NHL Thread: String Bertuzzi Up

[Ben Kenobi]

anything they do in the playoffs will be soiled by Bertuzzi's sickening act of brutality yesterday.

Yeah, tar the whole team for the actions of one player.

Now THAT'S fair.



Why don't you just admit that you don't like the Canucks and leave it at that, eh?

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
If they had let the Canucks do something in the 5-5 tie, then this would not have happened.

Bull.

This would not have happened if Bertuzzi had not have done it. Period.

Forget this "self-policing" crap. Vigilante justice only leads to further escalations.

[Ben Kenobi]

Forget this "self-policing" crap. Vigilante justice only leads to further escalations.

I agree.

The league should have done something about the hit on Naslund. Then there is no need for vigilante justice.

In the absence of justice, this is the result.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


13 stitches on a clean hit?

It happens-- There was a totally clean hit in the world junior where the opposing player had facial fractures. I have looked at the Moore on Naslund hit a dozen times and don't see a foul there

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi 12 games seems about right, for Bertuzzi.

Insufficient IMHO-- The NHL needs to make a statement and at a minimum I think it should be the balance of this year including ALL playoff games

[Flubber]

I would not have minded so much if Bertuzzi would have called Moore out and face to face given him a bit of a pounding . .. but to mug a guy from behind and then jump on his back and smash his face into the ice . . . much much too far

[Guynemer]

Don't fight it anymore NHL, just ban dirty play
To be taken seriously, league must halt cheap shots, fisticuffs

COMMENTARY
By Mike Celizic
NBCSports.com contributor
Updated: 7:53 p.m. ET March 09, 2004

Hockey wonders why it isn’t embraced by mainstream sports fans. The answer was lying just the other night in a pool of blood on the ice in Vancouver.

The NHL will certainly throw the book at Vancouver star Todd Bertuzzi, who laid a shot on Steve Moore of the Avalanche that was cheaper than a New York street vendor’s collection of watches. Not that it will do any good. The league could throw the Library of Congress at him and it won’t change anything.

It won’t because Bertuzzi isn’t the problem. He’s only a symptom of a sport that is so steeped in a culture of violence that there are no doubt both fans and players who think that what Bertuzzi did wasn’t all that bad.

The problem is the code of hockey, an unwritten behavioral bible handed down from the game’s ancient days and perpetuated in the rules of the NHL. The code says that if somebody is too good, you beat him up or knock him out. The code says that you protect your skill guys by employing big guys whose only skill is swinging their fists. The code says if someone cheap shots one of your guys, you’ve got to pay him back.


I’d say it’s Neanderthal, but that would be giving cavemen a bad name they don’t deserve. So let’s just say it’s stupid. And primitive. And unworthy of a game that, when played by the best in the world, is a marvelous spectacle of speed and power and grace and contact.

By the code of hockey, Moore had it coming to him, which tells you all you need to know about the code. To be fair, it doesn’t actually specify fractured bones in his neck and jaw, a concussion, and deep facial lacerations -- a collection of injuries that will keep him off the ice for the remainder of this season, including the playoffs. But the code not only accepts but also demands that somebody on the Canucks had to make Moore pay for conferring a concussion on Vancouver star captain Markus Naslund on Feb. 16.

Moore got away with his shot, an elbow-and-shoulder shot which cut Naslund up and knocked him out for three games -- at least in that game and the next one between the two teams. But Monday night, near the end of a 9-2 Colorado win, the Canucks took their revenge. Bertuzzi, who’s been suspended before for dirty play, rabbit punched Moore, then fell on top of him as he fell to the face-first.


If Moore had gotten up from Bertuzzi’s sucker-punch, we wouldn’t even be talking about this, which is another part of the problem. Only because of all those broken bones and how close Moore came to being paralyzed did it become a major issue. And as long as the NHL judges dirty play by the amount of physical damage done, it’s never going to be anything other than what it is, a minor professional sports league that can’t figure out why it can’t make the jump to prime time.

The NHL will wring its hands over this one, and the league will make Bertuzzi sit, maybe for the rest of the regular season. But it won’t do the one thing that makes such incidents possible –- even necessary.

Just ban fighting and dirty play. That’s all it would take to begin to cleanse the game. There’s no fighting in college, none in international play, none anywhere but in the NHL and its farm systems. Without the fights and cheap shots and stick swinging, hockey is one of the best sports you’ll ever hope to see. With it, it’s a game that could be adequately lampooned only by “Slap Shot,” a movie whose laughs are generated by an exaggeration of hockey’s culture of goonery.

