Being a Hurricanes fan means expecting some sort of roster overhaul every year. We’ve seen fan favorites walk out the door through trades or free agency and this year was no different. This year feels a little different with the trade for Brent Burns, a player who I wished the Hurricanes could acquire back in 2014 when the team was terrible & he was wreaking havoc as a forward for the Sharks. It was a pipe dream at the time, but players get old, contracts look worse and the Hurricanes were able to acquire him in one of their patented “we’ll take ̶c̶a̶p̶ ̶b̶u̶r̶d̶e̶n̶ player you don’t want off your hands for pennies on the dollar.”
Carolina didn’t have a lot of options to fill this void on the blue line. It was either pay John Klingberg (which wasn’t happening seeing how their last foray into unrestricted free agency is currently sitting on LTIR), re-sign Tony DeAngelo (who lasted six games into his last multi-year contract), re-sign Ethan Bear and hope he can regain his form from last October or look for an off-the-board trade. All things considered, they did okay. San Jose is retaining enough of Burns contract where he just needs to not suck not be a burden for the Hurricanes.
The caveat here is that he is a 37-year-old defenseman with an insane amount of miles on his tires. Even in the twilight of his career, the Sharks were still playing him over 26 minutes a night. I always feel like there’s a point of diminishing returns with guys who play that many minutes, but it’s another level with Burns regardless of how good of an athlete he is. Cale Makar doesn’t even play that much per night. Defensemen usually hit a wall earlier in their career, so the fact that Burns has been able to dodge Father Time so far is a testament to his conditioning & how much of a physical freak he is. The wall is unavoidable, though.
Acquiring Brent Burns alone brings lots of notoriety. He’s a Norris Trophy winner known for putting up gaudy point totals in his best years, scores some ridiculous goals and has many weird intricacies in his game that make him one of the most fun players in the league to watch even on his worst nights. His time in Raleigh will be remembered fondly.
From a strictly, “trying to win hockey games” standpoint, Burns can also help. Obviously not the Norris-level offense he was producing years ago, but there’s still a good player here even at 37. Let’s get the boring stats out of the way first.
The English version of this covers a few points.
Burns still brings a lot to the table offensively. He’s more of a balanced player now instead of the guy who would spam point shots while the Sharks were in their heyday. Stretch passes and shooting for deflections are going to be his calling cards for the remainder of his contract, which can work in Carolina.
Breakouts are still a strong suit of his game but he is turnover prone.
Most of his offense comes off the rush these days, which is a by-product of San Jose not having much sustained zone time. Carolina sets up shop in the offensive zone more than the Sharks, so Burns could see a bit of a revival here. Not at the level he was in San Jose and or what they had in Dougie Hamilton two years ago, but still an improvement over the potential in-house replacements.
Teams go after him in the neutral zone & he is very aggressive with challenging at the line. Sometimes Brent gets, well, Burned for lack of a better term. Who he is paired with will have a pretty big impact on his results. The Hurricanes are usually pretty good at keeping the play in front of them when Slavin is on the ice, which means the rushes they deal with are against tired forward groups and a little more controlled than if he was paired with Skjei/Pesce, who spend more of their shifts in the defensive zone. Pairing him with Skjei is another option, which could also work if the coaching staff can stomach some pure firewagon hockey shifts from those two. Skjei is someone who benefitted from having defined role on a shutdown pair with a predictable partner & putting him with Burns is like going from Sigur Rós to Converge. It wont be a big deal until the playoffs so they have some time to fiddle around with it.
So, the Hurricanes have a high-risk/reward player in Burns and he lies somewhere in the middle between Justin Faulk and Dougie Hamilton in terms of overall impact. Maximizing his offense is going to be Carolina’s top priority, even if it doesn’t manifest in a lot of points. They don’t have any players like him in their current defense corps, so they can spare to sacrifice some two-way play in exchange for an extra goal or two.
Whether or not Burns has that extra level is a fair question. Getting back on a team that spends more time in the offensive zone will help, and so will the addition of Max Pacioretty. Something that gets lost with analyzing defensemen is how much of their results are out of their control. You only notice them if they miss an assignment or throw a pizza into the middle of the slot. If they make a clean first pass to lead a zone exit that the forwards don’t do anything with, their work gets thrown out. Burns is a mixed bag here going by his microstats. A lot of good retrievals mixed with a lot of turnovers. A lot of rush offense while giving some back in the other end.
Breaking down the film from one of his games this past year paints a similar picture.
