Todd Bertuzzi and Steve Moore incident
It all started very simply when on February 16, 2004 Steve Moore, a rookie center for the Colorado Avalanche with a Harvard education, checked Markus Näslund, the team captain of the Vancouver Canucks who at the time was the league leader in scoring, in the head when Näslund was reaching for the puck just ahead of him. Näslund ended up with a concussion and a bone chip in his elbow and missed 3 games and the situation escalated to a fever pitch when the referee Dan Marouelli did not call a plenty on the play and Canucks head coach Marc Crawford said that Dan Marouelli and the other referee Rob Martell needs to respect the league leading scorer while Canucks GM Brain Burke said "a marginal player going after a superstar with a headhunting hit" while Canucks players spoke out loudly against the hit.
The next time the two teams meet on March 3Rd commissioner Gary Bettman was in attendance and there was no incident happened but 5 days later it hit the fan when they meet in Vancouver and 6 minutes into the game Steve Moore fought with Matt Cooke, a real creep now with the Penguins and is a disturber, and you would think he did his part sticking up for himself but with three more fights in the first period. NHL executive vice-president Colin Campbell and director of officiating Andy van Hellemond phoned the two referees doing this game during the first intermission to keep them aware of potential physical altercations. By midway through the third period the Canucks were up 8-2 and sadly this is when Todd Bertuzzi was on the ice with Steve Moore and was just trailing him around like a stalker which ended with him grabbing the back of Moore's Jersey and punched him in the back of the head and then a brawl broke out around his non-moving body which was scary as much as the punch because he could of been cut with a skate blade. Todd Bertuzzi was suspended for the rest of the regular season with was 13 games and the playoffs which was 7 games and then was not able to play during the lockout which shut down the league for a whole season.
Bringing it full circle on its 7Th anniversary of the incident Todd Bertuzzi has been able to play hockey ever since the end of the lockout and has made good money while Steve Moore has not been able to play hockey or even go on living a normal life and going out to getting a very good job with his Harvard education. Then you look at the condition of Steve Moore who has gotten bad news because his brain injury that he still has will remain with him the rest of his life which is very sad because it was unnecessary for Bertuzzi actions even if he was sticking up for his team as Moore did man up against Matt Cooke earlier in the game.
Then we get to the saddest part of this story where nobody has taken responsibility for the situation as everybody is pointing figures at each other especially Marc Crawford who Bertuzzi came out and said that he had told him to take him out. Even now Steve Moore and if people have not had their day in court yet and we are talking 7 years after the incident happened but hopefully it will conclude soon as they have finally found a place that will hear the case which is Toronto after they originally tried to have the case heard in Colorado but they were unsuccessful in that attempt. They decided to go for Toronto where Moore lives than Vancouver were the incident happened and the home of the group of people responsible for what happened and may be a little favorable towards the Canucks along with former Canucks like Bertuzzi and Crawford.
Lets hope Moore gets his day
Tom Mehegan
No comments:
Post a Comment