Vancouver Canuck winger Alex Burrows hasn’t been among the players skating regularly at University of British Columbia throughout the lockout but he’s managed to keep busy playing charity games in Quebec and dressing for success.
The 31-year-old forward was back in Vancouver Monday, specifically to make a promotional appearance at the RWCo. clothing store in the Pacific Centre. Burrows has been based in Montreal since the seven-week NHL work stoppage began and hopes he won’t be returning to La Belle Province any time soon, unless it’s to play the Montreal Canadiens.
“Hopefully I am here for a long time,” Burrows said inside the store while hundreds of fans waited outside to meet him and get an autograph. “Hopefully they’ll be able to get a deal done soon and I won’t go back. Hopefully the talks (scheduled for today) will spark something and we can get the season going soon. I’ve got my fingers crossed.”
In the meantime, Burrows has been showing his fashion sense while the league and players association bicker over dollars and sense. It was a deal, he explained, set up by his agent Paul Corbeil last summer.
“It was a good fit for me,” he said, without intending the pun. “I like to be comfortable in my clothes and I always liked this kind of clothing.”
Burrows estimates he has skated in about a dozen charity games with locked out players from the Montreal-Quebec City area so he hasn’t lacked for ice time or workout partners. He signed a four-year, $18 million contract extension with the Canucks on Sept. 14, the day before the lockout began.
GLASS HALF-EMPTY: Former Canuck and current Pittsburgh Penguin forward Tanner Glass has a history degree from Ivy League school Dartmouth, so he doesn’t need a lesson in critical thinking.
He isn’t easily swayed by rhetoric, gossip and 140-word declarations on twitter. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t overly enthused with weekend development in the 51-day-old work stoppage. You might say he was a Glass half-empty Monday.
“I think it’s proven unless there is an offer out there, there is no reason to get excited,” Glass said after skating at UBC. “When there is something concrete to work from, I’ll get more excited but I don’t jump up and down when they say there is potential of an offer, or something like that.”
Glass wouldn’t even admit to being a little more energized Monday at the suggestion NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHLPA special counsel Steve Fehr, brother of executive director Don Fehr, had made some headway in their Saturday tete-a-tete. “I try not to get too up and or too down, it’s kind of like a season,” said Glass. “Everybody is getting excited about this ‘make-whole’ thing but there is a lot of other stuff, too. It’s a process and until there is something really good to go off of, I’ll stay patient.”
CORY’S CORNER: Bargaining committee member Cory Schneider described the Daly-Fehr weekend summit as “better than nothing”, hardly a ringing endorsement.
“As far as we know, there are no offers from either side of the table but, again, I think we’ve said all along anytime there is dialogue and they’re talking for an extended period of time, it’s better than nothing,” Schneider said. “I’ve learned to keep my optimism and pessimism in check but it’s absolutely better than not talking. I think it’s getting down to the point where something has to happen one way or another. So, hopefully, it’s for the better.”
Schneider emphasized that contracting is still a major concern to the players beyond the revenue split and make-whole provision on deals already signed.
“Obviously the monetary split is a big one but the contracting has kind of been forgotten,” Schneider explained. “Don has made it clear as your cut of the pie shrinks, contracting becomes that much more important and any leverage you can have, and any position you can be in, to become a free agent or shop your abilities around becomes so much more important when there is less to go around.
“If you look at their (last) proposal closely, they are basically looking to eliminate any and all leverage a player really has until he hits 28. And, even then, by capping contract lengths and the way the money can be distributed and signing bonuses, it really eliminates a lot of leverage and a lot of things that the players got in the last lockout.”
QUOTABLE: “I beat Hank on our run today so that’s how I get energized.” – Daniel Sedin when asked if he was enthused by the resumption of CBA talks. Hank, of course, would be twin brother Henrik.
epap@vancouversun.com