But “Slap Shot” works because it is a reflection -– though a distorted one -– of the game as practiced by the NHL. Hockey fans love it because it smacks –- and whacks, bashes, slashes, and high-sticks –- of reality.

If the NHL ran its game the right way, “Slap Shot” would have been impossible to make. It wouldn’t have been funny.

But the NHL believes in “old-time hockey,” which means you drop the gloves and beat the snot out of somebody who’s too good for you to keep up with on the ice. Eliminating fighting, the guardians of the game believe, would somehow cheapen the game.

What’s really perverse is that some people are already saying that the reason Bertuzzi laid out Moore is because the league has already gone too far in legislating against fighting. When Moore knocked out Naslund, this line of thinking –- if you can call it that –- goes, someone should have been allowed to drop the gloves and beat Moore up on the spot –- like they did in the good old days.

But doing that would have earned the perpetrator a game misconduct, so the Canucks were left with no recourse but to wait for another game and then cheap-shot him.

Apparently, it never occurred to anyone that the way to deal with Moore was to hit him hard -– and clean. And it has never occurred to the NHL that the way to deal with its image problem is to simply outlaw fighting. You drop your gloves, you’re out of this game and the next three. You cheap-shot someone -– and it shouldn’t matter if you injure him or not -– you’re out of this game and the next three.

It’s not that hard to do. It doesn’t even take courage to do. It just takes someone who cares about a beautiful and wonderful game, and not about a stupid “code.”

Someday, hockey will find that someone. The hope is that it’s soon.

Mike Celizic writes regularly for NBCSports.com and is a free-lance writer based in New York



courtesy of msnbc.com

[Hot Mustard]

COMMENTARY
By Mike Celizic
NBCSports.com contributor

Behold the football writer/fan. Stick to what you know.

[trickey]

Bah, what is he talking about? You don't just grab someone that you can't keep up with, if two fighters want to go, they ask each other, and go. Sometimes dumbasses like Bertuzzi take things out of hand, but that is (was?) an oddity.

If fighting was ever banned from hockey, I could definatly see the stickwork and cheap shots increasing dramatically in numbers.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The league should have done something about the hit on Naslund.

Done something about a totally legal hit?

--

I'm with Guy. Ban fighting. Should have been done long before.

[Ben Kenobi]

That 'totally legal' hit knocked Naslund out with a concussion.

Do you think that if it happened to Sakic, that the Colorado Avalanche are not going to pay you back the next game?

Bert does lose his temper, but he is not a dirty player or a goon. He is the second highest scorer on the Vancouver Canucks. That needs to be taken into consideration when giving him the suspension.

If you have a goon, then sure, ban him for the rest of the playoffs.

Otherwise, lay off Bert. 12 games is a huge loss for Vancouver, of one of their biggest offensive stars.

[Asher]

Why would banning fighting prevent **** like this?

What he did is not permitted anyway, banning fighting wouldn't solve any problem but to further Americanize a Canadian game.

Americanize spelling an intentional subtle joke.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Bert does lose his temper, but he is not a dirty player or a goon. He is the second highest scorer on the Vancouver Canucks. That needs to be taken into consideration when giving him the suspension.

**** no, everyone should be equal for discinplinary action.

Hell, if anything they should amplify his punishment as such a famous and necessary player to the team. Get people to think twice before dumb **** like that again.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That 'totally legal' hit knocked Naslund out with a concussion.

And? Still totally legal.

Why would banning fighting prevent **** like this?

Read Guy's article. Prevent this macho tough guy retaliation fetish. Look at the much better international game.

[Ben Kenobi]

**** no, everyone should be equal for discinplinary action.

The history of the player needs to be taken into consideration. Bert lost his temper.

Hell, if anything they should amplify his punishment as such a famous and necessary player to the team. Get people to think twice before dumb **** like that again.

Again, losing Bert for 12 games is going to hurt Vancouver, enough.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Read Guy's article. Prevent this macho tough guy retaliation fetish. Look at the much better international game.

Bertuzzi wasn't out to fight the guy, he was out to hurt him. If he had intended to fight him, he would not have smacked him from behind and then jumped on him on the ground already.

If the international game is much better, go watch that instead of the NHL.