- Brent Burns walked into Avalanche training camp Wednesday with a trimmed beard, a fresh haircut and a new set of front teeth
- The 41-year-old is starting his 23rd NHL season and sits 57 games from Phil Kessel’s ironman record of 1,064
- Read below for the photo that set off the hockey world and what Burns’ agent told ESPN
Brent Burns showed up to Colorado Avalanche training camp on Wednesday and nobody knew who he was.
The 41-year-old defenseman sat down for media day with a close-cropped beard, a fresh haircut and a brand new set of front teeth. The gap-toothed grin he wore for most of the last decade is gone.
Avalanche reporter Bailey Curtis got the first photo of the new Burns out, and it went everywhere from there:
His agent, Ron Salcer, summed up the reaction for ESPN on Wednesday.
“He looks like some rookie I don’t even recognize.”
Burns started growing the beard out around a dozen years ago and leaned all the way into it.
San Jose handed out Brent Burns Chia Pets in 2016, and he pulled on a Chewbacca mask at that year’s All-Star skills competition in Nashville.
Going without front teeth was a choice too. He explained the thinking on that one in 2016.
“You get that big retainer thing, you lose it, it breaks. You can’t eat or drink with it, anyway. The vanity part I don’t really care about, to be honest.”
Take a look at Burns and Devon Toews holding court at Avalanche media day:
Camp business is piling up in Denver, where Jared Bednar is still waiting on an extension.
Everything above the neck is different. The ironman streak is not.
He has played 1,007 consecutive games, the longest active run in the NHL, and he has not sat one out since 2013-14. Fifty-seven more puts him level with Phil Kessel’s record of 1,064.
A one-year deal brought him back for a second season in Colorado after he put up 12 goals and 35 points and logged nearly 19 minutes a night. The Stanley Cup is the one thing still missing.
Our side-by-side of old Burns and new Burns pulled the line of the day out of Pete Blackburn:
Blackburn wrote that Burns choosing not to look like this for the last 15 years is kind of insulting. Fifteen years of Chewbacca, undone by one trip to the barber.
Colorado opens the season Sept. 30 against the Kings, so everyone gets two more weeks to adjust.
