SAN JOSE -- It's hard to completely describe Brent Burns and, yet, so incredibly easy. He is all the things you think he is, a larger-than-life approximation of a fairy tale character, a lover of snakes and iguanas and other unappreciated creatures, an oenophile, a military buff, a clotheshorse, a road-trip taker, an obsessive, a father and one damn good hockey player.
He is colorful, quite literally, in his tattoos and his missing teeth and his ability to grow a Rip Van Winkle beard.
Imagine: The future San Jose Sharks defenseman is 11 years old.