Don Cherry’s bizarre feud with Brian Burke

Don Cherry has never taken issue with being the centre of attention. With his weekly appearance on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada’s first intermission segment, Cherry takes to his soapbox to discuss his own personal appearances, vendettas and politics in front of a large national audience forgoing any quality analysis from the first two periods.

Cherry has very traditional views about hockey, favouring toughness and size over the speed and skill that progressive fans now associate with the game. He’s been very vocal, in his criticism of the Leafs’ penalty-kill, in lobbying for Mike Zigomanis to be called up to join the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’s never been shy in his own importance, suggesting at one point that “I’m killing the kid telling him to come up,” as if Cherry’s endorsement is what’s keeping Zigomanis in the American Hockey League.

(Full disclosure, I write a weekly column at the Vancouver Province chronicling the crazy things Cherry says each week. Mike Zigomanis appears in commercials for Cheetah Power Surge, an energy drink that runs its advertisements at the beginning of each Coach’s Corner segment)

The feud turned personal this week, after Toronto general manager Brian Burke reportedly complained to the higher-ups at CBC for Cherry to tone down his criticism of Burke and Leafs coach Ron Wilson. Cherry took issue with this in an interview with the Toronto Sun:

“I don’t wanna even talk about it,” Cherry said on a special All-Star Game edition of Coach’s Corner, paying lip service to the alleged complaints, seconds before rambling about Brian Burke and Ron Wilson’s tenuous record at the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs, although what apparently set off Wilson was the fact that Cherry “showed he ‘couldn’t care less’ about the Canadian troops because he was not clapping when they were introduced in a game earlier this month on military night.”

“For a guy that hasn’t made the playoffs three years in a row and teetering now, he’s got an awful lot to say about a guy that talks.”

Cherry’s beef has been the Leafs’ penalty killing, and Wilson’s treatment of players. “I don’t like the way he treats the players… like [Nazem] Kadri,” Cherry told the Sun. “When some reporter… [goes] to a player and [asks]: ‘What do you think of Ron Wilson?’ What do you think the kid is going to say? I don’t like the way he throws his players under the bus.”

Burke admitted on Monday that he has taken an issue with CBC’s criticism of the Leafs, though not directly related to Cherry or Ron MacLean. The straw that broke Wilson’s back, the crack about the military, was not said on Coach’s Corner (I go through these weekly) and was likely said on the time Cherry spends with MacLean between the early game and the late game on Hockey Night, which aren’t archived online. If Cherry used the words “couldn’t care less” about Wilson’s appreciation of the military, that’s a pretty stern indictment of the coach. Burke’s a big military guy (he was in Afghanistan on July 1) and has always emphasized the importance of giving back to the community. He’s also a defender of Wilson, giving him a one-year extension in December.

Burke claimed that he rasied the issue “quietly and professionally” with CBC brass and “they leak it.” He said “this is nuts.” It’s not fair of CBC to try and sort out that kind of complaint publicly, particularly on a weekend where it would take Burke another day to respond. You have to bet that as soon as the segment aired this week that Burke was on the phone with QMI to request a rebuttal in the Sun, rightfully so. This is a distraction Burke doesn’t need surrounding the Leafs, but it was Cherry and the Leafs who made the criticism public.

What is also nuts about this is MacLean’s answer to the whole ordeal. Usually the saner of the two opponents on Coach’s Corner, MacLean suggested during the first intermission of the All-Star broadcast that Burke was “hot at [Cherry]”. (“I don’t dislike either of them”, Burke is quoted as saying). MacLean follows up Cherry’s reasonably-enough one-sided explanation with a wild theory:

Cherry’s response, “what did you say?” captured my own thoughts perfectly.