From Snakes to Machetes, Everybody’s Got a Different Brent Burns Story (+)

The last time that we saw Brent Burns in a San Jose Sharks jersey, he was wearing Kaapo Kahkonen’s gear and playing goalie against 10 and 11-year-old’s.

If you know the fun-loving Burns, that story is not the least bit surprising.

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That was locker room cleanout day in May.

Kahkonen recalled, laughing: “I came down to the [locker] room, just checking out my equipment, what would I need to get packed so they could send my gear [home], what do I need during summer? The first thing I see, I walk into the room is Burnzie putting on my gear.

“He was just smiling like he always is. Putting my chestie on. He was like, can I borrow your gear?”

Two months later, San Jose traded the 37-year-old star to the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Sharks will host the Hurricanes tonight in their home opener, and the return of Burns, who starred in San Jose from 2011 to 2022, is at the forefront. The Sharks acquired Burns and a 2012 second-round pick from the Minnesota Wild for a 2011 first-rounder, Charlie Coyle, and Devin Setoguchi on Jun. 24, 2011.

So I asked former and current Sharks players, media, and management – Logan Couture, Tomas Hertl, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Aaron Dell, Timo Meier, Dan Boyle, Joe Will, Matt Nieto, James Reimer, Tommy Wingels, Peter DeBoer, Dan Rusanowsky, and Roy Sommer – “If you were to describe Brent Burns, with one story, to someone who didn’t know him, what would that story be?”

Of course, no one had just one story about the inimitable Burns, but the essence of what the San Jose Sharks lost in Burns was obvious.

Let’s begin with the big kid who “borrowed” Kahkonen’s pads.