Not a game, not a practice, not a day goes by in which Brendan Burke isn’t on the minds of the Miami of Ohio hockey team.
When the team arrives at Memorial Coliseum today to play its NCAA tournament-opening game against a seemingly overmatched Alabama-Huntsville team, the RedHawks will get off the bus, each donning a green bracelet reading, “The Brotherhood,” with Burke’s initials and a four-leaf clover.
Burke, who died Feb. 5, remains the quintessential figure in The Brotherhood of Miami hockey, even though he never skated in a game.
“It’s pretty special honor to be one of our team members,” Miami captain Tommy Wingels said. “He wasn’t (technically) a player, but he was a player in our hearts. He did so much for us. He hung out with us off the ice. He was always with us.”
Burke was the team manager and video assistant when he died in car crash in Economy, as he and friend Mark Reedy drove from East Lansing, Mich., back to school at Oxford, Ohio. The car slid on ice and hit a truck, news of which reached RedHawks coach Enrico Blasi between the second and third periods of a game against Lake Superior State.
Blasi chose not to tell the players until after their 2-0 victory was completed.
Victories just like that one – defensive-minded struggles that require focus from start to finish – were something Burke had played a part in all season, as he broke down film and motivated the team to improve on their runner-up finish in last year’s NCAA finals to Boston University, which scored two goals in the final minute of regulation and then in overtime for a 4-3 victory.
As the son of Brian Burke, general manager of both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the U.S. Olympic team, Brendan knew his hockey. He had been an accomplished goaltender, quitting as a high school senior because a secret he was hiding became too unbearable.
But Burke learned something about breaking down barriers, revealing that he was gay to his family in 2007 and to the RedHawks last year. He had worried how his father, one of the foremost figures in the world of hockey, would react. But Brian reassured Brendan homosexuality wasn’t an issue that would change his love for his son.
Brendan went on to do several interviews about coming out, hoping to alter the machismo of hockey to a point where sexual preference would no longer be slurred or an issue.
“My whole family has been behind me 100 percent, and my dad has been really supportive of me … talking about this publicly. He’s been unbelievable. It’s been amazing,” Brendan Burke said in November on TSN, the Canadian equivalent of ESPN.
“Everyone (at Miami) was unbelievable there. I can’t say enough good things about the university and the hockey team there. They knew me for a couple of years before I came out, so I think for most of the players, I was still Burkie. I was the same person. It just added a new dimension to it, and they weren’t going to judge me on that because they knew me as a person and knew my character. … But coach Blasi emphasized character and building a brotherhood and it’s not surprising they’ve embraced me.”
The death of Brendan Burke at age 21, as he readied to go to law school, has strengthened the Miami brotherhood even more. The RedHawks have gone 8-3-1 since then, and they’ve taken the top overall seed for the NCAA tournament.
“I think the fact that our team was able to attend the funeral and be close to Brendan’s family and pay our respects, that did a lot to help us get through the situation,” said Miami’s leading scorer, Jarod Palmer. “Our team is very close, and we’re basically a family here. Any of us can lean on any other player for help or advice or whatnot.
“Sticking together as a team, even facing adversity as a team, it’s helped us all get through this. It’s been rough, though.”
Brendan Burke has been on the RedHawks’ minds particularly recently, as they readied for a difficult regional that includes rival Michigan and Bemidji State, which made it to the Frozen Four last year.
The RedHawks want to win not just because they came up short last year, but also because Burke would have enjoyed it so much.
“Not a day goes bay without every guy talking about him or thinking about him,” Wingels said. “He’s someone who is still with us.”
