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SAN JOSE —​ This is a time for mourning and sadness but also for stories, and few figures in the NHL tell those better than executive Brian Burke. Currently the president of hockey operations for the Flames, formerly of Hartford, Vancouver, Anaheim, Toronto and the league's front office, Burke spoke with SI for an unrelated topic Saturday afternoon and agreed to share some memories about the late Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe.

"It's just staggering to the hockey community to lose giants like that," Burke said over the phone from Calgary. "I was talking to Doug Barkley, who played with Gordie. He said, 'They're getting a pretty good team up there. They've got [Jean] Beliveau last year, Gordie this year, there's a pretty good team up there. I'm getting choked up just talking about it. It's a sad day for the hockey community to lose someone that was that big a part of everything."

What follows are Burke's words, lightly edited for clarity:

1. The Hair

"When I first took over in Hartford, Gordie was on the payroll there as a goodwill ambassador. And I asked him, I said, 'We should sit down and talk about your role.'

"He came into my office. He sat opposite my desk. He leaned over to the left and leaned over to the right, way over. Like peering. I thought he was looking behind me, so I turn and look, see if there's something in the window or something. I turn back around and I said, 'Is something wrong, Mr. Howe?'

"And he keeps leaning each way. Finally he goes, 'Does your barber charge you by the f---ing acre?' I changed it to g—d---- for the media. That's how our meeting started. I've got such a big head and such thick hair. F---, I laughed."

2. The Elk and the Concrete

"If you look at pictures of Gordie Howe, any picture you see of him, except when he's on the ice, he's always smiling. I'd met him before. It was a great thrill. I met him and went to a payphone and called my wife and told her, you're not going to believe it, I just met Gordie Howe. I didn't want to wash my hand. He's always smiling. It's such a paradox, this vicious hockey player and this kind man.

"He loved to tell stories. He said, 'One time I was driving to northern Saskatchewan, and I heard an elk run across the road. And I thought, Elk don't run unless they have to. So I'm thinking, I stop my car, turn off the engine, I'm going to wait a minute, see why those elk are all running. Sure enough, about 50 yards behind here comes Mr. Cougar, trotting along.'

"And he's telling me about growing up on the farm. There's a great story in his book, about how his dad got him a job about the concrete plant. And the guy told Gordie, 'Alright move these 50-pound bags of concrete, and stack them over here.' About 10 minutes later, Gordie came up and said, 'Alright, what do I do now?' And the guy said, 'No, I said stack them all.' Each guy would struggle with a 50-pound bag of cement. Gordie picked up one in each hand. And if you've ever picked up a bag of concrete, it's impossible to grip it, unless you have a bone-crushing grip. It's impossible to grab a bag of concrete by the side and carry two at once and that's what he did.

3. The Blinks

Ted Lindsay told me one. Gordie, he blinked like every 10 seconds or so. He'd take a real deep blink, and it was from when he fractured his skull. When you first meet him, you're like what is this? Then you realize it's just this little affliction. So he blinked like once every 10 seconds. So Ted Lindsay told me this story, he said they were lining up for a faceoff against Chicago and they dropped the puck and Gordie speared the guy opposite him right in the groin, and they had to carry him off.

"And Teddy said to Gordie, 'What the hell was that for?'

"Gordie said, 'He was mocking me, he was blinking at me.'

"And Teddy says, 'He's got the same thing you do, you a—h---!'"

GALLERY: SI's Rare Photos of Gordie Howe

Rare SI Photos of Gordie Howe Hy Peskin