'Gone Too Far' - Former Vancouver Canucks GM Brian Burke Outspoken Against Elias Pettersson & J.T. Miller

Burke: "Yeah, I have, everyone has. I played for a championship team in Maine, we didn't all get along. You talk about playing Playstation, we didn't even eat dinner together some of us. We didn't all get along, but we won a Calder Cup together. You don't have to get along, you just gotta respect each other as players. So to me, the shocking part of this is not that there's discord or friction. The shocking part of this is that it's this public. This is wrong. This is not stuff that supposed to be aired publicly. This has gone too far. The people involved, you know, the coach has tried to calm this down, the GM's tried to calm this down, Jimmy Rutherford has tried to calm this down. It's still out there. It's gone too far. I blame the players involved for letting it get this far. But this is not anything unusual. This is routine for a hockey club. What is not routine is how the broadcasting of it has been."

Burke: "Yes, I think that's clear. You're talking about very impatient people. Jimmy Rutherford is an impatient guy. That's why he's successful. He would have called them in and said, 'You got to fix this.' Somebody would have called both players in. I would have called the players in separately and said, 'I'm not trading anyone. You two sort this out.' I would have had them in separately then brought them in together and say, 'you want to grab a case of beer somewhere and go drink beer and solve it, do it that way? You want to fight? You want to go after each other in practice and fight? Solve it that way. Let's solve it, fix it. I'm sick of hearing about it. And Patrik Allvin would have done the same thing. Jimmy would have done the same thing. It's not working. So now the best thing is, shame them into making it work and see if you can move on. The good thing is teams have distractions too. A fight will happen where players rally around the team. Something will happen that will get the team to rally around them and forget about this. But right now, it's a major problem.
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That's a last resort. At some point, it'll come to that. You're talking big contracts on guys, and because of the attention, are underperforming. You're not going to get full value right now. Elias Patterson is not going to fight JT Miller to do it, someone else will have to do it. Someone will have to grab JT after practice and say, 'I'm sick of this garbage. Let's sort it out now. You're too big for this guy, you're too good a fighter, but I'm not. Lets sort it out that way.' That might be what it needs to be, some trial by combat thing that sorts it out. That might be what happens. You're right. When I played, we would fight to solve this, and it's not a good method of resolving disputes, I know, and I know a lot of people are scratching their heads saying 'did he just say they should fight?' I remember in my first training camp in Providence, I fought a guy who was a junior, much bigger than I was, tough as nails. Had a great fight, we've been friends ever since. First time I met Paul Holmgren, I fought him, we've been friends ever since. So sometimes that's exactly what you need to do.