Revisiting the time Brent Burns played forward

Remembering a weird chapter of the former Norris Trophy winner

Back in March of 2013, the Sharks were reeling, and part of the solution was for defenseman Brent Burns to return to his roots.

Burns was being moved from the blue line to play forward amid a stretch where the Sharks simply couldn’t buy a goal. It’s weird to think about it now over a decade and a Norris Trophy win later, but Burns was drafted by Minnesota in 2003 as a forward before being converted to a defenseman. At times, he played both for the Wild.

When he was traded to San Jose at the 2011 NHL Draft, it was yet another big move from Sharks general manager Doug Wilson that would hopefully put the Sharks over the top finally, much like the acquisitions of Dany Heatley and Dan Boyle in previous years. They had to pay what was considered at the time to be a pretty penny, parting ways with a first-round pick in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft (which the Wild used to select Zack Phillips), former first-round pick Charlie Coyle and forward Devin Setoguchi.

In hindsight, the Wild ended up with a bag of magic beans, but it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the Sharks immediately following the trade. San Jose went from back-to-back 100+ point regular seasons and trips to the Western Conference Finals in 2010 and 2011 to crashing out in the first round in five games as the seventh seed in 2012.

The disappointing 2011-12 campaign has less to do with the Burns trade and more with brutal finishing luck and a poor penalty kill. Burns himself was phenomenal in his first year in teal. But it was still a significant step back for a core that was only getting older. In case you’re curious how the Burns trade was received with the Sharks sliding ahead of his move to forward, here’s Greg Wyshynski on Burns moving to forward:

It’s a little depressing to see Burns back at forward. You’d like to think Doug Wilson didn’t flip Charlie Coyle and a No. 1 for a third-line winger who moonlights on the power play.

After the lockout wiped out 34 games and the season didn’t start until January, the Sharks were red-hot coming out of the gates, finishing the month 7-0-0. But the bottom fell out in February, with San Jose going winless in its first seven games of the month, effectively wiping out that tremendous start. Heading into Burns’ debut at forward against the Blues on March 12, the Sharks were just 11-7-6.

The big problem the Sharks faced was that the finishing issues of the previous year reared their ugly head again. In the roughly month-and-a-half between February 1 and Burns’ move to forward, San Jose was ice cold despite being one of the league’s best teams in terms of dictating play.

In that span, the Sharks were somehow shooting below five percent at five-on-five despite generating offense at a decent clip. San Jose scored a league-worst 18 goals on 29 expected at five-on-five. The Sharks had one game in that span where they scored more than two goals in regulation at all strengths. Even their power play, which was unstoppable to start the year, couldn’t hit water if it fell out of a boat.

Via MoneyPuck. Data is at all strengths.

All of that is to say, it makes sense as to why they moved Burns to forward. The Sharks had a wealth of options defensively between Boyle, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Justin Braun and rookie Matt Irwin. They were going to be fine defensively either way, and clearly the situation at forward was untenable.

The good news for Burns was that he was basically stapled to Joe Thornton the rest of the way. There’s a laundry list of forwards who have had their games elevated by playing alongside Thornton, and Burns was no different. From March 12 onward, Burns was the Sharks’ leading scorer, picking up 20 points in 24 games.

Thornton was going to dominate his minutes no matter who he was playing with, and the Sharks’ finishing was right in line with the expected numbers with Jumbo on the ice. But adding more scoring punch to your first line is never a bad thing, and only Logan Couture would have more goals for the Sharks than Burns’ nine the rest of the way. It also didn’t hurt that Burns was one of the few Sharks forwards who could overachieve his expected goals, with his nine coming on roughly six expected.

It took a little bit of time after Burns made the transition, but that change, plus a major re-tool at the deadline, helped the Sharks get their mojo back. San Jose was one of the league’s top teams the rest of the way analytically, earning 56.7 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five. The Sharks still couldn’t completely overcome their finishing issues, but they could still find enough scoring to win hockey games, turn their season around and sneak into the playoffs.

