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Scott Burnside (born 1963) is a Canadian sportswriter. Burnside began a career in sportswriting with the Windsor Star where he covered the Stanley Cup championships by the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998. He was the National Post sports columnist when the paper began publication in 1998, then covered the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Ottawa Citizen, and was a special correspondent for USA Today on the Atlanta Thrashers.
Covering the National Hockey League (NHL) for ESPN for 13 years, Burnside's stories explained why something happened and gave a behind-the-scenes perspective. He was president of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association from 2013 to 2017, and subsequently wrote for The Athletic, Daily Faceoff, and cohosted an ice hockey podcast with Pierre LeBrun. Burnside has also wrote web site articles for multiple teams and the NHL Players' Association. He received the 2024 Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award at the Hockey Hall of Fame, in recognition of a career in ice hockey journalism.
A graduate of journalism at Carleton University, Burnside was a columnist and Breaking news reporter for the Windsor Star and Toronto Sun before his sportswriting career. With the Windsor Star, he won multiple Western Ontario Newspaper Awards, and the special project category at the National Newspaper Awards. After three years covering the criminal trials of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka for the Toronto Sun, he cowrote the book Deadly Innocence published in 1995, and won two Edward Dunlop Awards and a Jamie Westcott Award for crime writing.
Teaching English in Prague while on leave of absence in 1991, Burnside wrote about language barriers for him and tourists in Pečky, and the local success of British rock band Ten Years After. Writing investigative articles about Czechoslovakia, he detailed the transition into a market economy as the government sold off small businesses to fund the State Bank of Czechoslovakia, and reported on environmental issues in Czechoslovakia, and the economics behind water treatment and land restoration.
In 1992, Burnside received a Southam News President's Award for cowriting the education series, "Our Failing Schools".
Moving to the Toronto Sun in 1992, Burnside and Al Cairns covered a series of rapes across Southern Ontario, including the murders of Tammy Homolka, Leslie Mahaffy, and Kristen French. Burnside and Cairns spent three years covering the criminal trials of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka for the "schoolgirl murders", then cowrote the book Deadly Innocence. The book published in September 1995 by Warner Books, was based on facts from the trial and outside sources. The book contained few details of the assaults, but concentrated on what not heard at the trial, based on interviews of friends of Bernardo and Homolka. Burnside won two Edward Dunlop Awards and a Jamie Westcott Award for his crime writing with the Toronto Sun.
Transitioning to a national newspaper, Burnside wrote about sports for the National Post which began publication in October 1998. In September 2001, he was one of 130 layoffs from the National Post due to budget cuts and lack of profits.
Writing for the Ottawa Citizen from 2001 to 2003, Burnside regularly covered the Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL, and wrote the regular "Inside the Leafs" column. His columns on the Maple Leafs appeared in other Southam News publications,; and for CanWest News Service. He also covered the NHL, the Atlanta Thrashers, and Maple Leafs as a special correspondent for USA Today.; He was also a cast member of Leafs TV during the 2002–03 season.
Burnside returned to writing for the National Post from June 2003 until October 2004. During this time, he also covered the Atlanta Thrashers for CanWest and USA Today, and the Toronto Maple Leafs for The Canadian Press.
According to Burnside, his favourite story with ESPN was reporting on the selection process of the United States national team for ice hockey at the 2014 Winter Olympics. He and Kevin Allen of USA Today were the only two journalists given access to the meetings. USA Hockey hoped that the resulting story would popularize the game in the USA, despite the criticism written about the process by Burnside and Allen. The story was one of Burnside's longest in his career, and created more discussion than he anticipated.
Burnside was president of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association (PHWA) from 2013 to 2017, which aimed to preserve access for North American media covering ice hockey. He thought the PHWA was facing new challenges since the number of newspaper and radio journalists were decreasing, and being replaced by social media, independent bloggers, and teams producing their own content. During his time as president, he oversaw voting by its members for end-of-season NHL awards, honours for all-stars and rookies, and establishment of two awards—the Jim Kelley Memorial Scholarship in the 2015–16 season for the child of a PHWA member, and the Red Fisher Award in the 2016–17 season for the top NHL journalist.
In 2017, ESPN laid off multiple hockey writers including Burnside. Burnside subsequently resigned as PHWA president, and succeeded by Mark Spector of Sportsnet.;
From 2018 to 2021, Burnside was the national hockey writer for The Athletic. During this time, he wrote about the rise and fall of goaltender Ray Emery, who drowned in Lake Ontario at age 35.
Burnside joined Daily Faceoff in October 2021 as a senior writer. He also collaborated on a recurring ice hockey podcast with Pierre LeBrun, titled "Two-Man Advantage", discussing the NHL. Other organizations Burnside has written for include the Los Angeles Kings, Nashville Predators, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild, and the National Hockey League Players' Association.
Burnside reportedly frequented , with one such bar in Pittsburgh was known as his "second office" by colleagues. His writing style was to "expose how and why it happened", and produce "pieces he would want to read himself", because "he loved the storytelling". Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin stated, "No matter what the story is, whether negative or positive, you know Burnside going to be fair", and that "People feel comfortable talking to him because they trust him, no matter the circumstances".
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