Unbiased now....

[ClamRussel]

You think it will keep going? I know it seems that way, but it did in '95 as well....it seemed hopeless then all of a sudden they emerge w/ a deal out of the blue. It does seem bleak.

[Mozy]

I doubt seriously doubt that the NHL will base his suspension on when Moore gets back on the ice

[Cookie La Rue]

You think it will keep going? I know it seems that way, but it did in '95 as well....it seemed hopeless then all of a sudden they emerge w/ a deal out of the blue. It does seem bleak.

Honestly i really lost all my hope for a quick start of the season. do you believe in miracles ?

[Cookie La Rue]

I doubt seriously doubt that the NHL will base his suspension on when Moore gets back on the ice

that's not my speech. if you really want to know you must read the minds of a guy named Gary

[Mozy]

Perhaps we should kill the man named gary , that would be jsut as good, dont you think...........

[Cookie La Rue]

i guess that could solve some problems. if you have some tar left i'll provide the feathers

[Cornuck]

I think he's paid his dues.

1 - He's lost a shitload of money

2 - He's lost a lot of respect from players and fans and propspective bosses.

3 - He couldn't help us in the playoffs when we needed him most

4 - See 3 ^ - he cost the team a shitload of money

5 - He'll never see the big endorsement deals

6 - The Avs will be gunning for him (hopefully )

7 - He still has to worry about Moore and his civil suit

8 - He cried in public

How much more does a guy have to pay for one truly messed up mistake? When the league plays again he better be suiting up. Leave it to Moore to decide if he needs to be punished more?

oh yeah - 1 more

9 - He showed what joke the league and the media are

[Mozy]

6 - The Avs will be gunning for him (hopefully )

by gunning for him i hope you dont mean try and acquire him as a part of their organization, if by gunning for him you mean try to kick his ass, im all for that because it will never happen

[Cornuck]

Yes - I mean that they will be trying to run at him. Usually Bert plays his best when he's pissed off.

[Mozy]

excellent...

[Cookie La Rue]

I think he's paid his dues.

1 - He's lost a shitload of money

2 - He's lost a lot of respect from players and fans and propspective bosses.

3 - He couldn't help us in the playoffs when we needed him most

4 - See 3 ^ - he cost the team a shitload of money

5 - He'll never see the big endorsement deals

6 - The Avs will be gunning for him (hopefully )

7 - He still has to worry about Moore and his civil suit

8 - He cried in public

How much more does a guy have to pay for one truly messed up mistake? When the league plays again he better be suiting up. Leave it to Moore to decide if he needs to be punished more?

oh yeah - 1 more

9 - He showed what joke the league and the media are

Amen

[the Cunning Linguist]

The NHL has NEVER done that. Suspensions have always been based on the act & results not recovery time. However, there has never been a suspension this long before either. The McSorley thing was different because he was a bum skating into retirement & Bettman was happy enough just to get rid of him. Here we're talking about one of the NHLs top stars. Anyone know if he lost his Gatorade deal?

Another reason why basing the term of his suspension on the games lost by Moore is that - what if Moore didn't get hurt at all? Or what if Moore just happened to be extremely brittle and was never able to play again? And given that Moore was a marginal player to begin with (the Avs didn't re-sign him), would he play in the NHL again anyway?

Unfortunately, as in this case, I think the NHL is behaving like it is reacting to the negative publicity about this thing and the outcome rather than as CR says, the act itself. If they did, they'd institute a rule whereby any player who sucker punches any other player gets an automatic 10 or 20 game suspension, just as they have for the first person off on a bench-clearing brawl. That seems to have a pretty strong deterrent effect (when was the last time we saw one?)...

[Mozy]

(when was the last time we saw one?)...

Beleive it or not i think it was Bert but yeah that seems like a reasonable idea all around if only it were in existance, and im pretty sure its safe to say that Moore is NEVER playing hockey again, nobody wants him, except maybe an expansion team, maybe the jets??

[Jyrki21]

There's been a fair bit of suggestion -- especially coming from the U.S. media -- that Bertuzzi got off lightly, but those people simply do not understand the BC or Canadian court systems. A first-time assaulter, who poses no discernible threat to the general public, would not often get slapped with much more. Perhaps a suspended sentence rather than a conditional discharge (means you do get a criminal record for a while, but not much else), but people who thought he would 'do serious time' have no conception of the criminal justice system.

Canadian judges are loathe to send people to jail... you have to do something pretty darn serious to go these days. To expect someone in Bertuzzi's position, but without the celebrity status or hockey context to have gotten a stiff punishment is unrealistic. Same goes for any punishment much stiffer than the bread-'n'-butter conditional discharge.

Moreover, the bozos who are indicating that BC judges somehow favored Bertuzzi or imposed a double-standard as compared to McSorley (disregarding the fact that it was a different charge and that there was never any pileup on top of Donald Brashear to increase the damage) are making an extremely serious and insulting allegation. These people -- most of whom have never set foot in BC, let alone a BC courtroom -- are suggesting that our judges are such rabid hockey fans, that they can't help but allow their fanship to interfere with their jobs in sentencing. Give me a break... our bench may have problems, and it may periodically be swayed by legitimate politics, but a teenage infatuation with sports stars is not one of them.

Bertuzzi got what anyone else is his position would have gotten. If Moore's injuries had not turned out so harsh -- as a combination of the punch, an unusually quick bout of unconsciousness, and the pileup started by Andrei Nikolishin -- we wouldn't have even thought twice about the incident. And the same goes for any Average Joe on the street.

[Cornuck]

Canadian judges are loathe to send people to jail...

Unlike down here, where 1 in 143 people is incarcertated.