Burke returns to Vancouver carrying the pain of son's death

VANCOUVER - How do you keep moving forward? How do you remember that the left foot follows the right? How do you lose a child, then keep working, even when forced to return to your dead son's birthplace a week after his funeral?

How do you function, when your voice breaks and you wipe away a tear at the first mention of your loss?

"I just think about him," Brian Burke said. "He would have wanted me to do this."

Burke, who grew up in Edina, is the general manager of the USA Olympic men's hockey team. He headlined a news conference Sunday to discuss the team he handpicked.

When the subject turned to the death of his son, Brendan, earlier this month on a snowy Indiana highway, Burke's gruff voice broke and he wiped his face.

"I cry less every day," he said.

Burke, now the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was running the Vancouver Canucks when Brendan was born. The Chinese nurses at the local hospital treated Brendan like a rabbit's foot.

"Eight is a lucky number for people of Chinese descent," Burke said. "So he was in the nursery the day he was born, and they kept rubbing his head.

"One of the nurses said, 'Oh, that's a very lucky baby.' I said, 'Well, rub his feet, or he's going to be bald, for Chrissakes.'"

Burke chuckled, then spoke of the life and death of his son with candor and humor typical of his tenure as one of the most successful and blunt general managers in the NHL.

Burke is staying at the house he still owns in the area as he prepares Team USA for the tournament, but he's not sure good karma infuses his return. "I was driving downtown today, and my side-view mirror got smoked by a bus," he said. "It's clearly not my week."

Brendan Burke was a goalie who disclosed he was gay, prompting his father to publicly proclaim his support for his son and promise to make hockey more tolerant of gay players.

"He was a courageous kid, a very gregarious kid, a very compassionate kid," Burke said. "He was very bright and cared about people. The saddest thing is that his future was so bright. The sky was the limit for this kid."

Brendan had considered getting into sports management like his father, who wasn't sure Brendan was cutthroat enough. "You've got to have a callous on your heart to do this job," Burke said.

Tragedy can whittle those callouses to the nub, as Burke found at Brendan's wake.

Supporters came from almost every NHL city, from the league office, from adoptive hometowns where they landed after their hockey careers ended. What Burke appreciates most is that they came whether they were allies or rivals, current colleagues or forgotten friends.

"I think the hockey family shows itself best in a time of crisis or a time of loss," he said. "The support has been overwhelming. You look at 24 or 25 GMs showing up at the wake and the funeral, the league office and [commissioner] Gary Bettman were there, guys I played hockey with drove hours to be there, and even the media -- some of the nicest emails I've gotten have been from people in the media.

Burke plans to honor Brendan with his work in Vancouver. He couldn't march in the Opening Ceremony, though, couldn't bring himself to smile and wave in the city where his son was born.

"I was going to march, and my heart wasn't in it," he said. "But my son would have wanted me to be here."