What They're Saying
Canadian Press
3/10/2004
A selection of opinions from various sports outlets on the events surrounding Todd Bertuzzi's hit on Colorado's Steve Moore Monday night.
One of these days, the National Hockey League will finally get it. That will be the day one of its goons kills another player on the ice. Don't think it can't happen. It almost did Monday night in Vancouver. - Tim Dahlberg, The Associated Press
The NHL clearly is guilty of full idiocy. Somebody should knock sense into the heads of the league and the teams and the players association. An exchange of punches between two players is silly, macho one-upmanship. Blindsiding and cold-cocking an opponent, then slamming his head into concrete-like ice is a premeditated violent attack with intent to maim. No wonder the NHL is continuing to slip from a bad fourth in major-league sports popularity and racing toward disappearance next season. It's a league without a clue. - Woody Paige, Denver Post
There is no room in hockey for what took place at GM Place Monday night. No room at all. Now, it's up to the NHL to determine what will happen to someone who could do such a thing. - Gary Mason, Vancouver Sun
The NHL has, of course, suspended Bertuzzi and it will be widely debated as to the length and severity - but the debaters, unfortunately, will miss the essential point. It's not the player that required severe corrective measures - it's the game. - Roy MacGregor, The Globe and Mail
There was premeditation. There was intent to injure. There was extreme violence. For this, Bertuzzi should forfeit his right to participate in the NHL. He should be banned for the rest of this season, including the playoffs, and if someone wants to make an argument for a permanent ban, I'd sure be willing to listen. - Damien Cox, Toronto Star
Bertuzzi has made his bed and he must lie in it. But the NHL must share at least some of the blame. Alone among professional sports leagues, the NHL not only allows but, by its inaction, fosters a vigorous system of vigilante justice that may have worked in another generation but is totally out of date in 2004. One guy is in the hospital nursing a serious injury. The other is now in the fight of his life for his livelihood and his good name. His team is left in the lurch. And you know what? Hockey should count its lucky stars it wasn't worse. - Ken Fidlin, Toronto Sun
Most mystifying of all about Bertuzzi's actions, however, is why a skilled player, albeit a very large one, felt he had to personally dispense frontier justice, at what may turn out to be enormous cost - not merely playoff wins but millions of dollars in revenues - to this team. Heavy work is best left to heavies. Not only are they better at it, they are less costly to lose. - Cam Cole, National Post
In the long term, whatever those forces of authority do, it won't change a thing. A business that still thinks it needs fighting as a marketing tool, that allows threats to be carried out and that all but encourages vendettas isn't about to clean itself up. There are bigger fish to fry right now - like winning a salary cap from the players, at all costs. In the short term, Bertuzzi ought to be suspended for the rest of this season and the playoffs. And he ought to be charged. - Stephen Brunt, The Globe and Mail
Bertuzzi is no dainty tulip, nor is Moore, never mind his Harvard pedigree. They both have volunteered to make a living from an ability and an eagerness to dish out punishment. The NHL should ban Bertuzzi for life, or for the length of Moore's life, anyhow, though, most likely, it will be just for the season. It will be a gesture as hollow as it is transparent. - Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News
Hockey is a violent sport. That's one of the reasons we love it. But within the organized chaos of high sticks and slashes and hockey fights, there are rules, there are boundaries, there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. Todd Bertuzzi crossed one of those lines Monday night, and he should not play another game this season because of it. - Mike Heika, Dallas Morning News,
The NHL should suspend Todd Bertuzzi for the rest of the regular season - at least. If it hurts Vancouver's Stanley Cup chances, so be it. Bertuzzi deserves to be punished severely. The league must make a statement. - Nicholas J. Cotsonika, Detroit Free Press
Bertuzzi's attack was not a spur-of-the-moment, heat-of-combat lapse in judgment. Rather, he stalked Moore like a thug working a dark alley. Though he outweighs Moore by about 60 pounds, he slipped up behind Moore and punched him with his gloved hand. What a coward! And as the dazed Moore fell helplessly toward the ice, Bertuzzi jumped on him and smashed his face into he ice. He could have killed the guy. - Jeff Gordon, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Bertuzzi's cheap-shot sucker punch from behind on Colorado's Steve Moore on Monday night in Vancouver, and then his driving of Moore's head into the ice, was despicable and indefensible. Bertuzzi should be suspended for a year. A full year. It's sickening, and that was the case even before the news broke Tuesday morning that Moore had suffered fractured vertebrae. He has the use of his limbs, and there will be no paralysis, but that doesn't lessen the shock - or the disgrace. - Terry Frei, ESPN.com
It would be apt to say that Todd Bertuzzi's vicious attack on Steve Moore gave hockey a black eye, if the face of the sport didn't already sport a shiner, a misshapen nose and a perpetual bully-boy sneer. Despicable and cowardly as Bertuzzi's sucker punch was, it's really just one extreme incident in a continuum of needless violence that is as much a part of the game as the speed and skill such episodes too often obscure. - John MacKinnon, Edmonton Journal
Cheers,
Aquaman