Bertuzzi's first Florida interview

[jjtt99 0]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ts/15024662.htm

Bertuzzi's glad for new start in South Florida

By Greg Cote

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

MIAMI - You meet Todd Bertuzzi for the first time and you start with the pleasantries, of course. Small talk. Hockey stuff. Did the trade surprise you, and what do you think of the Panthers, and et cetera and so forth. But everything is leading somewhere else, somewhere darker, and you know it, and he knows it.

South Florida's newest NHL star, the goal-scorer counted on to end the club's long playoff drought, moves a pinch of Kodiak tobacco from a tin to under his upper lip after a while and looks you in the eye as he opens the door slightly, just enough.

``It was uncomfortable and very distracting,'' he says, meaning this past season with the Vancouver Canucks. ``It was tough to stay focused. Maybe the fresh start is what was needed. No strings attached.''

It doesn't go away, what Bertuzzi did the night of March 8, 2004. Not yet, anyway. Strings are attached. Maybe someday they won't be. Or maybe that's too much to ask.

Notoriety cloaks the name of the primary player acquired by Florida in the recent trade that sent popular goaltender Roberto Luongo to Vancouver. A hockey fan cannot hear Bertuzzi's name without conjuring the grotesque, flash-fast sequence of him chasing down Colorado rookie Steve Moore, grabbing him from behind, heaving a blind-side punch to his head, then driving Moore face-first into the ice.

Moore, who sustained three broken vertebrae in his neck, avoided paralysis but has not played since. An eventual comeback attempt is thought improbable but has not been ruled out.

If violence and damage done is how you measure such things, what Bertuzzi did made Zinedine Zidane's World Cup head-butt look like a valentine. Bertuzzi was suspended the final third of that season, 17 months in all, including most of the following season erased by the lockout. Some thought real justice would have been a permanent ban.

What happened is what greeted Bertuzzi (after the pleasantries) on Wednesday afternoon in a room in the team's Sunrise arena, in his first interview on his first day in town. Just like he knew it must. It is a part of his penance, perhaps.

``I made a big mistake. I regret doing it. I face facts,'' he says. ``I'm not going to sit here and ask people to feel pity for me. There are a billion things worse going on in the world. It's there. It is what it is. I understand that.''

Bertuzzi apologized tearfully two days after the incident, but he and Moore have not spoken. Bertuzzi, 31, from Ontario, says he has made attempts at contact that have been ignored.

His guilty plea to criminal assault brought a year's probation and 80 hours of community service. A civil suit filed by Moore this past February seeks almost $20 million in damages, most of it for lost future wages. The pending suit at times makes Bertuzzi choose his words as if each is porcelain that might break, or a grenade that might explode.

Has he seen the attack on tape? A quick, humorless laugh.

``A billion times,'' he says. ``I'm an athlete. I watch sports. And hockey is 24/7 in Canada. You couldn't avoid it.''

What does he think when he sees it? Why did he do it? He shakes his head slightly. That's enough.

It was retribution, hockey style. Goes on all the time. If the punch had been to Moore's shoulder and Moore got up and skated away, nobody would have noticed.

Two weeks earlier in a game, Moore had knocked Vancouver captain Markus Naslund unconscious with an open-ice shot to the head.

The payback was hell for Moore, but a sort of endless purgatory for his assailant as well.

Has the incident changed the way Bertuzzi plays the game? He strokes his finely trimmed beard. This one he wants to answer. He has not stopped being a 6-3, 245-pound brute of a right wing whose style is a lot about intimidation and physicality. He stops, period, when that happens.

``To be the best,'' he says, ``you have to be on this line at all times. People who don't play can't understand.''

The line is finer than the blades that cut across the ice. The line is barely there at all. On one side of the line is the kind of quintessential hockey hit that wins raves from the crowd and the heads on ESPN's SportsCenter. On the other side - an inch away, a second away, a spasm of awful judgment away - is the kind of hit that can effectively end your opponent's career and leave a horrible stain on your own.

Bertuzzi still feels remorse, but the tears have dried. His family - his wife of 10 years, a daughter, 7, and a son, 5 - has received death threats. Police details have accompanied him on road trips. Booing and derision have chased him in visiting arenas throughout the NHL.

The prices paid by victim and attacker cannot be compared, but Bertuzzi has paid some, too, for his solitary act of cowardice masquerading as hockey machismo.

He thinks Panthers fans will welcome him and says, ``I think fans will enjoy me,'' and he'll be right, if he is the 40-goal scorer he says he can be again, and if he backs up his claim, ``I am not coming here to not make the playoffs.'' This franchise has had no scorer other than Pavel Bure capable of offense like Bertuzzi, at his best, can bring. And no playoff victories since 1997 make Panthers fans a generous, forgiving lot.

More than two years since the nightmare he wrought, Bertuzzi is ready for his fresh start in a far-less-intense hockey environ. A fresh start that maybe no player needs more.

He cannot regret more than he already has. He can move on and hope that one ugly little piece of his past recedes just a little more.

``I'll eventually change people's minds. Time heals all,'' he says.

A pause then, and this: ``I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of who I am.''

[JR Boucicaut 3804]

Funny thing is that Cote's not even a hockey guy. Only time he writes about hockey was during the Panthers' run in '96 or something like this.

(He's a columnist at The Miami Herald.)

[kosydar 0]

I would have bet money that Bert was a Cope man.

[jbyun04 7]

i thought he kicked the chew for his kids..

[DarkStar50 679]

The key quote is about "being on the line all the time." That is what pro sports is all about. They all know they have the ability to seriously hurt one another. They want to inflict pain but they still want their opponent to get up. "People who don't play can't understand." Bert means professionals, not us wanna-bes. It is a very fine line at that level.

[JR Boucicaut 3804]

I would have bet money that Bert was a Cope man.

Damn, making all of that money and dipping K-bear.

He ain't classy enough to dip Cope.

[Eazy_b97 1]

It's a weird thing to notice, but did anyone else pick-up that he got married at 21 years old? I found that odd.

[odp 0]

Still doesn't help him from trying to pick up 21 year-olds. Happened to my buddy's wife (then girlfriend) - it didn't work, as she's a Calgary fan and didn't know who Bertuzzi was.

[ecjp11 0]

I wish someone else would hurry up and do something violent on the ice. I'm getting tired of associating Bert with Steve Moore(I shouldn't know his name, as he was a huge plug and had no business in the league anyway). It's just a matter of time before someone decapitates someone on the ice and we stop talking about "the incident" all together. Remember when everyone was up in arms about McSorley whacking Brashear in the helmet? Old news!