The Trip

Glad to see some fortitude in the rebound win on Saturday night. Great to see Guerin get off the shnide too. You see in his quotes and in how he plays the game that he cares. Against Florida, he even checked on Bryan Allen after Guerin sent an off-balanced Allen into the boards. Then Guerin even let Allen fight him to get the heat back. That's all part of The Code. You can't explain The Code unless you know what The Code is. The Code is mysterious but actually exists.

The Florida game was just terrible. Nothing was working and Ricky was starting to get his version of happy feet when he tries to do too much. Florida is totally one of those teams the Isles should be taking points from; not leaving them on the table.

Saturday night in Tampa was quite different. Ricky again tried to do too much at times and when he gets to far out of his crease, he still makes me nervous. If you missed it, our boys were up 2-1 (Guerin and Hilbert) and killing a penalty when Rick went to play the puck in the trapezoid, slipped, and ended up playing the puck outside of area behind the net. That put the Isles down two men (delay of game) and Brad Richards scored to even it up at 2.

Mike Sillinger, who had lost his stick on the play where Richards scored, potted a power-play goal with 27.7 seconds left in overtime to give the Isles the win and to send the players' fathers and mentors home from the road with a solid win.

Interesting news about former Islander Todd Bertuzzi came out last week.

Bertuzzi testified to a grand jury that during the second intermission of a game on March 8, 2004, in which he attacked Steve Moore of the Avalanche (and broke three of Moore's vertebrae, ending the man's hockey career) that coach Marc Crawford, then coaching Bertuzzi and the Canucks, singled out Moore and told his team that Moore "must pay the price" for what he thought was a cheap hit on Vancouver star winger Markus Naslund.

Crawford, once rumored to be considered for an opening with the Islanders, is now the coach of the Los Angeles Kings. Crawford has apparently refused to talk to reporters about the allegation but issued this statement, which I got from the Canadian Press. It reads: "When this occurred more than three years ago, I responded to every possible question and inquiry about this unfortunate incident. With that in mind, I am not going to re-engage this process and comment further on these reports."

You can read whatever you want into the statement but to me, it is not exactly what I would expect from someone who wanted to clear their name.

Bertuzzi has also tried to settle with Moore out of court on a few occasions. Any good lawyer would try to do the same. Moore's team of lawyers is trying to push the case forward.

I find this case very interesting for a variety of reasons. The first is the most obvious: the NHLPA steps up to help Bertuzzi in the case, a member of the Players' Association. What's interesting is that they do not support or help Steve Moore, who was also a member of the NHLPA. I guess in these situations, the PA has to pick sides and to me, just a regular person with no ties to the PA, I'd think that they'd want to help the affronted party and not the perpetrator who ended another man's livelihood. But that's me. I live in the real world.

The other thing that interests me about this case is the weird way that other so-called Hockey People have stood up and defended Bertuzzi and for whatever reason, they keep giving him work. The league keeps pointing out that Bertuzzi was disciplined for seventeen months but the lockout took up 12 of those months and none of the players worked at all and you don't need a degree in high math to figure out that he really got a 5-month sentence. His GM in Vancouver at the time was Brian Burke, the same guy who overpaid for Bertuzzi in Anaheim when Bert was a free agent this off-season. Oh, yeah. And Bertuzzi's been injured a lot so he is getting paid to not play very much.

The whole thing is just weird and gives you a sick feeling when you think about it. Bertuzzi should not be rewarded for cowardly attacking a fellow NHLPA member from behind and knocking him out. He should pay and pay dearly. And yet, because of The Code--this one of silence--the attacker is being rewarded and the attack-ee is the one pissing uphill.

It just doesn't make sense.