Brayden Burke hopes to keep his late-model Mercedes-Benz SUV parked in the Phoenix area for a while.
A long, long while, if he has his way.
On Sunday, Burke, a breakout star for the division-winning Tucson Roadrunners in just his second pro season, is all but assured of being one of 31 rostered Arizona Coyotes’ players boarding a jet airplane. Destination: Edmonton, Alberta.
That’s where, less than a week later, half of the NHL’s “return-to-play” tournament will commence. The 11th-seeded Coyotes face the 6-seed Nashville Predators in a best-of-five series in the newly-coined “qualifying round” of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoff. The series starts Aug. 2.
For Burke, an American Hockey League All-Star and the Roadrunners’ 2019-20 leader with 21 goals, 52 points and a club-record 13 power play markers in 51 games, traveling with the Coyotes to Edmonton is a bit surreal.
“I was pretty surprised,” Burke said recently on a video call “It kind of just all fell into place. I’m happy to go home. I’m not going to be able to do too much, but it will be nice to be back home. Hopefully we’ll be there for a while.”
Edmonton is where Burke grew up. He played youth hockey there for the Canadian Athletic Club. His parents still live there. It’s where he naturally returned to when the season shut down March 12 as the AHL, NHL, NBA, college basketball tournaments and virtually every other sports league or major event went on hiatus simultaneously at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic’s spread across North America.
One point of clarification: Burke didn’t “jet” to Edmonton this spring. He drove the 1,800-plus road miles, from Tucson — rolling through northern Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana and into Alberta.
The drive is 28 hours — without stopping — and touches three U.S. capitals (Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Helena, Montana), the capital of one Canadian province (Edmonton), and two different one-time host sites of the Winter Olympic games (Calgary, Alberta, and Salt Lake City).
Burke jumped back behind the wheel when the NHL called players back to their home clubs. His trek ended in Glendale, where he’s been on the ice for the Coyotes the last month or so.
After 3,500 miles and nearly 60 hours of driving, Burke can only laugh at the fact that he gets to go home yet again — this time through the air. He chuckles, too, at the idea that at some point in the coming weeks or months — once the Coyotes are eliminated or, dare anyone say, hoist a Stanley Cup trophy — he may have to fly back to Arizona just to get his keys and hit the road north yet again.
“I think I’m just going to leave it here for a couple months,” he said of his ride staying in Arizona. “I don’t think I’ve got that drive in me again. … I need some time, for sure.”
Burke recognizes that a twist of fate will bring him just a few miles from his parents, their house, and the basement shooting room where he kept his eye for the net as sharp as possible amid the stoppage and social-distancing efforts. Burke will be home, sure, but as part of the NHL’s 12-team Edmonton bubble, he won’t be able to visit his house — or see his family.
Brayden Burke kept his stick moving in this shooting room built in the basement of his parents’ home in Edmonton.
“It will be weird for sure. … It will probably take a couple days to get used to, but once you kind of get into the feel of the hockey and skating every day, keeping your body in good shape — that’s stuff that I’ve known for years now,” he said. “So once you kind of get over the initial shock of being home and not being able to see anyone, I’m sure I’ll just be able to look forward and put my nose to the grindstone.”
The chances of Burke making the Coyotes’ lineup are anybody’s guess, but he’s hard to count out. Burke is one of eight regulars from the 2019-20 Roadrunners, the Coyotes’ top minor-league affiliate, and just about all of them are on the NHL roster for the reboot.
Over a series of Zoom calls with assembled media last week, Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet praised the contributions of the Tucson players. Burke and fellow forward Hudson Fasching joined defensemen Kyle Capobianco and Aaron Ness — all Roadrunners during the 2019-20 season — as a penalty-kill scout team against the Coyotes’ power-play unit.
“They did a hell of a job for us. That’s hard to do. They had to come in there cold,” Tocchet said of the Tucson quartet. “That’s part of being a team. Those guys did a nice job for us today.”
Added Burke: “We’re all Coyotes right now, and we’re just trying to win. … That’s pretty much the mindset right now.”
