Brian Burke, the former GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is joining the Calgary Flames as President of Hockey Operations.
Flames President and CEO Ken King made the announcement at a media conference at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
King's role will not change and he will remain President and CEO of the team.
Jay Feaster will also stay on as General Manager and will now report to Burke.
"Jay's going to be the General Manager of this team. I actually asked Jay what he wants me to do. At a certain level he's going to say to me would you go in and look at this kid or what do you think about this trade?," said Burke.
"This has great appeal to me and I like working in Canada. I'm a Canadian citizen - everyone says I'm American, which I'm born and raised, but I'm a Canadian citizen, I have been since 1993. This, to me, is such a great city."
Burke says that while a lot of people say that he can only lead an organization, he can be a pretty good teammate too.
CEO and team president Ken King says that they've been working on finding someone to fill this position for quite a long time. "We've had a very long list," he told the conference on Thursday.
"I broached this structural, foundational notion of change probably two and a half years ago. We talked about the merits of it, the challenges of it, and that type of thing. We talked to other people, we considered other people and as I said in my comments, Brian was a clear and top candidate and emerged as the candidate."
As for the team, Burke says that the rebuild is already underway for the Calgary Flames and Feaster has already taken a lot of the steps needed. "I think Jay has already made some of the acquistions that have started the way to the rebuild. It's hard in a cap system to turn your team around. You have unrestricted free agency obviously, but in a cap system it's a slower process than a non-cap system but I think Jay's taken some major steps."
Burke doesn't want to speculate on how long it will take to rebuild the Flames. "I think there's a lot of luck involved to acquire a player that you didn't think you could get. I have seen Abbotsford play. I do think there is help on the way, and I'll tell you that Calgary had the best draft of any team in the NHL."
This is the fifth NHL team for Burke who has also had stints as GM in Hartford, Vancouver, Anaheim, and most recently Toronto where he was fired earlier this year.
Burke is also serving on the board of directors for Rugby Canada and is the director of player personnel for the American men's hockey team at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
(With files from CTVNews.ca)
