Coach: The Pat Burns Story (19 page)

Serge Savard, with whom Burns remained close in subsequent years, nevertheless felt like he was trespassing when he approached socially. “I have to say he was a little bit of a loner. If I was on the road when he was my coach, I would have a tough time to go and sit down with him after a game, say, ‘Let’s have a beer, Pat, and discuss it.’ He’d rather be alone.”

Not that he was entirely solitary. There were always significant others in the frame, women who nestled as close as they could and stayed until they decided to leave, Burns loath to do the breaking up, his body language and emotional isolation doing the talking for him. With girlfriends, Burns avoided messy encounters, had a low threshold of tolerance for sticky “let’s talk” sessions. He was, as Dixon recounts, “a puppy dog where ladies were concerned,” affectionate and nuzzling, more demonstrative than many men, a hand-holder. He could wine and dine, but recoiled when the whining began.

“He always needed someone there, not necessarily to marry or have children, just to be there,” agrees Burns’s sister Diane. “Some of these women were not genuine partners, in that sense, but they were definitely good for him and good to him. The truth is, he’d had a lot of problems with his early marriage and the children. It impacted all his future relationships with women. Growing up with sisters, being so close to me and my mom, you’d think he’d be more confident with women. But he just couldn’t seem to hang on to a relationship.”

By his late twenties, Burns had one brief marriage and one long-term union behind him, each producing a child. A woman he’d met in Gatineau,
Lynn Soucy, then accompanied him to Sherbrooke and Montreal. But the NHL apparently went to her head, according to those who were nearby at the time. “She was changing—the whole lifestyle, she went overboard,” says someone who spent a lot of time with the couple. “Every time she went to a hockey game, she had to have a new outfit, get her hair done. She didn’t work but she was spending all of Pat’s money. Oh, did she love to spend. As much as he brought in, she put out. She was going in a direction that Pat didn’t like.”

Early on, Lynn had formed a tight friendship with Luc Robitaille’s wife, Stacia, who’d been previously married to the son of actor Steve McQueen. (Robitaille’s stepson, Steve McQueen, Jr., is an actor on the TV series
The Vampire Diaries
.) Lynn was thrilled by their celebrity-studded life in L.A. and would fly to the coast at the drop of a hat. “She would take trips out there just to get her hair cut, $400 a shot,” marvels a friend, still amazed by such profligacy. “They’d hang out with that actress from
Dynasty
, Linda Evans. Pat didn’t want any part of it.”

Diane was also disapproving. “Lynn was a beautiful woman, always well dressed, but snobby. Whenever we went to visit them, she was not very friendly to us. She’d whisper in Patrick’s ear, which I totally disliked. She enjoyed being a celebrity spouse, that’s for sure. No, Lynn wasn’t our favourite by any means.”

The couple was obviously growing apart. In Burns’s third Montreal season, Lynn mostly remained at the house he’d purchased in Magog, only coming into the city for games. In his fourth year, Burns moved into a Montreal house on Nun’s Island that he shared with Expos manager Buck Rodgers, each in residence for their respective season and only briefly overlapping.

When the formal bust-up with Lynn inevitably occurred, it was not amicable. Burns, straining to disentangle himself, handed over the Magog house and all its contents to his ex, said, “Keep it.” In the basement of that house, however, Burns had stored all the hockey memorabilia he’d been assiduously collecting for years. Not particularly sentimental about collectibles, he’d amassed it for son Jason. “He’d built this rec room,
a little shrine, and he was so proud of it,” says Dixon. “It was crammed with memorabilia: a sweater from Gretzky, hockey sticks signed to Jason, that kind of stuff. And what did Lynn do? She gave it all away, just to piss him off.”

Observes Diane: “It was the act of a vengeful woman.”

Burns did not speak ill of her. He would rarely mention Lynn at all in later years, as if she’d belonged to an alternate existence. But there was already another woman on the horizon and, clandestinely, in his bed; a married woman, at that, another beauty, who would eventually assume the “fiancée” designation, though no proposal had ever been made and no marriage would ever take place.

