Brian Burke (executive)

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Brian Burke (born June 30, 1955 in Providence, Rhode Island) is an executive in the National Hockey League and currently the general manager and executive vice president of the Anaheim Ducks.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Burke graduated from Providence College in 1977 with a B.A. in History. While attending Providence, he played for the Friars Division-I ice hockey team, where, during his senior year, he served as captain. Burke then proceeded to play one year in the AHL with the Maine Mariners, who won the AHL Calder Cup Championship that year. After one year in the AHL, Burke attended Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1981.

Burke has served as the general manager of the Hartford Whalers and Vancouver Canucks. After he left the Canucks in 2004, Burke worked briefly as an analyst for NHL games on both the CBC and TSN.

A dual citizen of the United States and Canada [1], Burke is married to Jennifer Mather, a popular TV and radio journalist in Vancouver. They have 2 young daughters, Mairin and Fiona Grace. Burke has four children from a previous marriage—Katie, Patrick, Brendan, and Molly.

[edit] Quotes

Burke is well-known for his ability to offer witty quotes to the media. Some of those include:

• "Why would we be interested in acquiring Fedorov? We already have one Fedorov too many!"
• "Sedin isn’t Swedish for 'Punch me and headlock me in a scrum.'"
• "We've got 9,300 (season ticket holders) here and we were at 6,000 when I was hired, ... I believe this is a great hockey market. I remember when you couldn't get a ticket for games here. Then we gave people reasons not to come, and they stopped coming.”
• "If you'd have said to me in Vancouver, 'You can win a Stanley Cup but you can never do an interview and you can't be in the parade,' I'd say, 'Where do I sign?' My ego's a lot smaller than people think!"
• “It's too bad we have to lose a player of his stature. But this solves our financial problems and we're looking to reinvest that money.”
• "Every charter flight, I go back, see if there's a card game going on, make sure it's not getting silly, talk to the captains about it. It can really split your team if a guy loses a lot of money on a card game.”
• "Other than my annoyance with the way this business is being run, if we're going to have asinine, insane, inflationary signings, it suits me fine that most of them have been in the East so far."
• "We charge in the neighborhood of $100 for a ticket, folks. We have to justify that investment by our fans."
• "Good, so he's going back to $65 a week?" ~on hearing that free agent Peter Schaefer was skating with the Vancouver Giants.
• "I said a flat 'no' both times, with a considerable amount of emphasis and profanity" ~while negotiating a contract with Mike Babcock.
• "Hockey is a man's game. The team with the most real men wins."
• "If Trent Klatt gets more money from LA, God Bless Him, I'll drive him to the airport."
• "These players are going to come in at dollars that make sense, or they can sit on their butts till they turn to stone" (referring to holdouts Josh Holden and Peter Schaefer)