SAN JOSE – Ask a handful of people who know Brent Burns how much longer they think the 2017 Norris Trophy winner can keep playing in the NHL, and you’ll get roughly the same kind of response.
“As long as he wants,” Carolina Hurricanes forward Stefan Noesen said.
“It’ll be up to him to kind of decide when to pack it in,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said.
“He can play for a long (expletive) time,” said former Sharks teammate Mario Ferraro.
What say you, Mr. Burns?
“Until they drag me off by my ears,” Burns said Tuesday before he and the Hurricanes played the Sharks at SAP Center. “We’re so blessed to do this every day and I’ve been really lucky to learn from some people how to take care of yourself, and there’s obviously a lot of luck in that.”
Now in his 20th NHL season and five months away from his 39th birthday, Burns, after Tuesday, will have played in 1,337 NHL regular season games, including 798 over an 11-year period with the Sharks. Burns will have also played in 765 consecutive games, an Ironman streak that began on Nov. 21, 2013.
Which begs the question: how high can Burns climb on the NHL’s all-time games played list?
Burns will tie Adam Oates tonight for 57th on the all-time list and if he plays every game for the rest of the regular season, he’ll move up to 36th with 1,415 games, one game behind Hall of Famer Al MacInnis.
At that point, Burns will be 265 back of Zdeno Chara (1,680) for most games played by a defenseman and 364 games behind Patrick Marleau (1,779) for the NHL’s all-time lead.
Are reaching those totals realistic for Burns?
“You’d have to ask him but he’s definitely capable of doing that,” Ferraro said. “He’s obviously a specimen. It’s kind of like LeBron James hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down. Same with Burnzie. He’s put up the numbers every year. He’s played the games every year, 82 across the board.”
Marleau’s record came after he finished his career having played 910 straight games, the fifth-longest streak of all time. When Marleau played his 1,786th game and passed Gordie Howe for the NHL’s all-time lead, there was a feeling that he would hold that record for a long time.
Can it be broken?
“I mean, who knows? A lot of that’s just luck, to be quite honest,” Brind’Amour said. “But it’s not luck in the sense that to get yourself in that situation, these guys are all prepared and take care of themselves. But it’s a freak thing here or there that can get you out of it.
‘So I don’t want to talk too much about it. If there’s a guy that can do it, though, it’s definitely him.”
Burns said these days, as one might expect, it takes longer to prepare for each game than before. Also, as players get older, perhaps their priorities start to change.
“I don’t think it’s the body that fails unless you’ve had some tough injuries,” Burns said. “It’s just, it gets hard to get going and get warm and the routine gets longer, and commitments usually away from the ice are kind of what make it difficult — missing kids’ events and things like that.
“So I don’t know. You’ve got to really enjoy it. You have to try your best to do everything else you can. But it’s a lot of luck, it’s a lot of grinding and enjoying the grind, because, man, the warmups take a lot longer.”
Burns is in the seventh year of an eight-year contract that kicked in during the 2017-18 season. But Burns, if he wants, should have no issue in signing another deal considering he had 61 points, 12th-most among all NHL defensemen, and averaged over 23 minutes of ice time per game last season.
“Anyone’s going to give him an opportunity no matter what,” Noesen said. “You can put a guy like that in any system. He can still shoot the puck, can still skate, and make a good first play. I don’t know how long he wants to (play), but I’m sure as long as he wants to.”
“I don’t care what you do in life. It’s, ‘Can you get up and do it again, knowing how hard it is?’” Brind’Amour said. “And then it’s, ‘I’ve got to do this again tomorrow?’ That’s the difference right? The great guys, they know, ‘OK, I’ve got to do this today, and it’s hard, but it’s what makes me effective.’
“Put