some people said to me there should have been an immediate response to lot from the others. To me, it was kind of like, you know, a collision between a bowling ball and a bunch of pins on the play and and the orders, you know, obviously McKinnon was getting the penalty. Do you think there should have been a response from Edmonton in that scenario?

7:36They were short handed at that time. Well, you left this kind of a salient factor out of which was the hit by Darnel Nurk. Yeah, Angleton. And McKinnon. Yeah. Like that was not as, it wasn't like Curlin where he bumped his stone into someone. He got hit hard. I think that was the responsible for much of the impact I think they still could have had a penalty, but not as dispensable for sure. Yeah, and they just and for full clarity purposes, Brian, as you know, the lead rescinded the major penalty and the game is conduct on Nathan McKinnon, which basically means that they're saying that the officials made the wrong call, which I don't know if I love that if I was well the referees. All right, switching focus. The Edmonton owners made a trade to get the silly put Coleson from the Vancouver conucks. Okay, use a 10th overall pick in 2019, stand moment, traded a fourth round pick in and around the time. The trade went down August 18th and Stan had to decide on August 20th as to whether

8:39or not Edmonton was going to match on Dylan Holloway and Philip Robert, who now play for obviously the blues here in St. Louis, Edmonton got put Coleson for a fourth. At least this year, Brian, once Conor, David got hit by Jonathan Colessevic, put Coleson dropped his gloves immediately, took the instigator, took the fight. And then the second time was ironically enough, Ridley Greg of Ottawa, ran Mattia Sackholm and put Coleson tracked him down immediately and Greg tried to, you know, he was, he's not as big and strong as Vasilis, so he did his best job defending himself there. And Coleson leads the others in hits with 200. He steps up and fights for his teammates. He's got 15 goals, he's plus 15 and he's got 13 even strength goals. This guy's turned out to be a heck of a player, isn't he? Great. Take off. How about the speedy show tonight, Coles the other night? Yeah. We pulled away from everyone. He's a great skater's way better than I thought he was.

9:40He made that deal and Stan made that deal I could talk to one of the guys on his old team. He's always a good player, but you know, just just really a roster spot. This kid's got 15 goals, he hits, he fights, he's like a great kid too. Yeah. I mean, he is becoming a fan. People can correct me if I'm wrong, they can text us on the Ashley Fine Floor's text line. He's becoming a bit of a cult figure in Edmonton, right? Because, you know, I mean, Brian, he's still only 24. Like, yeah, he might finish with 20 goals this year, but where is he going to be at two or three years? And if you saw how hard he works in practice, like he works on his game. He works on his craft. And remember, become a cult figure in Edmonton for Russia, and you got to be pretty special. Yeah. Well, there are three over 350,000 Ukrainians in the province of Arizona. Is that what you're referring to or just say there hasn't been, there's not been a lot of success, you know, I'm, you know, he is, I'm telling you right now where fans love

10:42the guy. I'll throw that out there right now. Text us on the Ashley Fine Floor's text line, 78045, I want to make sure I don't give up my cell number. Apparently, I did that once on the show in this last calendar year. 7804518800. How many down for a yes vote? Put you down for a yes vote. You love the guy. Absolutely. How many different teams in the NHL were you, the GM for five or four five five? How difficult is it for the GM to separate the pressure of the here and now all the while, all the while maintaining a view at 30,000 feet? I don't think it's very hard. I had a guess that I got that from Pat Quinn, Pat told me never always ignore the situation you're in. Do it. Especially the team. I felt like you can share that mandate through that every team I work for, so I didn't feel the pressure. I never did, but I think it's really hard to escape from it.

