With Teeth and Goals, Burrows Gets Under Bruins’ Skin

Which is the real Burrows? Is he the reviled Canucks forward who chomped down on the finger of the Bruins’ Patrice Bergeron in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals, escaped suspension because the N.H.L. could not find deliberate intent and, unrepentant, went on to score two goals in Game 2, including the overtime winner?

Or is he the loyal son who promised his father he would rehabilitate his on-ice reputation by scoring in Game 2, the hard-working clutch scorer whose overtime goal in Vancouver’s opening-round series against Chicago saved the Canucks from an epic collapse, and the faithful friend who salutes a dead teammate when he scores?

Burrows, who has five goals and four assists in his last seven games, is both. He is a troublemaker and a hero and a hockey version of a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story, cheered ecstatically by the fans clogging the streets of downtown Vancouver, booed mercilessly by the Boston faithful from Southie and Eastie and Westie.

“The negative press I’ve been getting the last few days doesn’t affect me at all,” Burrows told reporters after his two-goal, one-assist performance in the Canucks’ 3-2 victory in Game 2. “I don’t read you guys, I don’t listen to you guys a lot.”

That was probably good, because in the Boston newspapers and even on NBC, the unanimous opinion was that Burrows should have been suspended. That he wasn’t, the NBC analyst and Boston native Mike Milbury said, was “a disgraceful call by the league.”

But Mike Murphy, the N.H.L.’s disciplinarian for the series, did not find proof that Burrows’s bite was a deliberate act. He might have had in mind a 2009 fight in which Burrows pulled on the hair of Chicago’s Duncan Keith in response to Keith’s seeming to “fish hook” Burrows by crooking his fingers painfully inside Burrows’s mouth.

In any case, Burrows, after avoiding punishment from Murphy, said: “I respect his decision. He was great. That’s all I can say about it.”

That statement, made before Game 2, touched off more criticism in Boston and elsewhere, which Burrows presumably also did not care about.

“It affected my parents,” however, Burrows said after Game 2. “My dad listened to everything. He told me to ‘go score some goals — that’s what’s really going to hurt them.’ I listened to his advice tonight, and it worked out.”

That statement, in turn, went over big in Vancouver, where Burrows is already adored for his two-goal performance, including the overtime winner, in a 2-1 Game 7 win over Chicago in the first round after the Canucks had blown a three-games-to-none lead.

A 31-year-old from West Montreal, Burrows has scored 89 goals in the last three seasons, playing alongside the Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel, for much of the time. But he was a late bloomer who spent much of his 20s in the ECHL and A.H.L. His greatest moments came playing organized ball hockey, the sneakers-and-asphalt game Americans know as street hockey. He was named international player of the year in that sport in 2005.

After finally making it to the N.H.L. with the Canucks in 2006, Burrows became embroiled in a handful of charging and punching incidents and was fined for publicly accusing the referee Stephane Auger of calling phantom penalties against him because of a personal vendetta. In 2009 he was accused of striking a 19-year-old goalie in the face during a summer rec league game, though no charges were filed.

“He enjoys the spotlight and being the bad guy,” Burrows’s teammate, the backup goalie Cory Schneider, said Sunday.

But Burrows also earned the affection of fans for paying tribute to his friend Luc Bourdon, the Canucks defenseman who died in a motorcycle accident in May 2008. Burrows often pantomimes shooting an arrow into the sky after scoring, as Bourdon did when he scored.

Burrows made the gesture after scoring the series-winner in overtime against Chicago and after scoring the Game 2 winner in overtime against Boston.

Bruins fans do not care about that side of Burrows.

Forgetting that their own playoff hero, Nathan Horton, escaped suspension for squirting water at Tampa Bay fans a couple of days before scoring the Game 7 winner against the Lightning, Bruins fans were outraged that Burrows was not suspended for biting Bergeron.

They were more enraged when, during Game 2, Maxim Lapierre — the Canucks’ Sean Avery-type agitator — taunted Bergeron by sticking his gloved fingers toward Bergeron’s mouth.

“The N.H.L. rules on something — they decide to make a mockery of it, that’s totally up to them,” Bruins Coach Claude Julien, still steamed about the incident, said Monday.

Vancouver Coach Alain Vigneault had nothing but praise for the man at the center of the controversy, Burrows.

“He’s a great hockey player,” said Vigneault, who also coached Burrows with the A.H.L.’s Manitoba Moose. “He was one of the hardest workers I had when I had him in Winnipeg. Came here to Vancouver and just kept plugging away. He’s a great example of, you know, if you stick with it and you work at it, things will come around.”


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