Brian Burke explains how an offer sheet nearly led to a fist fight between NHL GMs.

In the spirit of all the talk in the National Hockey League surrounding offer sheets this summer, offer sheets that have now suddenly become a very real thing after years of being ignored, I thought I would dig up one of the most infamous stories in the NHL regarding the use of such tactics. 

You see although offer sheets have very clearly been negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement between the National Hockey League Players Association and the league itself, it is also quite clear that they are largely frowned upon by NHL general managers. It is for that very reason that you have seen them used very sparingly during their history in the league, but back in the day one Brian Burke took his distaste for offer sheets to the extreme.

Burke of course had a very long and very heated feud with long time NHL executive Kevin Lowe and that feud reached a boiling point when Burke was general manager of the Anaheim Ducks. Burke had just learned that Dustin Penner, one of his players at the time, had just received a huge offer sheet from Lowe who at the time was at the helm of the Edmonton Oilers organization. Things got so bad that Lowe actually challenged Burke to a fight, and Burke was more than willing to dance with Lowe.

“It got a point where Kevin challenged me to a fight on a radio interview,” said Burke as per the Edmonton Journal. “I’m like that’s not really how you challenge a guy to a fight. If you want to challenge a guy to a fight, you pick a place and a time and you show up. So I called Glen Sather and I said, ‘Look, this guy went on the radio and challenged me to a fight.’ I said, ‘I’m going to be at Lake Placid at the U.S. junior camp.” I gave him three dates. I told him I’d rent a barn and I’d pick the address and the time and I’d fight Kevin Lowe.”

Burke was not kidding either, not only was he ready to fight Lowe himself but he firmly believed that Lowe would have been a willing participant in such a confrontation. Of course it was none other than Gary Bettman who stepped in and ruined the fun for everyone involved.

“Dead serious. It got to the point where Gary Bettman called me an and said, ‘I hear you guys are thinking about having a fight and if you do I’m going to suspend you both indefinitely.’ That’s how crazy it got between me and Kevin. He’s as stubborn as I am. And there’s no doubt in my mind if we had bumped into each other right about then, we would have fought. No question. He’s not afraid of me. We would have fought for sure. Anyway, my wife overhears this, I think I’m in the privacy of my backyard in California and my wife says, ‘You idiot. You’re going to fight this guy? Are you crazy? You’re a general manager. So it never came to anything, never came close to it.”

As cool as it was to hear Brian Burke tell this story, I must admit I am a little sad that we did not get to hear about this thing actually going down.