In the playoffs, Burns, Thornton and linemate T.J. Galiardi had a significant territorial advantage in the first round against the Canucks, even if it, again, wasn’t reflected on the scoreboard. All three players had an expected goals share over 70 percent in the series. In Game 2, Burns picked up an early assist, and then the game-winning goal to give the Sharks a 2-0 series was all him. Burns blocked a Vancouver shot, raced the other way on a two-on-one and slid it over to Raffi Torres for the win.

Burns would also score the first goal of Game 4 to help the Sharks sweep the Canucks. San Jose wasn’t as fortunate in the second round, as it was edged out by the Kings in seven games. The Sharks again had the lion’s share of the expected goals (over 58 percent of them, to be exact), but they just couldn’t buy a goal. Burns’ sole point in the series came when he scored in a 2-1 win for the Sharks in Game 4.

Sharks head coach Todd McLellan opted keep Burns at forward for the 2013-14 season. Stepping in at forward midseason is one thing, but doing so for 82 games could be a challenge.

To start the year, Burns was back on Thornton’s line, along with a new face in rookie Tomas Hertl. That put the Sharks’ three biggest regular forwards all on the same line.

The trio immediately started playing out of its mind. That line had an absurd expected goals share of 69.4 percent and outscored opponents 16-5. Of the 124 combinations that spent at least 150 minutes together at five-on-five, no one had a higher expected goals share than the Hertl-Thornton-Burns line.

Unfortunately, those three only had 24 games together since Burns missed time with sore gums, and then Hertl had his rookie season basically ended near Christmas after a knee-on-knee collision with Dustin Brown. But in Hertl’s place, the Sharks moved Joe Pavelski up to the top line, and San Jose’s top line didn’t skip a beat.

Between Thornton’s passing, Burns’ physicality and Pavelski’s finishing, they made the perfect combination. It’s not far off from when the Sharks went to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2016 and had the same top line, just with Hertl in Burns’ place. With Pavelski, that threesome still had an expected goals share above 60 percent and had 70.8 percent of the real goals.

Whether it was with Hertl or Pavelski, San Jose’s top unit was going to shoot the puck. A lot. No line combination with at least 150 minutes at five-on-five attempted shots at a higher rate than the Hertl-Thornton-Burns pairing, and the version with Pavelski wasn’t far behind in fourth.

Thornton was as shot-averse as ever, but Pavelski was no slouch in terms of getting the puck on net, either, en route to a career-best 41 goals. Burns himself attempted a whopping 355 shots at five-on-five, finishing fifth in the league despite missing 13 games. But he also generated 18.8 expected goals (fourth in the league) at five-on-five and scored 18.

Overall, Burns finished with then-career-highs in goals (22) and points (48) while being a vital part of a lethal San Jose first line. Was Burns an elite forward? Probably not, but he was a very good top-six forward for a Sharks team that was deep but still needed some more scoring punch.

Sharks fans don’t need any reminders of how that 2013-14 campaign ended, with San Jose blowing a 3-0 lead in the first round and losing Game 7 on home ice. The Sharks parted ways with Boyle as part of the fallout, opening up a hole for an offensive-minded defenseman. Thus, Burns went back to defense for the 2014-15 campaign, where he’d stay put up to the current day.

Within two years of switching back to defense, he was a Norris Trophy finalist. The following year, he came a goal short of the 30-goal mark and actually took home the Norris Trophy.

If there’s one thing Burns inherited from his spell at forward, it was his propensity to shoot the puck. Since Burns moved back to defense, he is the only defenseman to land 300 shots on goal in a single season, and he did it four years in a row (2016-2019).

This wasn’t something that Burns was known to do before 2013, but he started firing pucks at the net en masse after switching back. In fact, Burns was goalless at five-on-five in 2009-10, which is wild to look back on.

Granted, some of that may be due to the emergence of Pavelski. Burns’ innate ability to get the puck on goal no matter how many bodies were in front and Pavelski’s tipping skills made them a lethal combination. But Burns still shot a ton after Pavelski left San Jose, and he hasn’t slowed since he himself was traded to Carolina.

More than a decade after the Burns At Forward experiment, it is a little weird to look back on, simply because Burns became one of the league’s premier offensive defensemen once he moved back to defense. But for someone like Burns, whose personality is somehow much bigger than his 6-foot-5, 228-pound frame, there are no surprises.

Stats are from Natural Stat Trick and Evolving-Hockey