EDMONTON — About a six-hour drive southeast of Nashville, where Alex Burrows will play his 500th NHL game on Tuesday, is Greenville, South Carolina.

It’s a million miles from the NHL, but it’s where Burrows’ improbable professional hockey journey began nearly a decade ago.

Hockey wasn’t big in Greenville, or for that matter Baton Rouge, La., or Columbia, S.C., the other two stops Burrows made in the East Coast Hockey League.

He remembers long bus rides, punctuated by stops at places like McDonald’s and Subway to help the players stretch their paltry per diems. And he remembers that all anyone seemed to care about in those places was college football and basketball. A hockey puck was a foreign object.

It was a tough environment in which to chase your NHL dream, especially for a player like Burrows who had been passed up in the NHL draft.

“It was always a dream to play in the NHL and it was really a big dream sometimes with those long bus rides,” Burrows said before the Canucks departed Monday for Nashville. “You are going to games where there are no scouts and no one really cares about hockey. It’s all about college football, college basketball, that’s all people really care about. It’s tough to get out of there.”

But Burrows did and here he is 500 games into a NHL career that has exceeded everyone’s expectations.

“Everyone has got their own story, has their own journey,” Burrows said. “Everyone has to work hard to get to 500 games even if you are a first-rounder or not drafted. But for me, it’s nice. I’m really happy with the way things have gone. We’re a Stanley Cup-contending team, we’re feeling good about our game, it’s fun to win and play with two of the best players in the world. It couldn’t be any better.”

Sometimes in the those East Coast days, Burrows wondered if it could get any worse. The Greenville Growl, Baton Rouge Kingfish and Columbia Inferno played in some interesting venues.

“The one in Columbia where we played, the rink, it wasn’t even a NHL standard ice rink,” Burrows said. “It was an old basketball arena that they decided to make into a hockey arena. It was much smaller than a normal rink, so we had a really tough team and tried to scare everyone out of the building.”

Think Slapshot in South Carolina and Burrows, not surprisingly, was in the thick of much of the rough stuff. He had 194 penalty minutes in his one full season in Columbia. The previous year he combined for more than 265 minutes in Greenville and Baton Rouge.

Unlike a fellow French Canadian, goalie Denis Lemieux, Burrows did not “feel shame” for all the time he spent in the penalty box. It was part of life in the East Coast League. You played hard, did what you had to do and prayed that someone noticed.

Craig Heisinger did. The former Manitoba Moose general manager, now an assistant GM with the Winnipeg Jets, is the guy who gave Burrows his first big break, or in Slapshot terms, set him free.

“I owe him so much,” Burrows said. “He really trusted in me.”

Burrows got a two-game look with the Moose in the 2003-04 season and became a Moose regular the following season during the NHL lockout.

“They had the rule change in the AHL and teams could carry 12 forwards,” Burrow said. “That opened up one more roster spot and I was able to grab it.”

“I’d like to be able to say we saw in Alex what he has become today but the truth of the matter is we didn’t,” Heisinger said Monday. “We thought Alex would be a good replacement for Jimmy Roy, who was an absolute (bleep)-disturber and that’s how Alex played.

“To say that we projected him to be a first-line winger on one of the best lines in the NHL, that would be very much of a stretch. He’s the one who has taken advantage of the opportunity.”

Burrows broke in with the Moose at the same time as defenceman Kevin Bieksa, a fifth-round Canuck draft pick who had just finished his collegiate career at Bowling Green University in Ohio. Bieksa had never heard of Burrows.

“I don’t know if you want my first impressions,” Bieksa said Monday with a laugh of Burrows, whom he now counts as one of his best friends. “You know what, at the time I think I noticed his work ethic right away. He started that year in the East Coast League and got called up five or six games into the year. And when he came up he played the same way he does now. He worked tirelessly, he hounded the puck, he had a good stick and scored some big goals.

“I have always said he is one of the smartest players I have ever played with. And he’s obviously very opportunistic.”

Burrows, who happens to be a member of the Canadian Ball Hockey Hall of Fame, also counts Canucks coach Alain Vigneault as one of those who helped get him to the NHL. Vigneault coached the Moose in 2005-06 and helped convince then-Canucks coach Marc Crawford and general manager Dave Nonis to take a look at him later that season.

“I remember when Dave and Marc called and they asked me who our best player at that time was and it was Alex,” Vigneault said. “He got called up and he has been in the NHL ever since.

“One thing with Alex is he’s got great hockey sense and he’s got a lot more skill than people give him credit for. Combine those two and you’ve usually got a pretty good player.”

Burrows, of course, has been a very good player for the Canucks. He has cracked the 20-goal mark for the fourth straight season and with 22 goals has a chance to surpass 30 for the second time. Most of his 133 goals as a Canuck have come the hard way, at even-strength. He has more shorthanded goals (15) than he does power-play markers (9).

With one more year remaining on a contract that pays him $2 million per season, Burrows is truly one of the NHL’s best bargains. He may be underpaid by NHL standards, but Burrows still feels blessed on so many levels.

He gets to play with Daniel and Henrik Sedin and yes, they have certainly helped his career. But the flip side of that is that Burrows helps make the twins better.

At home, Burrows and his wife Nancy have a little girl, Victoria, who was born during last year’s playoff run.

“It puts everything back in perspective with the family now,” he said. “That’s the best part. I have a healthy little girl at home and that is the most important thing.”

All that’s missing is a Stanley Cup.

“That would be another dream come true,” he said.

And Alex Burrows knows better than most that sometimes that happens.