Anaheim’s Garrett Burnett Defies the Odds

They say when you are passed up in the Western Hockey League’s annual
entry draft as a Bantam-aged player, you’ve already been slammed with
one major knock against you. Well, four years later, when you’re sent
packing from a Tier 2 junior A hockey club well…stick a fork in you because,
in the highly competitive world of Canadian junior hockey, you should be, pretty
much, done like a cheap microwaved dinner.

Such was the case when present-day 28 year-old Anaheim rookie enforcer, Garrett
Burnett, was released after a handful of games with the 1993’94 Trail
Smoke Eaters as an 18 year-old defenseman. Just to add some perspective, eighteen
is the age of Florida’s Nathan Horton and Pittsburgh’s Patrice Bergeron.
While Burnett was being released from tier II Junior, most future professionals
were already drafted. At the time, the best advice anyone could have given Burnett
was that, perhaps, he should start thinking about life beyond hockey. It’s
a good thing he didn’t listen.

Let’s step back to his brief tenure in Trail for just a moment. You must
be thinking to yourself, wow, that must have been one heck of a team. Well,
not exactly. That particular edition of the Trail Smoke Eaters was a club that
produced a despicable ten victories all season. Yes indeed, even Trail’s
storied hockey history, and all of its glory, was not enough to propel our hapless
squad to victories. In actuality, it only served to magnify just how lousy we
truly were. Team management tried everything to motivate us—one time even
sending legendary Hall of Fame goaltender, Seth Martin, along with two other
Smoke-Eaters from the 1961 World Champion team, down to the dressing room to
speak with us. I think we went out that same night and were trounced by more
goals than any of us would like to remember.

So why was Burnett released? That doesn’t make sense. After all, he wasn’t
some 16 year-old kid trying to skip midget. This was a player who would go on
to play in the NHL. The truth, from where I sat in the dressing room, was simply
that he hadn’t yet committed to the role that would end up defining his
style for the next ten years. He hadn’t made the decision to fight. I
can only assume that his release forced him to seek out another way to make
his NHL dream possible. Pardon the cliché, but I guess it is true: where
there’s a will, there’s a way—for everyone.

Believe it or not, with Burnett’s recent NHL breakthrough, that same
God-awful team now boasts two current NHL hockey players. The other is Edmonton’s
third year center, Shawn Horcoff, a solid two-way player who has just recently
come into his own. Horcoff was, at the time, a scrawny fifteen year-old kid
who was more often mistaken for the team’s stick boy rather than it’s
leading scorer. By all accounts, Horcoff’s NHL path was set out for him
and he was expected to be the guy we’d all read about it the papers ten
years later. The name “Garrett Burnett” was the last one we ever
thought we’d see.

One common destination—two very different paths.

Burnett’s rise through the ranks has been anything but
predictable. It’s also been anything but a cakewalk. His career has had
the look of one we’ve seen many times before. The only major difference
is that 99.9 % of the time, the ultimate goal of reaching the big time is missed…and
missed by a long shot. Burnett has experienced stops at almost every level of
minor pro hockey: the Colonial League, the Central League, the ECHL, and the
AHL. And just how frequently has Burnett’s mitts decorated the ice? The
1999-00 season saw him rack up an astonishing 506 PIMS in just 58 games with
the Kentucky Thoroughblades of the American league. In total, he has amassed
a formidable 2562 PIMS with 13 different minor pro clubs. That’s a lot
of long bus rides holding an ice pack to the meat hooks and melon. A prime example
of Burnett’s resolve was displayed in a late-September pre-season contest
between the Ducks and the San Jose Sharks. Typically, after loosing a one-sided
tilt against a veteran heavyweight, such as, Scott Parker, many enforcers would
simply call it a night and settle their losses. Not Garrett Burnett. Before
the first period would come to an end, he would challenge Parker for second
time—and again, he would lose. Still not satisfied, Burnett challenged
Parker a third time in the second period. Would this be ‘lucky number
three’ for the rookie hopeful? Unfortunately not. Burnett lost again;
however, he proved to his Anaheim teammates that he is unafraid to go to battle
under any circumstance.

Horcoff, on the other hand, has enjoyed a much more prosperous
ascend to the big leagues. That’s not to say that his journey was a joyride
either. Even when one is blessed with the talent that enables him to play junior
hockey at the age of 15, he must still dedicate the time and effort to make
use of, and further develop, his abilities–especially under the pressures of
lofty expectations. Following four highly successful seasons at Michigan State
in the NCAA, Horcoff spent a total of 26 games in the AHL before being promoted
to the big club for good.

The disparity between these two former teammates could not be more pronounced
when you analyze their respective paths. I would imagine that Burnett has been
involved in more scraps in one game than Horcoff has in his entire career. Conversely,
Horcoff has probably scored more points in one game that Burnett has produced
in a full season, practices included!

Dreams can come true and Garrett Burnett has shown us that, at times, even
the unlikeliest of characters can surprise us all. If Burnett fails to play
one more NHL game from now until the end of his professional hockey career,
it won’t take away from the fact that he has truly defied the odds. There
is simply no question about it. Best of luck Mr. Burnett; you have proven yourself
beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.