Burnside ‘covered League with integrity and passion’ en route to Hall of Fame

TORONTO -- Scott Burnside’s son, Connell, was about 10 years old when his parents took him to the Hockey Hall of Fame to see where the greats of the game are forever enshrined.

After visiting the plaques of all-time legends, from Bobby Orr to Mario Lemieux to Wayne Gretzky, they moved to the media wall where some of the best writers and broadcasters to have ever documented the sport with their spoken or written words are honored.

“I was young at the time and remember asking him if his name would ever be on it,” Connell Burnside, now 22, recalls. “He was with ESPN at the time, so I figured he might have a shot.”

His dad, however, did not.

“My answer to him at the time? ‘Not a chance. Never,'” Scott says now, breaking into a sarcastic chuckle. “He reminds me of that to this day.”

It was one of the few times, if at all, in his more than three decades in journalism, that Scott was wrong.

Because this weekend, Scott will be joined by his wife Colleen, Connell, and a gaggle of supportive friends, colleagues and family to be permanently entrenched in the Hockey Hall of Fame as the recipient of 2024 Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award.

“If I could use one word to describe how I felt when I heard the news, it’s proud,” Connell said.

He’s not the only one.

The honor is in recognition, according to the Hall, of “distinguished members of the newspaper profession whose words have brought honor to journalism and to hockey." Recipients are selected by the Professional Hockey Writers Association, the organization with which he served as president from 2013-17.

In an ever-changing media world in which the quality of content often is judged by the number of clicks a story gets, Burnside stayed true to his longtime credo of cobbling together the types of in-depth, behind-the-scenes pieces he’d want to read himself.

“It’s very humbling to receive this award,” he said. “I mean, none of us get into this business for the recognition. We do it because we love the storytelling.

“For me, it’s about peeling back the layers and letting people see what the players, the people, the game is really like, the things they don’t normally see.”

Burnside’s career reads like a road map of the profession, with stints with the Windsor Star, Toronto Sun, National Post, ESPN, The Athletic, Daily Faceoff, NHLPA, Dallas Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Nashville Predators, Carolina Hurricanes and Minnesota Wild, just to name a few. In almost every stop, he would hunt down his beloved dive bars, with some colleagues calling Shale’s in Pittsburgh his “second office.”

Wherever he honed his craft, it was always the same.

Most sportswriters tell the world what happened. That never was enough for Burnside. He would always take the next step and expose how and why it happened.

It’s a philosophy that earned the trust of the hockey world and allowed him access to places fans normally don’t get to visit.

In 2009, he covered Sidney Crosby's days with the Stanley Cup in Nova Scotia and was in the Crosby Cup parade. When it was all over, he and the Pittsburgh Penguins superstar talked at length about his journey in dealing with concussions and getting back to the Final, where he and his teammates had lost to the Detroit Red Wings one year earlier.

Six years later, he accompanied Alex Ovechkin for a night of bowling as part of a charity promotion in which a family had paid $11,000 to watch the Washington Capitals star struggle to knock down pins. One day earlier, Ovechkin had been to Andrews Air Force Base where, as Burnside wrote, “he donned a cushioned suit, was attacked by a military-trained dog and used a mobile bomb disposal robot to try to pick up (teammate) Brooks Laich’s shoe.”

For a significant chunk of Burnside’s career, Crosby and Ovechkin have been the faces of the NHL. Imagine, then, how Burnside struggles with the overwhelming reality that he now is honored in the same Hall where those two generational players will be one day as well.

It’s a place where he belongs, according to Crosby and Ovechkin.

“He’s obviously someone who’s been around for a long time, covered a lot of big events and, I’m sure, a lot more in his hockey career,” Crosby said. “He’s always been great to deal with.

“I’m happy for him.”

So, for that matter, is Ovechkin.

“I’ve always enjoyed talking with Scott about hockey,” the Capitals captain said. “He’s a great reporter who is fair and has done a great job of covering our sport for a long time.

“I wish to congratulate him on this impressive honor and wish him and his family all the best.”

Luc Robitaille couldn’t have said it any better.

Robitaille was inducted into the Hall in 2009 after a 20-season career in which he had 1,394 points (668 goals, 726 assists) in 1,431 games for the Kings, Penguins, Red Wings and New York Rangers from 1986-2006. He’s now the president of the Kings and had the firsthand experience of seeing Burnside chronicle events like the team’s Stanley Cup First Round series against the Edmonton Oilers this past spring, and it’s subsequent preseason trip to Quebec City in September.

“Scott is a true professional who deserves this honor for the many years he has covered the League with integrity and passion,” Robitaille said. “He is an excellent storyteller who has brought his readers behind the scenes while providing nuance to the personalities he features. We respect what he’s meant to the sport.

“Scott always has a smile on his face at the rink. We appreciate his involvement around our club and congratulate him on this recognition.”

Though Burnside’s cache of feel-good stories are part of his professional legacy, so, too, have been a number of sobering issues he’s tackled that others wouldn’t.

Or couldn’t. At least not like him.

During his tenure as a news reporter at the Toronto Sun from 1990-97, Burnside and colleague Al Cairns covered a series of rapes and subsequent murders in southern Ontario that eventually were referred to as the crime of the century in Canada. Burnside and Cairns eventually authored a book titled “Deadly Innocence: The True Story of Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka, and the Schoolgirl Murders,” documenting how two newlyweds were a pair of vicious killers who abducted, sexually tortured and murdered innocent schoolgirls.

More than two decades later, long after Burnside had shifted to the sports writing fraternity, he examined the complicated rise and tragic fall of former NHL goalie Ray Emery, who was found drowned in Lake Ontario at the age of 35 on July 15, 2018. It was a tale of resiliency and resolve, of depression and drug use and injury, all woven together in the type of thought-provoking way only Burnside could pull off.

“Scott tells it like it is,” Wild general manager Bill Guerin said. “No matter what the story is, whether negative or positive, you know he’s going to be fair. People feel comfortable talking to him because they trust him, no matter the circumstances. I know I do.”

Through it all, loyalty has always been one of Burnside’s trademarks. While attending Carleton University in Ottawa in the early 1980s, he played hockey with his buddies on a team known as the Stingers, where he was known as an “elite chirper.” Decades later, they now gather from across North America for an annual golf tournament where his competitiveness is on display. The driver that’s on the bottom of the pond bordering the 18th green at Seguin Valley Golf Club in Parry Sound, Ontario is an example of that.

On a personal note, Burnside’s frequent notes and calls of support during the ICU stint for heart and kidney issues encountered by yours truly last winter showed exactly the person he is and never will be forgotten. If there was a Friendship Hall of Fame, he’d be one of the first people in mine.

For now, the Hockey Hall of Fame will do. And then some.

“To be able to go into any rink and say, 'Yeah, that’s my dad, the Hall of Famer,' that’s just so awesome,” Connell said.

Not to mention well deserved.