VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Colorado forward Steve Moore was taken off the ice on a stretcher after being jumped from behind by Vancouver forward Todd Bertuzzi midway through the third period of a game the Avalanche led 8-2 and won 9-2.
Moore delivered the hit last month that knocked Canucks captain Markus Naslund out for three games with a concussion.
Bertuzzi sought revenge when he punched Moore in the head from behind while skating at center ice. Bertuzzi jumped on Moore's back and drove him face first into the ice, knocking him unconscious.
Less than two hours after the final horn, the NHL suspended Bertuzzi, who was given a match penalty for intent to injure, indefinitely -- without pay. There will be a hearing Wednesday morning at the league's office in Toronto.
Trainers from both teams rushed to Moore's side while players from both teams squared off for more fights. Moore was motionless on the ice with a puddle of blood pouring onto the ice around him.
Avalanche officials said Moore was conscious as he was taken from the arena to a hospital.
After a 10-minute delay, during which Colorado coach Tony Granato tried to get at the Canucks bench and screamed at Vancouver coach Marc Crawford, Moore was strapped onto a stretcher and wheeled out of the arena.
Moore, a 25-year-old checking center, fought Matt Cooke early in the first period and scored a goal. He has five goals and seven assists in 56 games with Colorado this season.
Bertuzzi was assessed a five-minute match penalty.
Moore wasn't penalized for the Feb. 16 hit on Naslund. At the time, Crawford said it was "a cheap shot by a young kid on a captain, the leading scorer in the league."
7/11/01-1/23/03.
Caps Hockey.....ain't worth shit.
Does this team suck yet?
Todd Bertuzzi, as I have read it described, "stalked" Moore on the ice (that's the verb I saw), attacked him from behind, jumped on his back, and drove (again, the veerb I saw used) his head into the ice.
Moore has a "cracked vertebra" (you may read that as: "a broken neck"). I'm guessing that but for the fact that Moore is a professional athlete, whose conditioning and musculature is more developed than thee or me, he'd have had a much greater chance of being paralyzed or otherwise incapacitated.
Bertuzzi is entitled to his hearing before league officials (and, if it comes to this, his day in court). But if the facts don't get any better, I'm still going with my original thought . . . you're out, pal, until Moore returns to the ice . . . and if he never does, well, it's been nice having you in the league. Outside the arena, that kind of thing gets people extended jail sentences . . .
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Play hard, shake hands, drink beer.
"LA needs two hockey teams like Switzerland needs two navies" -- Norman Chad (from "My 10-Point Plan to Save Gary Bettman from Himself")
Renee was watching The Score (local sports channel in Canada) and apparently they were saying that the Vancouver Police are investigating the whole incident.
Brad May has been quoted as saying that there was sort of a bounty placed on Steve Moore's head.
Makes ya wonder eh?
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I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum
This message has been edited by CalgaryCaps on Mar 9, 2004 1:48 PM
VANCOUVER (CP) - Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore remained in hospital Tuesday with a neck injury after crashing face first to the ice following a sucker punch by Canucks star forward Todd Bertuzzi.
Bertuzzi, meanwhile, faces the wrath of the NHL and possibly the police.
B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman said Tuesday that Vancouver police were investigating Bertuzzi's hit on Moore.
It was in Vancouver that Marty McSorley, then with the Boston Bruins, was charged with assault after knocking out then-Canuck Donald Brashear with a stick to the head in February 2000.
McSorley, suspended by the NHL for a year, was convicted of assault and given an 18-month conditional discharge.
An Avs spokesman confirmed Tuesday that Moore had injured his neck but did not offer further details. Rogers Sportsnet, citing Moore's parents, said the 25-year-old forward had sustained two fractured vertebra.
Colorado did say Moore remained in hospital and a statement on his condition would be released later in the day.
Vancouver GM Brian Burke, speaking to radio station CKNW on Tuesday morning, said the Canucks had been told the Avs forward had concussion-like symptoms but was going to be OK.
Moore spent the night in a Vancouver hospital after he was slugged in the side of the head by Bertuzzi at 8:41 of the third period in Monday night's game at GM Place.