“Pat was a simple man,” sighs Dixon. “But he was living a complicated life.”

I
N THE SUMMER OF
1991, Pat Burns was named assistant to Mike Keenan for the Canada Cup series. Team Canada would spend eight weeks together, from training camp in August through the finals—a two-game sweep over Team USA—in early September. Brian Sutter was also an assistant coach. The two became Laurel and Hardy, a brace of buffoons who brought lightheartedness to the occasion with their juvenile pranks, Sutter more often getting the best of Burns. He’d order a stack of pizzas to be delivered to Burns’s door and place wake-up calls for three o’clock in the morning. He’d sneak into Burns’s room, filling his suitcase with hotel towels and ashtrays. “I’d be carrying it to the airport thinking, ‘Geez, this is heavy.’ ” After Canada copped the Cup—undefeated in the series with six wins and two ties—Burns and Sutter made off with the trophy during celebrations and paraded it in a golf cart driven through the hotel lobby, goalie Ed Belfour also stuffed in the back. In the wee hours, they stealthily deposited the Cup in Keenan’s bed as he slept,
Godfather-style
. In retaliation, Keenan called hotel security to have it removed and stashed, announcing to reporters the next morning that it had been swiped.

Frivolities finished, it was back to serious business when the NHL season opened. The league was celebrating its seventy-fifth year of operation, and Montreal and Toronto wore vintage replica uniforms, coaches in cardigans and fedoras, when the teams faced off at the Forum for their opener, Canadiens winning 4–3. Notable for his absence was Stéphane Richer, who’d cleared out his locker on September 20, traded to the Devils, future captain Kirk Muller received in return. “I think Stéphane will be a better player in New Jersey because he’s going to a place where there’s less media attention,” opined Burns, reflecting on the relentless spotlight that had been trained on Richer and how he withered under that stress. “A player has to be really strong to deal with it.” That Montreal had lost a star who had twice put up fifty-goal seasons Burns dismissed as inconsequential. “The importance of fifty-goal scorers in this league is a lot of garbage,” the coach said, unconvincingly and nonsensically. Later, he expounded on the Richer soap opera. “When I sat Richer out for even a shift, he would move down to the end of the bench where the French TV camera was set. He would sit there with this really sad, kicked-dog look on his face, knowing that the picture was going across the province with commentary about Richer being sat out by bad Burns again. One time, Richer had two French-Canadian rookies who weren’t playing sitting with him, looking sad. I wanted to ask them which one heard no evil.”

Of course, Burns was a gritty guy who was overly fond of grinding third-liners and often careless with the egos of genuine stars. That first week of 1991, he benched Denis Savard during a game in Detroit that Montreal won 4–1. Savard was piqued, and the French media took his side. Burns saw the blowback coming. “When you bench a guy on a French club, there’s always a howl from the fans back home. It’s hanging time for me tomorrow. My house is probably burning down right now. I love Denis Savard but he’s got to learn to listen to me. He’s got to get my message.”

Was that when it began, the fatal fissure between coach and club, coach and media, in what would be Burns’s swan song season in Montreal? At the end of the year, Sylvain Turgeon bitterly remarked, “He has the biggest ego on the team and if he’s not the star of the show, he’s not happy.”

Nobody saw the alienation looming, certainly not during Montreal’s fast start, 14–4–1, nor through the midpoint of the season, the Canadiens sitting atop the league on January 1, 1992, owning the best defensive record in the NHL, and doing it all without a single scorer in the top twenty-five. They weren’t a flashy squad, but efficient and resilient as the team transitioned seamlessly through roster-rebuilding changes. “We don’t need a hero,” said Burns. “That’s one thing I try to stress. I know fans like a Lafleur, a Béliveau, a Geoffrion. The press would like one. But I’m sorry to say we don’t have one. They tried to put pressure on Stéphane Richer and he couldn’t handle it. We’d like to have a different hero every night.”

