Presidential Rumour: Is Brian Burke a Calgary Flame? – UPDATE – Yup. Press Conference at 10am

 

 

Rumour broke out BUT A FEW MINUTES AGO from former Calgary media scribe Bruce Dowbiggin that it seems like your Calgary Flames are set to announce the hiring of former Leafs GM/current curmudgeon Brian Burke:

 

 

Now take that with the grainiest grain of salt you can find, because obviously nothing has been confirmed, and near as I can tell, this mostly seems like speculation on Dowbiggin’s part, not him conveying the news. You’ll remember he was initially the one who reported that the Flames were originally looking for a new President of Hockey Operations, which is where all that speculation that Brendan Shanahan came from back in June, so we shouldn’t ignore what’s being said here.

After Shanahan said thanks but no thanks to the job and erstwhille rumours of Burke himself taking the job were quelled, the story lost all it’s traction and we all looked on to bigger and better things, ie. Draft Day and Free Agency. Updates, if there ever were any, on this development completely stalled.

Now that training camp is oh so ridiculously close, and the remaining days of summer start to drift away, you can bet we’ll be fed a lot of hearsay about the Flames filling this position, and yeah, Burke is a name I expect to see a lot of as this fire starts to grow out of control.

We all know that Ken King has a lot more on his plate these days since taking control over the Flames Limited Partnership, which requires he oversee the daily goings on of the Flames, Stampeders, Hitmen, and Roughnecks. This is a position you have to believe the team really would like to fill, preferably giving the role to someone with more of an acumen for hockey than Ken King, meaning literally almost anybody.

Though I’m not convinced Burke is the right guy for the job. His views on the game seem pretty old fashioned to me and doesn’t jive well with the new direction this team is supposedly going in. Honestly, I would have preferred Shanahan, but who knows what Burke’s mindset would be. We could expect some bold new horizons for the GRITCHART, of that we can be sure.

Of course, the fact that Brian Burke is on a plane to Calgary right now does NOT equate to "The Flames have hired the almost tie wearing angry Irish Guy to oversee hockey operations", and could very well mean nothing, but hey, isn’t this fun? I’m told Burke’s daughter lives here in the city, coming to visit her seems like a very reasonable thing to do, doesn’t it?

If this all comes to fruition, my favourite part of his tenure will be whatever synonym for "Aggressive" he uses to coin the direction of the team (Truculent is so played out). My personal favourites are Bellicosity and (my personal favourite) Scurrilous. Damn that sounds hip.

Update – Burke landed in Calgary last night and the Flames have a PC scheduled for 10am this morning, likely to announce the hire. FAN960 will be covering it if you want to follow along.