Moore landed face-first - with Bertuzzi on top of him - and lay in a pool of blood for several minutes before he was removed from the ice on a stretcher.
Bertuzzi has been suspended indefinitely pending a hearing at the NHL's office in Toronto on Wednesday morning.
Burke said it was inappropriate for him to comment on the incident while the league conducts a review.
The Moore injury is the latest black eye for the NHL, following a brawl-filled game last Friday between the Ottawa Senators and Philadephia Flyers, which set an NHL record of 419 penalty minutes.
And the league will not be pleased that the Bertuzzi bloodbath tarnished NHL trade deadline day - normally a dream day for hockey junkies.
Bad blood between the two teams, currently No. 2 and No. 4 in the West, had been simmering since Moore's hit on Vancouver captain Markus Naslund during a game Feb. 16 in Denver. Naslund suffered a concussion that cost him three games.
Moore wasn't penalized for the hit and the league took no action.
Vancouver coach Marc Crawford called Moore's hit ``a cheap shot by a young kid on a captain, the leading scorer in the league.''
The two teams met in Denver on March 3 but there was little action in a 5-5 tie. That changed Monday night with the game out of hand - Colorado won 9-2.
The Denver Post called the incident ``an ugly piece of frontier justice.''
``Even with the animosity between Colorado and Vancouver seemingly building by the second, nobody expected it to come to this,'' said the Rocky Mountain News.
Bertuzzi received a match penalty for his hit on the Avalanche centre Monday.
The two teams don't meet again during the regular season.
Colorado cancelled a planned skate Tuesday morning at GM Place. The team was to fly to Edmonton later in the day for a game Wednesday against the Oilers
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I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum
that is not good at all. I sounds like a big injury. They don't do surgery for just a fx vertebrae. I pray they are not putting in rods to stabalize his spine
Lacroix will not say anything about it at his press conference going on now.
I say Bertuzzi out permanently. I am afraid that hit will at the least end Moore's career. I hope he walks again.
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If you can't play with the big dogs,stay the hell on the porch
I can answer that about reporters asking the same question. As a former sportswriter, I'd bet that it means this:
There must be a rumor in the room about the injured player or the injuring player or the league process. I guarantee you the reporters know the rumor and that Lacroix knows the rumor. By dancing around whatever the rumor is by asking different versions of the same question, the reporters are trying to get close enough to the rumor to get Lacroix to address it on his own. (No reporter bases a question on a rumor, or at least no good one does.) Lacroix knows the drill, the reporters know the drill, so the dance was on...
Brian Burke's press conference boiled down to his support for his players and coaching staff, and his inability to make much of a public statement due to the nature of the police investigation and the pending NHL hearing. He will be attending the NHL hearing with Todd Bertuzzi tomorrow.
Burke stated that Bertuzzi was not at the press conference because he is emotionally distraught. He has personally made efforts to contact Steve Moore and the Avs training staff to check Moore's condition, and he was not ready for a press conference today. Burke credited him with trying to contact Moore and the Avs himself, rather than just issuing a typewritten statement to the press.
As for Granato's press conference, the comment about Moore being on the ice at the time of an 8-2 lead didn't sit well with me.....Granato was asked why Moore was even out there with the Avs in a comfortable lead. Granato replied that if this had happened to Joe Sakic, the press would be grilling him about that. Not only would Granato have been out of a job, but the Avs would have a big threat to their Cup run. I couldn't help but read between the lines, and get the sense that Moore was more expendable than Sakic, so he was out. Granato stressed that he had to play SOMEONE, but I didn't like the vibe of that response.
This is not a knock on you or your post Renee, but on Burke and Tuzzi:
He's emotionally distraught? What a bunch of garbage. He assaulted a defenseless person with a deadly weapon and we're supposed to feel for him becuase he's "distraught?" Shove it. You did what you did and you're accountable for it. We don't give a flying fig whether or not you could sleep last night.
The suspension has to last into next year and possibly through it.
Wow. I've just now managed to download the clip. That was brutal, criminal behavior. Hockey violence is just that; it's violence. But there are limits to it, and those who understand it speak the language. What Bertuzzi did was beyond the pale, and he deserves to be incarcerated.
Oh, I agree that Bertuzzi needs a long suspension for that move last night. Deliberate intent to injure. I know the emotions are high after a hit on a player like Naslund, and when you're getting spanked as bad as Vancouver was, but that doesn't forgive what Bertuzzi did. We got spanked 11-5 by Ottawa, and nothing like that happened...we spanked Florida 12-2 and nothing like that happened....Colorado had bruised egos after getting spanked by the Flames the night before, and I had a bad feeling that something would get ugly when they played Vancouver.
I may be a Bertuzzi fan, but that was a very dirty play and I am not a fan of that. I'm sure he does feel bad now in hindsight, but it doesn't forgive it. I honestly hope that he does get hit with a sizeable suspension....if it were someone lesser, they would surely get a huge penalty, so I hope the league isn't more lenient than they should be just because the guilty party is Todd Bertuzzi. The Peter Worrells....Tie Domis....Darcy Tuckers....all those kinds of players need a message that this shit won't be tolerated, no matter who does it.
Yes, he's emotionally distraught... because of all the bad things that will happen to HIM. Most people who are guilty of an aggression like that one feel very bad for themselves, and then can fake remorse.
This message has been edited by Mehdi_Caps on Mar 9, 2004 4:59 PM
To a certain extent, I see where you're coming from, Marc. You have to wonder where the heart is in anyone who could do something ugly like Bertuzzi did.
But I also respectfully disagree with you. I don't think of Bertuzzi as a dirty player. He's big. He's tough. He dishes out the hits and he takes them. He battles in front of the net to get scoring chances that most other guys couldn't get, but Bertuzzi is able to use his size and anchor himself.
I don't think Kenny Klee is a dirty player, but that was a dirty hit on Iginla that caused his shoulder injury when the Caps came to Calgary last year. The Bertuzzi/Moore situation is worse, yes, but don't judge Bertuzzi to be a monster based on this one thing.
I'm sure he is concerned about the disciplinary actions against him. But I suspect he's also feeling very bad about what he did, now that he's out of the arena...away from the screaming crowds....not participating in a game where most everyone was being ugly in some way. There was plenty of hostility in that arena last night besides Bertuzzi's bad play. I watched most of the first period, but as much as I like tough hockey, I had enough and turned it off after Colorado's fifth goal. Between Colorado's scoring bonanza and all the dirty looks and fighting, it seemed that a lot of people were losing their cool, and I didn't want to hang around to see how much worse it could get. I didn't see the Bertuzzi hit on Moore until this morning.
We don't like to watch something ugly like that and think we have the capacity to do something similar in us, but we do. It's not easy to admit that to ourselves, and seeing one thing like the Bertuzzi hit brings up a defense mechanism of judgment in many people. It's easier to concentrate on that than to acknowledge than in a certain circumstance, that could be us. We have the capacity to do some very bad things, but we also have the capacity for shame and remorse. As well as compassion. I have watched Bertuzzi take enough abuse, and not react when he could have, and I won't isolate my opinion of him based on one action. I believe that he is genuinely sorry. I can't imagine how horrendous and heart-wrenching it must be to know that you damaged another person like that. All over a hockey game. It's amazing how much clarity you can find once you come out of the immediate moment. I bet Todd Bertuzzi wants that minute of his life back, and not just for selfish reasons. It's very easy to be harsh on someone else for making the wrong decision, but when I watch that clip of the hit on Moore, I can't help but think that any one of us could have reacted that badly in that bad situation, with all the aggression around us building up the way it did. We just don't want to think we could.
I believe he got caught up in the moment. And I believe it was wrong, and that he deserves to be penalized for what he did. But I also believe that he's sorry.
Just my opinion, of course, and my heart influencing things as usual.
I understand you, Renee. And actually, we could also take into account that Bertuzzi did that because Naslund is (probably) one of his best friends, and certainly the fact that Moore was not penalized for his hit on Naslund gave Bertuzzi a feeling of injustice. But no one is allowed to retaliate themselves. When the justice doesn't do its job properly, well, you have to accept that it's like the 5% of mistake that any administration will always do. It's because there are refs, and the league's justice, that skilled players like Bertuzzi are not punched to death each time they hit the ice. The league protects him, but it also protects guys like Moore, even if he did a dirty thing that didn't get noticed by the refs in a previous game.
I guess Granato was yelling at Crawford: "You see the consequences of your fucking declarations to the press? You see them?"
It's only a sport, after all. I know that TAK loves the rivalities, and all, but actually, what's important is the nice play, the goals, the speed of the game. Forsberg is way more interesting than Oliwa. It's good to protect your players, but I think the best way to do that is either a good and clean hit, or a fight according to the rules: no gloves, etc... Bertuzzi was not fighting, there. He tried to hurt the guy badly.
I think that he didn't really want to push Moore head first onto the ice, though. That was the consequence of Bertuzzi hitting Moore from behind, and Moore falling down, maybe. I believe that second hit (head onto the ice) was the main cause of the injury.
You're right, retaliation is never acceptable. I agree with that 100%.
I learned a lot when I worked at the jail before I moved here to Canada. I took that job because I thought it would be a challenge to my consciousness. Isn't it a lot easier to just lump all "those people" into a group called "criminals" and forget they exist? They did all kinds of horrible things.
But there's another aspect to it. What happens when it's visitation time, and you see the inmates' mothers, husbands and wives, sisters, brothers, friends, children? What happens when it's someone you know, and the inmate becomes a person? Yes, they did some monstrous things, and yes, they deserve to pay for that. They are. But there are people in their lives who love them as whole people, not just for their individual actions.
On a slightly different scale, that's how I look at this. I understand how it happened, I don't condone it, but I'm not going to just personally dismiss someone as a monster because of one mistake.
This message has been edited by ReneeCapsFan on Mar 9, 2004 6:57 PM
This is NOT to alleviate any of the blame toward Bertuzzi, who is ultimately responsible for the injury, but I want to throw something out there....
I've seen the tape of the hit on Moore at least 20 times at this point. If you look at it, could the fact that Nikolishin jumped on top of Bertuzzi made Moore's injury worse?
I watch Bertuzzi sucker punch Moore from behind, then take him to the ice. His head appears to be forward all that time. Then Niko jumps on Bertuzzi, and Moore's head appears to move to the side at that point. Might that sideways movement ultimately be what broke the verebrae? Certainly he would have been hurt without the twisting motion of his head, but I'm curious about this.
'Tuzzi is still the one who threw him down, and perhaps that alone broke Moore's neck. But it also seems that the extra weight of Niko coming down on the two of them might have made a bad situation worse.
I dunno. Maybe I've just seen the clip too many times. That's why I'm putting it up here for discussion...
I'm still proud of Niko, though, even if (I don't know if it's true or not, and we'll probably never know) he made the injury more serious... because he jumped on Bertuzzi to protect Moore, and only then started to punch Bertuzzi. Bertuzzi would have punched Moore again and again without Niko's quick intervention, I think.
On the last slow motion replay, you can see Bertuzzi preparing the next punch to the side of the head (the concussion-inducing kind of punch).
This message has been edited by Mehdi_Caps on Mar 9, 2004 7:59 PM
It is one thing for him to sucker punch Moore and then take him down...it is entirely another thing to grab a prone player by the head and smash a 240 pound frame onto Moore's face until someone drags you off. What really made me sick last night was that as Moore lay prone on the ice, clearly out, with the pig pile starting to grow Bertuzzi just kept smashing Moore's face into the ice with his forearms/gloves. I'm not too upset with the hit/take down even if Moore fought early in the game it was the continual pounding of Moore's head into the ice that I think should put Bertuzzi out of hockey for the rest of this year including the playoffs. He's already earned a 10 game suspension what could intentionally maiming a player possibly bring? The NHL WILL make an example out of him...and IMO deservedly so. Fan who may have only seen the Sports Center clip won't see the pile up and Bertuzzi's actions as they went sliding across the ice...he continually beat the guy for no reason but to surely injury him. There is no place for that in Hockey…sports…or society.
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All I ever wanted to do was break this world in two...
Current Topic - Any Bertuzzi fans here?I thought there was.