The Good
Burns helps create a goal with an aggressive pinch off a good forecheck by the Sharks fourth line. It’s a layup because the Jets breakout is out of sorts, but it’s also the type of read Dougie Hamilton made all the time & will fit right in with Carolina.
Burns makes a good first pass to help the Sharks get a controlled breakout. Unfortunately this play dies after they get the puck into the zone because the Jets outnumbered them along the wall. This could go either way with Carolina. They’re more likely to chip the puck out at the second layer or have a guy flying the zone rather than have a 2v2 rush like this. They also probably want Burns being the guy in the rush rather than starting it. Speaking of which…
This is the Brent Burns Carolina is hoping to get (with a better result on the shot but that’s another issue). He’s always going to be an attack-minded player and it’s the one area where he was still somewhat of a game-breaker with the Sharks. It’s not something they can expect every shift (although with Burns’ conditioning he’s probably capable) but part of the reason you go get a player like this is to let him play to his strengths. Being the guy leading the rush is part of that with Burns. The Hurricanes defense will pick their spots when it comes to joining the attack and I expect Burns to have more of a green light.
The Bad
As far as Burns fitting into the Hurricanes system goes, this is where some issues might arise. Aimlessly dumping the puck in is the Hurricanes primary method of entering the zone, so there’s no problems there (although it’s not ideal) but you’re not always going to recover the puck & get a forecheck established, so how you defend matters. Burns stays up in the play in the neutral zone, forces a dump-in (good!) and then the Sharks kind of botch the retrieval, resulting in them spending another 20 seconds in their own zone. Most teams will have the partner swing over to the right side to retrieve the puck like Ferraro does here, but there’s nowhere to go for him except up the boards because Burns and the left winger go to the same place. You’d like to see Burns (or anyone) provide a better outlet option for Ferraro here so they have a cleaner way to exit the zone. Watching a few Sharks games, they usually have three players converge together along the wall to make two passes out of the zone, so it could be just be him playing the system and a breakout going awry. Something that’s probably fixable if you pair him with Slavin.
In the rest of this shift we get a little glimpse of what Burns provides in the defensive zone. He plays more of a role with puck retrievals than DeAngelo did with the Hurricanes, but in this clip he’s playing sort of a similar role to him in coverage, patrolling the front of the net and having Ferraro or the wingers do most of the puck chasing. This could be the result of a long shift or him not reacting as quick as he usually does (probably why he shouldn’t be playing 26+ minutes a game anymore). The Jets don’t get near the net with him in that spot, but the Sharks also have a devil of a time getting puck out of the zone, so there’s some give & take with this approach.
This is one of those plays that either works for it doesn’t. Burns goes for the puck, he misses & the Jets get a break. His partner was staying back & he also recovered, so no real damage was done here. Every defenseman in the world has made this play, but you’re going to see Burns at least try it more often than a Brett Pesce or an Ethan Bear. It’s either brilliant or catastrophic.
This is where some of my concerns lie with Burns’ fit on the Hurricanes. He’s going to look for that extra play at the blue line on a team that is constantly in forecheck mode. When they aren’t, they settle for a lot of one-and-done shots off the rush like this. Again, there’s nothing wrong with being a forechecking team, but the Hurricanes lacked a quick-strike element to their game, especially in the playoffs. If Burns is going to be getting a lot of shifts with Andrei Svechnikov or Seth Jarvis, I want to see them take advantage of some of the plays he can make at the blue line to get them into the zone with some momentum.
File this one under the defensemen doing his job & the play going awry when it reaches the second layer, which is the risk you take when you run an intricate breakout like the Sharks & why the Hurricanes just clear the puck out of the zone at the first sign of pressure. There’s a happy medium between this and what Carolina does, so hopefully the team can adapt.
Takeaways
Burns can likely fit into the Hurricanes system & post some better numbers than he did in San Jose. He’s not going to be defending as much and his size/reach should make him a good complement to Slavin if they have to spend some shifts defending. Unlocking the game-breaking side of him is going to be the challenge. The willingness to lead the rush, keep pucks in and make the extra play was still there in limited opportunities with the Sharks. Carolina has a deeper forward corps & spends more time in the offensive zone, so he should get more chances to shine in Raleigh (unless their territorial game falls off a cliff). If he can be the 80% of the offensive player he was in his heyday it’s a game changer for Carolina (especially on the power play). If not, he’s just a right-handed Brady Skjei, which is fine for what Carolina will be paying him, it’s just not the game-breaker they need to make a deep playoff run.