Bertuzzi: Villain or vindicated?

A party erupted in August when Todd Bertuzzi came back to hockey. The Canucks' winger, banished in disgrace from the game after badly injuring Avalanche forward Steve Moore in March 2004, made his return during a Canadian Olympic team practice at General Motors Place in Vancouver, the site of Bertuzzi's attack.

A sweaty crowd of 11,000 attending the weekday workout stood and roared its support for Bertuzzi, 30, who had been reinstated a week earlier by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and immediately was added to Team Canada's camp roster by manager Wayne Gretzky.

It was as if Bertuzzi had just bought everyone a tank of gas.

"Seeing people cheering for him and hugging him was almost sickening," Flames defenseman Andrew Ference says. "He deserved every hardship because it was an awful thing that he did. It wasn't accidental."

Moore, who was jettisoned by the Avalanche four months after Bertuzzi's attack and still suffers from postconcussion syndrome, will argue Bertuzzi's intent if his civil lawsuit gets to court. In the meantime, Bertuzzi â€" who pleaded guilty to assaulting Moore and received a year's probation in addition to serving an NHL suspension of 20 games â€" will draw a paycheck and be more popular in Vancouver than Google.

But several polls conducted before his reinstatement showed that Bertuzzi will be a pariah nearly everywhere else.

To those who know him, there never has been much question about Bertuzzi's re-establishing himself as a dominant player. The uncertainty is how Bertuzzi will cope with being the most hated player outside of Vancouver.

"Some fans don't really understand hockey and don't understand that things like that â€" unfortunate as they may be â€" occur in our game," says Anaheim Mighty Ducks G.M. Brian Burke, Bertuzzi's former boss in Vancouver and one of the defendants in Moore's lawsuit. "I feel he's going to get a rough time."

So does Bertuzzi.

"Am I going to get it? Absolutely," Bertuzzi says. "Whatever. You know what? I'll deal with it and contribute the way I know how, and that's on the ice."

On the ice, Bertuzzi still needs to be careful. At Bertuzzi's reinstatement ruling, Bettman said: "Mr. Bertuzzi is on notice that he will be held strictly accountable to a higher standard than other NHL players for his on-ice conduct during that 2005-06 season."

Bettman all but slapped a monitoring bracelet on Bertuzzi, whose habit of arguing every penalty, offside and icing never got him invited to the referees' bingo parties. But what about his peers, whose opinion Bertuzzi values most?

"I think the NHL just decided it didn't need another dark cloud hanging over it," Ference says. "But I accept that he has served his suspension and paid a huge price in the game and in his private life."

Canucks captain Markus Naslund, who played in Sweden during the lockout with two of Moore's former teammates, Peter Forsberg and Dan Hinote, says even Avalanche players thought Bertuzzi should be reinstated. Adds a prominent general manager, who didn't wish to be identified: "One player told me he's done worse but the guy he punched got up. Guys know that could have been them (in Bertuzzi's situation). I think he had support of most players."

Avalanche players Joe Sakic, Rob Blake and Alex Tanguay supported Bertuzzi at Team Canada's camp. Tanguay even said, "I wish he could be playing in Colorado with me."

Says Colorado forward Steve Konowalchuk, "We don't have anything more to say about it. It's an old memory; we're trying to put it behind us. That's what we've decided as players and decided as a team."

But others in the Mile High City aren't so quick to forgive and forget. Avalanche fan Craig Stadler, the Champions Tour golfer who lives in Denver, says: "The feeling in Denver is Bertuzzi shouldn't play until Moore does."

But Bertuzzi is playing â€" and he wants to move on. "There's no way I can change what happened in the past," he says. "But I'm going to do what I can to make sure my career and my life aren't defined by what happened March 8."

That may be harder than winning the Stanley Cup.

PHOTO (COLOR): Vancouver fans welcomed back Bertuzzi with open arms, but he'll face open season on the road.

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By Iain MacIntyre