Burrows Digs Himself a Hole

Burrows Digs Himself a Hole

By Adrian Dater
January 13, 2010

Memo to Alex Burrows: don't forget your new piece of headgear - the tin foil hat - when you next take to the ice. You and the other conspiracy theorists in your new chapeaus can meet on the grassy knoll and compare notes on the latest on Roswell and the bogus moon landing.

Item: Burrows publicly claimed Monday night that NHL referee Stephane Auger said to the effect, "I'm going to get you" prior to the Canucks' game with Nashville, allegedly over the player making Auger look bad for allegedly embellishing how bad he was hurt in a Dec. 8 game with Nashville in which Auger penalized the Predators' Jarrod Smithson.

Item: Burrows was fined $2,500 Tuesday by the NHL for the paranoid conspiracy remarks, while Auger was not disciplined.

And now, we have one big new tin foil hat society in Vancouver, including some usually sound-minded media people now looking like Captain Queeg rubbing two steel balls together and wondering who ate the strawberries. (Even prior to the Burrows-Auger incident, one Vancouver columnist last week claimed the NHL is conspiring to get the Phoenix Coyotes - who Gary Bettman and the league still technically own - into the playoffs by giving them favorable calls in games).

The bottom line: As a player, Burrows should know better than anyone that there is no crying in hockey. Yes, there was video of Auger talking to Burrows before the game and, yes, chances are good he was talking about that prior incident with Smithson some. But Auger had his arm around Burrows' back, and it didn't appear to be any kind of heated confrontation.

My bet? Auger was trying to be paternalistic with Burrows right there, saying something like "Hey, I'm going to let that one go this time, but next time it might be a different story. Fool me once...."

So Burrows gets a couple calls that go against him (debatable both, but show me a game where there aren't a few debatable calls) and immediately dons the tin foil hat after the game, and now his sycophants in the Vancouver media and all of Canucks fandom will automatically cry "conspiracy!" over any call against them the rest of the season and beyond.

Even if Auger was a little out of line saying anything like that to Burrows (but refs say that kind of stuff a lot, in different ways), Burrows broke all kinds of code by doing what he did. Nobody likes a tattler. Nobody likes the kiss-and-tell types.

So now the Canucks have their built-in excuse if they fail to win their first-ever Stanley Cup. You can just hear the cacophony of whine now, can't you?