Brian Burke: "I have not experienced the Pittsburgh experience like I hoped to"

• Sports

Brian Burke is still trying to understand the situation at the club, as it has only been a year since he became Penguins director of hockey operations “It’s a great sports town,” Burke said recently. “This is one of the best sports towns in the world.

So that part has been great. As far as the dining and all of that, I’ve really only been to four restaurants because that’s all we’ve been allowed to go to in between lockdowns."- Burke said, as quoted by triblive "So, I have not experienced the Pittsburgh experience like I hoped to.

I did go to a Steelers game, which was cool. Got to be friends with (Steelers general manager) Kevin Colbert, who I admire very much. It’s been terrific." "What have I learned? I have yet to meet a person here who has treated me unkindly.

People here have been terrific. No one honks at me if I’m late at a turn. “People are wonderful. It’s great”. Although the COVID pandemic has changed many things, Brian Burke praised the NHL and how they coped in these difficult times
“The league has done an amazing job with all of this stuff.

We’ve got big challenges ahead of us as a league. But I think the NHL is ready to meet those challenges. And I’m impressed with the way crisis after crisis has been dealt with effectively and professionally by the NHL.

So that’s all good." "Our coach has a mindset that no matter what happens, we have to be ready to play, next man up, all that. I think that same mentality applies here." "OK, we’re locked down. OK, then we’re not locked down.

… We’ve all been just like, whatever the rules are, let’s follow them and let’s keep winning. Kind of a matter-of-fact approach”.

NHL draft

He is pleased with how the NHL draft went and his team seems to have a lot of potential “We’re happy with (the 2021) draft.

We didn’t have a lot of picks. We’re happy with the players that we took. We’re not going to change our formula. …" "The two things that you have to counterbalance here are being capped out. What do you want to add? And being cognizant of the fact that our talent pool is limited. Trading high picks for an outside chance of winning a round, that math doesn’t make sense anymore”.