Grange on Leafs: A different approach by Burke

He rolled into town on a tank camouflaged by a Stanley Cup ring and powered by his own bombast. He took a few key adjectives by force and a market by storm.

The only glitch being that on the ice the sound and fury of Brian Burke yielded not much.

But what a difference three years can make.

The Leafs — tied for second in the Eastern Conference heading into a home-and-home test against the surging Boston Bruins beginning Wednesday night — are small, fast, skilled and generally free of thuggery.

Not at all, in other words, what Brian Burke promised so famously — truculence, pugnacity and the rest — during his introductory blast of performance art.

But you can’t win games with a thesaurus alone.

As Ron Wilson said Wednesday: “In spite of all of those multi-syllable words, you want your team to compete hard for 60 minutes and never give up.”

So Burke’s Leafs are that, they have enough skill to score and if their defence and goaltending tighten up, the first playoff spot in seven years seems likely, if not certain.

But who knew that Burke is also getting it done with a softer, gentler side?

That he’s inspired loyalty despite blowing the roster he inherited to smithereens in 36 where-did-the-time-go months?

Nikolai Kulemin (who along with Mikhail Grabovski, Luke Schenn and Wilson are the only remaining holdovers from the Cliff Fletcher era) failed the quiz when asked how many teammates remained from the good old days:

“That’s it? Only three guys left?” the big Russian said. “I survived.”

Yet despite shifting players around like poker chips and popularizing the term ‘Blue and White disease’ in reference to those who got fat and happy playing in Toronto, where VIP treatment around town was not connected to MVP-type performance, Burke’s players don’t regard him in fear.

In fact, they like him. He’s not one to linger around a dressing room, but he’s not about creating a divide between players and management. He’s quick with a kind word.

“It’s ‘hey, great game’, or ‘how’s it going’, stuff like that,” said Ben Scrivens, the back-up goalie who is likely bound for the AHL Marlies when James Reimer returns to the lineup. “He does it to everybody. He’s a good man, so it doesn’t surprise me because that’s how I see him. Everyone has their own way of operating, but for a young guy it definitely means a lot that you can have that relationship.”

It’s not an aspect of his approach that Burke goes out of his way to play up. “Don’t ruin my image!” he joked (I think) in an email.

But it’s there, the counter-point to his pistols-at-dawn public face.

“Brian very much has a gentle side, I do too,” said Wilson, who has known his boss since they played college hockey together.

(They’ve known each other long enough that when someone suggests that Burke was Wilson’s bodyguard on the ice at Providence College, the coach said of his boss, who has yet to extend his contract: “He was my protector huh? I guess he did. In the five or six minutes he played his job was to protect me. What can you say?”)

“It’s not surprising, it’s just you’re not coming home with us, nor should you have the right to come home with us,” Wilson continued. “If I’m a softer guy or appear to be in the media, I’d be ridiculed for that. Here you’re going to be ridiculed for anything.”

Until recently the Leafs were ridiculed for how they played. They’ve missed the playoffs all three chances under Burke. This time last year, their playoff hopes were already distant. They weren’t close the other two years. The trade for Phil Kessel, the signings of Mike Komisarek and Francois Beauchemin were seemingly signature moves without dividend.

But a team is like a garden, as Wilson likes to say. Burke’s job was to pull weeds, moving players that didn’t fit what they were trying to do while Wilson was charged with cultivating the seeds planted.

Since the all-star break last year, everything is coming up roses. The Leafs have 72 points since the mid-season break last year, good for third in the NHL in that span. It’s a significant enough sample size( 57 games) that it’s getting hard not to think the Leafs as constructed by Burke are for real.

Trade acquisitions Dion Phaneuf, Joffrey Lupul and Kessel — to name three — are playing like all-stars. Defenceman Jake Gardiner is earning huge minutes, raves from Wilson and is a likely Calder candidate.

Clearly the message is perform or you’re gone. And yet when the glowering Burke mingles with his team, it’s not fear but affection that seems to be part of the Leafs’ surge.

“First time meeting him, especially playing under him, you might be intimidated because he’s got this whole persona,” said Schenn, who spent five days with the boss in Afghanistan last summer and can also cite examples of his boss making time to relay a kind word, especially when he was struggling earlier this season.

“He can get kind of angry and stuff,” said Schenn. “But over all he’s a guy you respect a ton. He’s a real personable guy you want to play hard for.”

The Leafs have and do, even if Burke might have to come up with some new adjectives to describe their go-go style.

Doubtless the Harvard lawyer in him can. In the meantime, he’s so far resisted coming up with new ways to say “I told you so.”