With his mane of white hair slicked back, and his tie undone and slung around his neck like a prizefighter might wear a towel, Brian Burke spoke of retiring. This job, he told the large crowd, would be his last in hockey: “This is it, I’m tired of moving.”

The 60-year-old Burke is president of hockey operations with the Calgary Flames, the fifth stop in an NHL management career that spans three decades. He had previously worked in Toronto, which is where he was speaking on Thursday, inside the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus.

“I’m not tired, I don’t want to get out, I love what I’m doing,” he said. “I hope that this run last for 10 years — but this will be my last job in hockey.”

The Maple Leafs fired Burke as president and general manager days before training camp opened in the lockout-shortened season two years ago. On Thursday, he told the audience he was not bitter over that decision, but that the job still exacts a toll.

“The team I left here was a playoff team, people forget that,” he said. “And the energy that went into that, and the abuse you take to get there, and the sleepless nights and the driving home after losses, it’s enough.”

Burke said he would likely move into a teaching role, or return to work in the media, if the Flames decide to fire him: “I won’t ever go away from the game altogether.”

He covered a range of topics in more than an hour spent in a room filled with more than 200 students, former colleagues and other business-minded onlookers. He discussed his unruly hair — “it aggravates everybody, it’s great” — saying it was adopted after his firing in Toronto, when his stylist suggested he try something different because he had “looked like a cop” for most of his life.

Burke also discussed his former team, saying the Leafs were engaged in an “experiment” with their large and varied staff.

“You’ve got Lou Lamoriello . . . who’s never taken an order from anybody, Mike Babcock — who’s a great coach and a good guy — who doesn’t think he should take an order from anybody,” he said. “And you’ve got Brendan Shanahan in the middle, who’s a very bright, stubborn Irishman.

“Now, how does this work? How many hands can you have on the wheel?”

Burke said he was optimistic it would succeed because of the “bright people” involved, but said the Leafs have “got a lot of work to do.”

Richard Peddie, the retired chief executive of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, cast doubt on whether Burke would be able to give up on that kind of work and leave hockey management, as he claimed.

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“I don’t believe he’d give it up,” Peddie said. “I don’t believe it at all. He only knows one speed, and that’s full forward.”

Burke said he still maintains a home in Toronto, and that he has kept his season tickets to the Leafs. He was fired with two years remaining on a six-year deal, but he told the room he does not regret his time in Toronto: “I’d rather have tried to climb Mount Everest and failed than not try to climb.”

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