11:45Yeah. Do you think it became a different, Brian, did it become a different world when social media came out? Did that change? It became much harder. Yeah. Much harder. Yeah. Yeah. Like you look at Vancouver now. It's really hard to be a GM and Vancouver right now. Wasn't that hard when I was there? Yeah. Well, you executed a, you know what? I'll throw the satch. I don't know if you've talked to like Sam, Konstantino and Jason Buchlo about this. You pulled off a trade to get the two sedans. Like they were high and right at the top of the draft guys, but there is a couple kids playing in medicine at the Ruck brothers that are the one kids probably a late, they're under size, but they're really skilled. And I think the ones leading the Western League and scoring the other ones like second or third. I wonder, you know, they ended up being a package deal playing for Williams, Jordan, a medicine hat. Vancouver's got some extra second round picks here. I wonder whether or not it might be whove them to take, you know, make some things happen

12:50to drop the couple kids out of the West that are BC, their BC kids, okay, they're from the interior. And whether or not they maybe need to take a page out of Brian Burke book when you went and landed these two guys by the name of Daniel and headroom sitting, you know, those are pretty good acquisitions for your bride. The thing that I always liked about them, you know, was the character that they had, they volunteered like legitimately volunteered hours to the children's hospitals. I don't think they ever wanted any acclaim for doing it, they just, they just believed in doing it. You know what I mean? They didn't need the cameras there following them around and stuff.

13:52Did you know about, like, did you do an extensive amount of work on their character before you stepped up and executed, you know, the machinations to make it possible? Well, I think a lot of people are going to hope that I say, yeah, Brian Burke, Doug Deep, no one else knew about them. I will tell you this. We did cursory exploration on them. It all came back so positive from everybody. Every single source we went to talked to maybe a dozen people that all came back so we stopped there. We were right. And you're right. And they were like, I, I think of the two sedenes, Jerome Aguila and Timo Salani, like, I think a stars a Western conference teams that were always giving with their time. And we're great guys to deal with at a time in which Edmonton was in a bit of a rebuild. It wasn't a great time in oil country, like it's different now because we have McDavid and dry settles. So we've got two of the biggest stars in the world on one team. And guess what, Brian, we got a third guy that's emerged this year and he didn't have a great night last night. He'd be the first to tell you that.

14:52But Evan Booshard, the lead NHL defense and points, he kills penalties now. He plays in every situation. He's up by eight points right now, the defense, scoring race, he probably should have been on team Canada. Well, he should have been on team Canada. But you know, it's one thing when your team has a lot of attention and the others always have lots of attention because they got Conor and Leon. But it's another thing when your team is just another team and the sedenes of the world or Jerome or Timo Salani is sitting there giving you extra time after a morning skate. That probably doesn't surprise you knowing the character of those players. Not one bit. And Evan Booshard is certainly a really good player. He's got to eliminate the really big mistakes. He's got way back on them. He's a way better defensive player. He still makes bonehead plays once in a great while, really dumb plays. He's got to eliminate those horrible mistakes. He's done a really good job on doing just that. Brian, I still make bonehead mistakes on this show occasionally too.

15:55So that's why I'm glad we got you to keep me in line. Have a good one. Have a good weekend, Brian. Thank you. That's Brian Burke, NHL executive legend. His appearances are brought to you by our friends at Ultra Shine, commercial cleaning done smarter, request your free cleaning quote today by visiting ultra shine dot com. It is 348 in oil country. We will tell you that guests on the show received guest certificates to Japanese village. It's a true celebration for the senses quality ingredients and unmatched grill side experience. Don in the staff at Japanese village. They can hook you up at JV Edmonton dot C.A. Just wanted to throw something extra out there. What have we got here? Okay. No, we're not going to do that one. I got to find it here. That's, yeah, we'll get to it when I get back. We're also going to get to a bunch of your texts on the honestly fine floor is text line 349

16:58in oil country. Oh, yeah. We'll also have oil. It's game day trip. You're listening to letters now. USA a knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and side ticks or auto and home insurance. With USA a you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10% tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USA a dot com slash bundle restriction supply. Spring starts at the home depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300 like the next grill for burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go to spot the patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the home depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the home depot. Exclusion supplies the home depot dot com slash price match for details. Three fifty one in oil country. Context is at any time on the actually five floors text line seven eight zero four five one eighty eight hundred. This text comes in out of a seven eight oh. If you don't have players that have a physical presence and get minutes and play a hockey

18:02wealth those minutes, you're subject to being bullied or losing mojo when the opposition gets does dirty stuff. But calls and keeps us up next year he's tracking to be an oiler for life. Gagne dropped the gloves sometimes and that moved the needle for orders fan same with Newton Hopkins and same with Ryan Jones again you can text us at any time. At seven seven eight zero four five one eighty eight hundred. Okay, he becoming this text from Sherry says I really like number 92. Vasilic put calls and as a player for the Edmonton Oiders. I'm having to suggest that most of you want this text comes in from Brian. He says Bob Bouchard might have points but minus three in the first period. He's a liability in the defensive zone. Never physical never picks up as man should be playing forward. He had a rough game last night.