Melodrama actually occurred off the ice when a Montreal doctor announced at a press conference that a female patient who had died of AIDS two years earlier claimed to have had sex with about fifty NHL players. This stunning revelation came just days after NBA star Magic Johnson disclosed he’d been infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). Suddenly the bed-hopping habits of professional athletes became a topic of conversation everyone was having. Burns, quite enlightened for the times, ordered that a condom machine be installed in the trainer’s room. “I’m not distributing them myself. I’m not out there handing them out like candy. But in Montreal, the players are well known and recognized. They might have that macho thing about not wanting to go into a pharmacy and have everybody looking at them. So I told them, ‘Boys, they’re at your disposal. And don’t use them for water balloons!’ ”

He defended athletes against the bad rap they were getting for promiscuity. “Being in the field as a police officer, I saw politicians getting involved with hookers and whatnots. Let’s not pick on professional athletes. They are the most exposed because they’re public figures, but you could find politicians or travelling salesmen looking for female companionship in any bar in any city.” Burns revealed that 90 per cent of NHL players had been tested for AIDS already, either of their own volition or as part of the application process for life insurance. “But having a blood test is a personal thing. I can’t take anybody by the hand and lead him up the hill to Montreal General Hospital.”

On the ice, everything felt safe as houses. Burns’s security had been assured with a contract renegotiated in December that made him the highest-paid coach in the NHL, among those not also functioning as general manager. The three-year deal reportedly paid Burns $350,000 a season. “There are probably twenty-one coaches giving me a standing ovation in their offices right now. The coaches have all been waiting for someone to do this.”

Columnist Réjean Tremblay describes how he helped launch Burns’s bid for a fat new deal. “One day, he was shaving in the dressing room as I passed by. He opened the conversation by saying, ‘Do you think a coach like me plays a big role on the team?’ I said, ‘Pat, you’re the heart of the team.’ ” At the time, Montreal had an enforcer by the name of Mario Roberge, a low-scoring winger with a limited role. Burns asked Tremblay, “Do you think I’m more important than a guy like Mario?” Tremblay replied, “No comparison.” Burns: “So I should earn at least the average of what the players are making.” In those years, that meant around $400,000.

“I understood the message,” says Tremblay. “The next day, I wrote a big column saying a coach like Pat Burns should get a new contract. In those days, the relationship between the writers and management was very close. So I got a phone call from Serge Savard. He said, ‘Reg, are you Pat’s new agent?’ ” Burns got his plump raise with no apologies for it. “To be president of the United States is a lot different from being president in Zimbabwe, just like coaching in Montreal is different from other cities. Now watch, I’ll get a pack of angry letters from people in Zimbabwe.”

He was happy, not a care in the world beyond the usual day-to-day aggravations, his team seemingly serene. “I’ve said before I’d like to stay in Montreal my whole life, and this should make it a little longer.” GM Savard was equally pleased with locking Burns into the franchise. “My wish now is never to have to make another coaching change in my career.” Now
there
was a proclamation to tempt fate.

From January, the team started to lurch, sliding through the standings. Still, there was no immediate panic. When not using them to achieve his
own ends, Burns continued squabbling with the media. Now, though, there was more of an edge to the thrust-and-parry. Burns increasingly showed his contempt for journalists, and the feeling was mutual. “I don’t think he hated us personally, but he hated the way we were doing our job,” says Tremblay. “Don’t forget, before Pat Burns, we covered Jean Perron. Perron had a master’s degree, so he was a new type of coach for us. Pat Burns was the former cop/tough guy. You could not intimidate Pat Burns. Personally, I thought he was a tough son of a bitch. But he could take it better than most guys. Maybe we were harder on him than we had been with other coaches. Nobody wants to destroy a man, but, when you believe a guy has the strength to take a hit, maybe you go a little bit further in your criticism.”