sirlickheralot said:
[BWhen compared with previous punishments handed out by the league I think this decision is out of line. [/B]
Read this article and see if you still think it was "out of line". Considering the severity of the injuries, the obvious pre-meditation, and Bertuzzi's record of violence, he got off easy IMHO.
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SPORTS Thu, March 11, 2004
Man with 'hair-trigger'
STEVE SIMMONS, TORONTO SUN
TORONTO -- What happened in Vancouver on Monday night was not about the National Hockey League or the culture of hockey or the apparent problems within the game. Do not confuse one with the others.
It was about one player out of control. It was about one player acting irresponsibly. It was about one player's premeditation, and a heinous and frightening act of cowardice, that Todd Bertuzzi and only Todd Bertuzzi is guilty of.
Neither the game nor the league can be expected to police violent stupidity and, frankly, neither can society.
The league and game may be bystanders, albeit neither are innocent: They just didn't pull the trigger on this one. An individual still has to make that reckless decision. This was an orchestrated stickup gone bad. Bertuzzi acted. The rest is shameful history.
ROBBING THE BANK
He was robbing the bank. He didn't mean to shoot the teller. How many criminals end up the same way?
"He's always had that hair trigger," said Mike Kelly, who was Bertuzzi's general manager in junior hockey and now runs the Windsor Spitfires. "Unfortunately, it went off the other night."
Unfortunately. Everybody keeps using that word. Unfortunately, Steve Moore is in hospital. Unfortunately, he has a broken neck. Unfortunately, we don't know if he'll ever play hockey again.
Bertuzzi was just doing his job, protecting his teammates, that's what the hockey community will mutter and continue to sound ridiculous saying it. Bertuzzi was doing what he has done for too long, in too many places, excused by too many people because he was so very skilled: He was parading violence as sport, living the macho code that is so often misinterpreted in hockey, and figured to be congratulated for it.
"He wanted to make a point," said his teammate, Markus Naslund, maybe the best player in the NHL. "That you don't hit our players." Some point.
The kid is in hospital. The sucker-puncher shouldn't be allowed to play in this or any other season. The NHL has to be that strong when it makes its announcement on suspension length this morning - it has to be more outraged than even the public on this one.
And no matter what happens, Bertuzzi is probably the lucky one here, lucky that a Colorado player named Andrei Nikolishin was in the right place to stop his left fist from further pounding into Moore's already injured head and neck. Had that punch connected, we might not be debating suspension length today.
We might be talking about murder charges.
This isn't a one-time ''I snapped'' kind of determination for Bertuzzi. There is history here. There is a background. There are stories out there to be told.
POUNDING ON THE WINDOWS
Like the time in 1991, playing in the northern Ontario midget championships, when his team was beaten out in the finals by Sault Ste. Marie and he chased the winning team's bus out of the parking lot, swearing and pounding on the windows, out of control.
The next year, his first in the Ontario Hockey League, Bertuzzi missed the end of that season and the beginning of the next when he was suspended 15 games for kicking a Kitchener player.
The year after that, in his own locker room, for no apparent reason other than jealousy, he punched out teammate Jeff O'Neill.
In the NHL, Bertuzzi punched linesman Jean Morin in a 1996 scuffle and was suspended for three games before losing 10 more games to suspension for leaving the bench to attack a Colorado player in 2001.
This morning the NHL has an opportunity to distance itself from Bertuzzi. This morning, the NHL has an opportunity to make one of their problems go away forever.