19:03He's on a stretch where he's about plus twenty five since about the 15th game of season. But he had a rough game last night. So did the entire team pod cold podzilla is a beast love is worth that ethic and his plan style and I think there's any question about that he brings it and the fans love that about him. Bob, can we bring up Klattberg if and where would he fit well again and it is puck Peter reporting that the orders of place Colton doc on I R L T I R look for a move announcement at some point today from the Edmonton Oiders and they've recalled Max Jones tonight. Klattberg plays his first game back. He got his hand jammed in a jersey and suffered an injury but he has been a physical player and he was a physical player for the orders as well in the games that he played. Again, you can text us at any time seven eight zero four five one eighty eight hundred. I feel bad that put Colson doesn't have a country man around or a buddy. The orders should bring back Clim Kostin another Clim Kostin was a former first round

20:05draft choice of the St. Louis Blues. The orders traded another Russian Dmitry Samarukov who made his NHL debut in this building in twenty one twenty two and got dashed to one minus two. So on the ice for two goals against the first four and a half minutes. She simply wasn't ready. That was when Dave Tipett, Jim Playfair, we're coach of the team. The orders the next season at the start of the year made a trade Samarukov for Kostin and Kostin had double digit goals and fought like six or seven times and then wanted to get paid. What's happened here with Pankolz and as opposed to Kostin ended up moving Kostin to Detroit and Detroit also took Kader Yamamoto and bought him out at one third kept Kostin, Kostin lost traction in Detroit and is currently not in the national hockey league. Kostin has already signed a three year extension with the Yamamoto orders, but he's had a million dollars this year. He's having a good year and he's becoming a real storyline for the Edmonton Oilers. All right. If you're ready for your next adventure, trust new S Travel All, British family owned

21:06and operated Travel Experts since 1979 from European River Cruises and all inclusive vacations to corporate incentive groups and luxury escapes. Their Travel Experts take care of every detail, making every trip stress free and personalized visit newestravel.com, your local travel experts for every journey. As we go to the Oilers Now game day trivia, this is a fun one and this is one all of you can play. You got to text us the correct answer on the Ashley five floors tax line. Get all correct answers. Get bragging rights, a chance for bragging rights and a $50 GC from our friends at Pro M sports where fans are family pro M sports has the silly put calls and signed jerseys, photos, ucks and much more in stock, visit them today at Edmonton or online at Pro M sports dot C.A. Okay. While we're playing St. Louis, so you got to know that it could theoretically be involved in a question connected between Edmonton and St. Louis.

22:08Here we go. Which former St. Louis blue player was the last in NHL history to play without a helmet? Which former St. Louis blue player was the last in NHL history to play without a helmet? You don't need one if you're a regular listener to our show, Oilers Now. That's your hint. Which former blue player and the last coaching stint he had was in St. Louis during that of four mentioned 21 22 season, by the way, I believe that's your he was here. Which former St. Louis Blue's player and coach better known for being a player and coach in Edmonton was the last player in NHL history to play without a helmet and your hint is, you shouldn't need one if you're a regular listener to our show. We will head off to an 880 news whether traffic update with Thomas Dias when we return will give you the trivia answer. And then one of our favorite segments of the week, Ryan Rashog coming up for game day

23:11men's health West ever to hear list the doiders now. My name is Mickey Fox Friday, February 27th on a global. I'm sheriff of edgewater for her keeping the peace cartels moving in means every investigation. People are getting threats. It's close to home at the end of the day. I'm responsible for this town secrets, loyalties and small town justice collide in a new hit drama. I'm a damn good sheriff sheriff country returns Friday, February 27th on global stream on stack TV.