Burke's Law Quotes

“In terms of the way his teams play, he was the perfect match for me. He loves black-and-blue hockey. You never had to tell Randy to play the game tougher because that’s how his teams always played. He liked it as crude as I did. My three pillars were Randy’s three pillars. We were going to entertain you. We were going to gamble. We might give up more chances than other teams, but we’d be exciting. We could dazzle you with the puck and we could run you out of the building and onto the street. We were going to be tough as nails. We weren’t going to take any shit from anyone. And we were going to have great goaltending—and with Jiggy in net, we were already set there.”
― Brian Burke, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey

“As a person, Teemu is the anti–Chris Pronger. He’s never in a bad mood. He brings his enthusiasm and positive energy to any room he enters, which has great value in hockey, because this is a business filled with grumpy people. It’s like sunshine fills the room when Teemu arrives. He was a great player, but he was also a great teammate.”
― Brian Burke, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey

“The point is, when all is said and done, who is going to come to your funeral, and what are they going to say? Do you think they’re going to talk about how much money you made? Not a chance. They are going to talk about whether you were a good brother or good sister or good father or good friend. Did you do charitable work? Did you make a difference? It’s not about cars and country clubs and expensive vacations. The only thing that really matters is that you loved your kids, that you showed them that, and that you made a difference where you lived.”
― Brian Burke, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey

“He was a really aggressive young guy who wanted to climb as fast and high as he could, and he made some mistakes. “I bear no resemblance to the guy I was back then,” he said, and he asked me to give him a second chance. I’m a second-chance guy. It’s always been one of my pillars.”
― Brian Burke, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey

“And after dinner, we had a mandatory reading hour. At seven o’clock, the whole family assembled in the living room to read books. That was before we did our homework. No phone calls, no television. Just all of us gathered together, reading library books. That’s where I got my lifelong love of reading.”
― Brian Burke, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey

“Every night at dinner, one kid had to bring a new vocabulary word to the table. We had to say it, spell it, define it and use it in a sentence. As a result, we all have great vocabularies.”
― Brian Burke, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey