[Rosco]

The punch was one thing but I don't think it did more than distract or lightly stun Moore at the most, the damage was done IMO when Bertuzzi took advantage by grabbing the back of Moore's head and using his muscle and weight to drive it into the ice. It looked to me like Moores awkwardly positioned neck had to take their combined weight for an instant before the rest of Moore's body fell and took the pressure off.

The cuff to the head by Bertuzzi after Moore was down and the subsequent dogpile might have aggrevated the neck injury but didn't cause it in the first place IMO.

I lost a lot of respect for Bertuzzi and many Canuck fans also for defending one of the cheapest, most gutless displays I've seen in a while. Bertuzzi's punishment was deserving as far as I'm concerned.

[Mukluk]

I never did see the hit, so I am going to speak in general terms on this to respond to some comments I have seen here.

Karra's example is a good one, but let me offer this: A guy goes to the water fountain and another runs full speed into him driving his shoulder into the man's chin, knocking him unconscious and giving him a concussion. Another guy has filmed the assault etc etc.

This is a crime. But the guy is not in an office, he is on the ice, and he is heading to the net and not a water fountain...making it hockey, and therefore a clean hit. The solution...the guy needs to keep his head up. We don't view it as an assault when this happens because .... it is not a penalty?

Again, speaking in general terms, we tend to view the consequences of someone's actions when passing judgment. Taking your stick and swinging it at someone is wrong, and common. That is why we have "slashing" as a penalty, it means you sit for two minutes. Next day: Oh, we found out today that you actually broke his thumb...suspension. Same slash, but because there was an injury, it is suddenly more serious. What if you swing at a guy and miss...might not even be a penalty!

The Bertuzzi events sound pretty viscious, and I am not really shedding any tears for a 29 yr old that makes millions a year and decides to do something like he did. I do have a lot of mixed feelings about what constitutes a crime, and what makes one slash so much more aweful/terrible/viscious/etc than any other.

m

link to Bertuzzi's suspension details
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/03/11/ca ... date040311

[CookieLove]

NO CHARGES NEED TO BE LAID!
Hockey is a violent sport and getting more and more so every day. I think that something needs to be done about that, but they shouldn't use Bertuzzi as a scapegoat just because his hit was the one that happened to cause a significant amount of damage! Make a new rule, stating that certain types of hits WILL have consequences such as police involvement, "you will be charged with assault causing bodily harm if you hit someone illegally and they're hurt"...it has to be a rule before the incident. You can't just decide all of a sudden that it's getting too violent for you and it's time to teach everyone a lesson!! That's not fair to Bertuzzi. The need to have a standard and all the players need to be aware of it BEFORE anyone is reprimanded for it.
Just my opinion.

[AdamNF]

Quote:

That's not fair to Bertuzzi.

Its not fair becasue he wasnt worned that purposly trying to hurt someone is a bad thing to do. He is grown man, take some responsiblity for your own actions.

[Bert_fan44]

I just wanted to say thank you to all who have signed the petition!! Its actually starting to get there!! I actually started this thread, but used my BF name!!


http://www.petitiononline.com/todd44/

[Canadaka]

Bertuzzi punished for wrong reason
Uninformed focus on unfortunate result, not the act
Tue Mar 16 2004


HAS anybody actually paid attention to how many times in an NHL game players scrum, punch, push from behind, face-wash, ambush and blindside each other during skirmishes and melees over the course of 60 minutes? Judging from the reactions to the Bertuzzi/Moore incident viewed on CNN all the way to Good Morning America, I may be alone in these observations.
When you put 12, 200-pound men on ice in an enclosed space with sticks, blades, hostility and enough equipment for medieval jousting, there are some inevitabilities you are going to have to deal with. Yet, from what I have witnessed on the south side of the border, masses of pedestrian hockey pundits have transformed their usual indifference for the game into disgust over an incident that spilled the greatest game on ice onto their TV trays.
A whole community of people who have undoubtedly never even watched a complete hockey game have now been prompted to switch off Yankee spring-training camp to blow their horns about a pretty typical goon show with non-typical consequences.
But what are we really upset about? That Bertuzzi didn't follow proper hockey-fight protocol? Do you know how absurd that sounds?
Should he have tried to swing Moore around just a little more so that when he pummelled him they were squared up? If only fury were that malleable.
The outrage is about the fact that the odds finally caught up with the game and someone was seriously injured. All contact sports are played with varying degrees of ill intent. It is the nature of the beast that aggression can not always be tempered within acceptable programming levels on CBC. It's nothing but good times and film reels when a player goes through a pane of Plexiglas or is dropped "cuckoo" to the ice by a punch during a fight.
Yet when the professional hostility crosses that thin line and interferes with our moralities, hell hath no fury.
As much as every indignant headline would have you believe, Steve Moore's two sections of vertebrae were likely NOT broken by a "SUCKER PUNCH." His neck was more likely broken as a result of the position of his head, helmet and visor being driven into the ice after he lost consciousness.
Granted that's not much of a reprieve from "SUCKER PUNCH BREAKS NECK" but at least it is a true rendition of events. Todd's reckless behaviour was simply magnified and isolated due the extent of the victim's injuries and the fact that no one has paid this much attention to hockey since Wayne Gretzky went to Hollywood.
Let there be no mistake, however, about this opinion. What Bertuzzi did to Moore was callous and wrong. Yet, if the unlikely collusion of fateful circumstances hadn't aligned, would anyone have claimed Bertuzzi's behaviour as uncommonly vicious?
When it comes time for questions of reinstatement, this is not an offence that should be compared with the stick-swinging incident between Marty McSorley and Donald Brashear. Unless you can convince me that Bertuzzi knew Moore was out cold and that he intended to break his neck, it has nowhere near the malicious intent of the McSorley incident. It's a simple punitive decision that needs to differentiate a swinging stick versus a swinging fist, as neither player was prepared for the assault. I accidentally wasted several seconds of my life catching actor Jeff Goldblum (The Fly, Jurassic Park, etc.) bumble his way through his frustration with the NHL with statements like "why doesn't anyone try to stop them when they are fighting? Why don't they try to break it up?"
If only the culture of contact sports were as simple as his overstated acting and garish leather pants.
It's been eight days and I have grown infinitely tired of hearing how "barbaric" NHL players are and what a "violent game" hockey is from people who think "icing" is something that Martha Stewart won't be able to do with her cakes in jail.
Maybe one day we can make professional hockey as compassionate and peace loving as the America we are living with. Until then, I think Todd Bertuzzi already feels bad enough.
Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.

(found here: http://winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/sports/

[Goaler27]

Quote from a new jersy online paper

Quote:

Too much Canadian machismo

Saturday, March 13, 2004

HARVEY YAVENER

Two things I hate about hockey. Fights. And whining Canadian-accented voices defending the need for vigilantes on ice to police the game.

So, I should be thrilled this week. A hockey mugging that has every civilized sports fan - and even a few of that considerable group you could lump as civilization-deprived - disgusted and calling for reform.

I should be delighted the sport is having a 100-million-kilowatt spotlight shone on its savagery, with demands certain to come from governments to eliminate public brawls or have brawlers face stern prison terms.





But all I can see is the remorse on Todd Bertuzzi's tearful face, the contrition in the choked-up voice, the obvious trauma he was undergoing. The half-million-dollar plus hit his pocketbook takes is nothing compared to the scars on his psyche, the disdain which will follow him forever as the goon who cowardly broke Steve Moore's neck.

They say in addition to being an outstanding hockey player that Todd Bertuzzi is a quality human being. Better past-tense that. Was a quality human being. Among decent folks, he now becomes a pariah.

Better Bertuzzi should become a martyr. How much better for the National Hockey League to go to its windows, throw them wide open, and shout, "Enough! No more fighting. Ever. We will not let this brute mentality destroy the game any longer and destroy the lives of our players. We will not degrade our athletes and make them doomed gladiators."

Either that or ban Canadians from the game.

It is that Canadian machismo which always has ruled the NHL. There's no fighting in European hockey. None in American collegiate hockey except what Canadians try to bring. None in the Olympics. Just Canada, where it's part of the call of the wild.

Canadians long ago sold the NHL on the belief it is their game, that they are the only ones who understand its purity and intensity, that they have devised the machinery under which it best is played and watched, and the machinery by which it is policed. Enforcement, intimidation, are keynotes. You want fancy footwork, watch figure skating.

And now those same neanderthals are going to reap the whirlwind. Like athletes who sell their lives for what glory a steroid needle can promise, the goons of sport are going to turn the mass public away in disgust. In this age in which everything is televised and there is no place to hide, every act of thuggery is going to be replayed and replayed and every Todd Bertuzzi will be branded forever.

I admit, I have become wussified. Moreso all the time. The guy who used to puff fat cigars in public now looks with disdain on anyone who lights up. The guy who used to think prize fighting was the manliest of sports long ago stopped watching that state-licensed mayhem and bloodbath. The idea that "fans" would phone to ask who won an auto race and then automatically ask, "Anyone get killed?," gets more revolting all the time. Beanball throwers and soccer riots and `'fans" who storm the floor and severely trample cheerleaders and others all make me nauseated.

It's more than being politically correct. It's putting all the irrational conduct that mars sporting gatherings into one ugly bag and demanding it be compacted and thrown away. It's letting hockey be a sport you shouldn't be afraid to let your kid play because there's some bully looking for an excuse to maim the youngster.

Hockey, Canadian variety, keeps insisting fist-throwing and similar mayhems are critical to keeping worse things from happening on the ice. That a physical sport must have players who can defend their mates from punishment.

Really? Is hockey more physical than football, where each snap of the ball is followed by titanic collisions, where each tackle is a pair of railroad trains meeting head-on? Yet there are no constant wink/wink-sanctioned brawls on football fields. Those warriors understand the officials will police everything they can and what goes unpunished is another challenge of a macho game.

The idea that hockey fans go to games hoping to see brawls and come away disappointed if fists don't fly demeans the sport and demeans any fandom thought to think that way. Save barbarianism for X-Box games.

I watched hockey regularly on TV until I found myself turning off the set when some prolonged fistic dance was taking place. At first, I'd return to watch after peace was restored. In time, I just never went back. The goonery chased me.

A musical ditty of my youth was titled, "South America, take it away."

If we can't have hockey without fighting, it's "Canada, take it away." Oh, and take your geese, too. NOTE:

Harvey Yavener is The Times' staff columnist.

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The guy said ban us from the Game. We are the Game. Without us the game is done.

I love Bert, but I love the game more... Maybe Bert should be done, forever.
One day we will find another power forward bigger and better then him, and hopefully he will be smarter.