Marc Crawford
Neil Becker
29sports.com
It looks more and more like no one will ever find out the exact truth about what happened during that controversial game on March 8 2004, when Vancouver Canucks bruiser Todd Bertuzzi permanently damaged his reputation by attacking Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore from behind and putting him out of hockey.
Bertuzzi, who has since moved on to play for the Florida Panthers, Detroit Red Wings, Anaheim Ducks and now the Calgary Flames, responded earlier this summer that his coach at the time Marc Crawford ordered retaliation against Moore who a few weeks before that early March game delivered a questionable hit against Canucks captain Markus Naslund. Moore, who was sucker punched from behind by Bertuzzi before being shoved face first into the ice, ended up to suffer a concussion, broken nose, facial lacerations and three fractured neck vertebraes.
A little over four years later Moore, who hasn’t been on the ice since and is still suffering some concussion symptoms, filed a 38 million dollar lawsuit against Bertuzzi, the Canucks organization and Orca Bay for loss of income and injury damages.
A couple of months after Bertuzzi claimed to be following the coaches’ orders on retaliation against Moore, Crawford responded to that allegation by claiming that the winger was being ordered by the coach to not retaliate but to get off the ice.
“Just prior to the attack on Moore, Bertuzzi had been on a shift to kill a penalty, had missed the shift change and had remained on the ice for longer than the rest of his line,” said Crawford’s third-party defence. Crawford who recently filed that defence in court in response to Bertuzzi’s allegations, went on to add, “After being directed to get off the ice, Betrtuzzi was on his way back to the bench where suddenly and without warning he turned around and skated back in the direction of Moore and attacked Moore.”
“This was not done under any specific or general direction or encouragement from Crawford, it was just direct disobedience of the instruction that Bertuzzi had been given from the bench to get off the ice.”
Either Bertuzzi or Crawford are lying and it looks like it will always remain a mystery into what led up to Bertuzzi cowardly attacking an opposing player from behind and ending his playing career before it really got started.
