Brent Burns brings joy, versatility and in-laws to All-Star weekend
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The NHL’s best All-Star weapon sits at a podium with a huge gap-toothed smile and an unkempt beard.
He’s a goofy 29-year-old who sometimes acts a like a five-year-old, and roves around the ice, skating with reckless abandon.
Brent Burns is simply the best type of player for this game and this format. Rocket shot? Put him in the skills competition. Down a forward or a defenseman because somebody faked a lower body injury and went to Cancun? He’s played that spot too.
Last season Burns notched 48 points in 69 games with the Sharks as a winger. This year he’s at 35 points in 48 games with San Jose as a defenseman. He is the Sharks only representative here.
“Before you asked that I never thought about playing wing in this game,” Burns laughed. “I didn’t know that was a possibility. I didn’t know about guys pulling out either, so. I’m not going to be holding my breath early in this draft. “
Burns isn’t the only rover in this game with a blast of a shot. There’s Dustin Byfuglien of the Winnipeg Jets. He and Burns shoot as hard as each other and have the same rangy skill-set.
But Burns is just a giant goofball in the most lovable way possible. He’s the type of personality that fans enjoy watching. Who knows what he’ll do in the skills competition or in the game itself? He may even shave his beard! Oh the humanity.
And the dude’s a family guy. He even brought his in-laws in town! That’s either a major suck-up move or brilliant on Burns’ part.
“I think this whole event is really about family and fun. The NHL does a great job of allowing us … I have my dad and my in-laws here and my kids, just to have them around for this weekend,” Burns said. “For them to be allowed into our world and see what we do and see this kind of stuff is special. It’s a fun thing."
The gambling website Bovada lists Burns as 100-1 to be taken with the No. 1 pick by either Team Foligno or Team Toews. Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos have the best odds to go No. 1. But if you want a versatile forward/defenseman who’s good in the locker room, why wouldn’t you take Burns? Especially if another player happens to somehow come up lame (literally and figuratively) after the skills competition.
“We might pick him. He might be a rover on our team. We’ll see,” Team Toews alternate captain Ryan Getzlaf said. “He’s a great player, he has a big shot and he roams the ice really well … his ability to be in the zone and out of the zone, he’s a hard guy to track when you’re on the defensive side of things.”
But what if ‘Team Foligno’ wants Burns? When we asked Nick Foligno himself, he did not divulge his plans on whether he would take Burns and also mentioned Byfuglien’s name. Oh the delicious drama.
“They’re going to come in very handy,” Foligno said. “They’re guys you can use in the skills competition in quite a bit of areas and in the game.”
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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