Tom about the punch to head of Steve Moore by Todd Bertuzzi : “18,630 fans witnessed a blatant assault tonight. The Crown should be looking at it. Steve Moore lying in a pool of blood was a crime scene.”
That's not an exaggeration. The friends with whom I saw the game agreed that the suspension would be long (10 games minimum), but I wondered aloud whether Bertuzzi's season was effectively over. I also wondered—but to myself—whether the police would be involved. I have no doubt that they will at least investigate. The issue (which was Moore's hit a few weeks ago against the Canucks' leading scorer, Markus Naslund), for all I cared, was settled when one of the Canucks' enforcers, Matt Cooke, fought Moore in the first period. Bertuzzi had no business being an enforcer. That was neither expected of him in this case nor is it what he's paid to do. He's paid to be tough and score goals, but he is not paid to stick up for the team's stars (of which he is one). That's for Ruutu, Cooke, May and others to do. (I grant that Bertuzzi is lippy and can be a cheap-shot artist now and then. But he speaks with the goals he scores and the hits he makes, not punches to the back of the head.) You'll hear a lot about this never happening if the instigator rule was taken out, but this shouldn't have happened with the instigator rule.
I would be surprised if a suspension included playoff games, but I would not disagree with it.
