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San Jose Sharks woke up is a pissy mood on Thursday. Facing elimination in Game 5 in Pittsburgh, Burns took an "over my dead body" attitude" into his day.
From the moment his skates hit the hotel floor early in the morning, Burns' ass was chapped.
After the morning skate, Burns delivered one of the best pregame rallying cries for his teammates and the media to hear.
"I think that's crazy. You're in the Stanley Cup Finals, your desperate. You're in the first round of the playoffs, you're desperate. That's what makes the playoffs so good. Every shift you're so desperate. If you're here and you're not desperate, f*ck, check the pulse! I'm desperate when I play Warcraft on the computer. You get to this point, there's no extra motivation. You wabt to win. You don't get to this league and not caring and not wanting to win, unless you are really good. I'm not that good".
You hear that Thornton? Pavelski? Marleau? Couture? Vlasic? Donskoi?
Burns told his teammates that HE is the leader from here on out. Line up behind #88.
No more Mr. Nice Guy!
Slow. Clap. Burnzie.
During the pregame warmups, Burns singled out a dorkey Penguins fan to take out his aggression and anger on.
Nice cape and wig, bro. Yinzers are so funny.
Watch the clown chirp Burns and the Sharks. Then, watch Burnzie shut him up by firing a puck at him.
It took the raging Burns 1:04 into Game 5 to give his team it's first lead of the series.
Behold, the greatness that is Hockey Night Punjabi's "Mr. Burns, Excellent!" goal call!
The Sharks scored three goals on it's five shots in the first period to give the Sharks a 3-2 lead after twenty minutes of play.
The moral of the story:
Don't piss off Brent Burns!
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The Columbus Blue Jackets may not be so high on drafting Finnish forward Jesse Puljujarvi with the third overall pick after all.
Last weekend at the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo, the popular talk was that Edmonton was the most likely of the teams to trade their premium pick for established NHL players who can help the Oilers immediately. Another thought process was that the Jax would hold tight to their third overall pick so that GM Jarmo Kekalainen could select the 18 year old power right winger.
Puljujarvi, the projected third-overall pick in the 2016 NHL Draft, said last Thursday he would not be participating in this the NHL Scouting Combine’s fitness testing.
Puljujarvi turned 18 last month and also sustained an injury to his left knee playing for Karpat in Liiga on March 4. He was forced to miss playing for Team Canada's silver medal squad at the IIHF World Championships in Russia. Puljujarvi underwent knee surgery in May.
“I don’t like (that I can’t participate in fitness tests at the combine),” Puljujarvi said. “But it’s good, it’s good. It’s feeling better and better.”
Has Puljujarvi's stocked dropped? Is he no longer the projected third overall pick?
Comes word today that Kekalainen, a Finn, may not be married to selecting Puljujarvi with the third overall pick.
The reason?
Jarmo is really desperate to add a versatile, two way center to his roster.
Currentlyt center ice, the Jax are in need on an infusion of youthful talent and skill at that position.
Gregory Campbell, 32, will be UFA on July 1, 2017. Brandon Dubinsky, 30, is signed for the next four seasons at $5.85M have. There's 22 year old Boone Jenner, an emerging star who is ready to play top six minutes and an increased role. After that, the depth is thin with youngsters Alexander Wennberg and William Karlsson.
Kekalainen is also looking to add a difference maker to his blue line.
Kekalainen must be having second thoughts about drafting another skilled winger. Kekalainen, his scouts and John Tortarella must be looking around the Eastern Conference and noticing that most teams are running four lines that feature speed, skill and size. Look at the damage the Pittsburgh Penguins have done in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The center position is their area of greatest strength. The NHL is a copycat league. Therefore, center ice is a position of concern for most teams. Either you have three or for solid centers, or you don't. The Blue Jax do not.
TSN's Bob McKenzie to AM 1040 Vancouver that he's hearing growing sentiment abounding for Kekalainen to trade out of his third overall pick so that he can be move down a few spots in the foirst round to stock up on assets and to insure that he can select ginormous American center Logan Brown in the 5-8 slots of the first round. Brown is the 6'6" pass-first power center who created a hockey buzz at Windsor this season where he scored 21 goals and added 53 assists for 74 points. Brown is big, fast, string, athletic and very smart. He's a wanted man by many NHL teams including Montreal at 9 and Colorado at ten. Brown is projected to be taken in the 6-10 range. However, Kekalainen may want to trade his #3 for a center, D and top ten first rounder for the opportunity to select Brown.
“To be honest with you, I think of the three, Columbus might be the one that might be the most open to doing something right now.
Although Edmonton, clearly Peter Chiarelli wants to make some changes to his hockey team. And it’s not in a vacuum, saying, ‘Hey, we want to trade 4th pick,’ it’s more along the lines of… we’ve heard a zillion trade rumors, most of them inflated or whatever, coming out of Edmonton involving everybody from Taylor Hall to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to Jordan Eberle and on and on and on it goes.
“But if the 4th pick needs to be put into play in an effort to get a front-line defenseman, well, by all means I think the Edmonton Oilers will look at that. But it would really be contingent on that deal specifically says.
“The Columbus one is interesting to me because they’ve got the 3rd pick, and it’s supposed to be a Big 3 in this draft, and why would a team that’s one of the three winners, if you will, be interested in moving down.
“The sense that a lot of people are getting right now is that the Columbus Blue Jackets are not sold on Jesse Puljujarvi at that spot, and that they may be looking at a more positionally-oriented name, and that is a center.
“Specifically, two centers come to mind. One is Logan Brown, who’s the big 6-foot-6 American from St. Louis who plays for the Windsor Spitfires, who has been kind of rocketing up the draft charts. The other is Clayton Keller, another American who broke a lot of Patrick Kane’s records at the U.S. national program that he’s been a part of for the last couple of years. Now, he’s a small center. He’s Patrick Kane dimensions as well.
“But in any case, there is this sense that if somebody wants to move into the No. 3 hole to grab Puljujarvi – if the Blue Jackets could get themselves a pick that’s a few picks later, or not dropping out of the Top 10, then they would still have a shot at one of Brown or Keller.
“As for the Canucks, I’m not sure. I think it’s more along the lines of, ‘Hey, we’ll listen to anything anybody is talking about,’ as opposed to a definitive plan saying, ‘We don’t want this pick and we want to try to parlay it into an NHL player.’”
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Trader Tim Murray might want to dip his tie into the Columbus pool.
Murray is looking to jump out of the 8th seed and into the top 5.
Murray has center Zemgus Girgensons to offer in a trade along with right D Mark Pysyk. Cody Franson will be UFA at the end of the 2016-17 season, however, there was a time last season when the Jax were scouting the Sabres D. Franson's name was in the trade chatter. Franson was not traded at the NHL trade deadline. Murray would also include his 8th overall pick where Kekalainen can select Logan Brown before Colorado scoops him up at #10.
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Transciption, Nichols On Hockey
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