NHL Veteran Brent Burns Looks Unrecognizable After Getting Rid Of Massive Beard He’s Had For Over A Decade

Brent Burns has spent more than two decades as an NHL player, and the second half of his career can be best described as his Beard Era due to his trademark mass of facial hair. However, he looks like a new man after deciding to go with a different look ahead of the upcoming season.

There isn’t a single active player in the NHL who’s played in more regular season games than Brent Burns, who currently sits in 15th place on the all-time list with 1,579.

The 41-year-old defenseman, who was selected by the Wild with the 30th overall pick in the draft in 2003, has the chance to crack the Top 10 if he plays at least 60 games during what will be his 23rd season in the league (and his second as a member of the Avalanche).

Virtually every NHL player refuses to touch a razor while growing a playoff beard due to one of hockey’s most entertaining superstitions, but Burns has spent more than a decade heading into the postseason with a massive head start on everyone else thanks to the lumberjack aesthetic he embraced when he started growing his out in the mid-2010s.

It’s fair to wonder if it’s been a source of power and longevity based on how he’s fared as he’s gotten older, and he may be tempting fate based on the route he decided to go before the new campaign gets underway.

Brent Burns does not look like the Brent Burns most NHL fans know after trimming his signature beard

Before we get to Burns’ makeover, I want to take a look at how we got to that point.

He made his NHL debut with Minnesota in 2003 at the age of 18, and there was nary a hair to be found at the start of his career.

Some scruff started to appear a few years later, but he was keeping it pretty short in 2007.

He was firmly a Beard Guy by the end of his tenure with the Wild in 2011, but it wasn’t really anything to write home about.

However, that changed when he was traded to the Sharks, and we got our first real glimpse of what was in store at the start of the season in 2014.

He eventually decided to trim it, but he officially committed to growing it during the 2015-16 season to the point where San Jose conducted a Chia Pet giveaway in his honor.

It only got bigger from there, as he continued to lean into the untamed aesthetic during his three seasons with the Hurricanes and looked like this toward the end of his first season in Colorado earlier this year.

However, we were treated to a fairly unexpected development after he rolled up to training camp on Wednesday, as he decided to trim the beard (and seemingly got some dental work done in the offseason).

Fresh look for Brent Burns heading into this season 👀 pic.twitter.com/Tkrp11ySvh

— Bailey Curtis (@baileyycurtis) September 16, 2026

That’s going to take some getting used to.