FOURTH MAN ON THE PILE
When I left for Detroit, I shook some hands, I kissed Mrs. Journeyman goodbye, and I took a cab to the airport. It’s great to be called up, but it had been a while since I’d had butterflies in my gut; I figured I’d seen it all before. It doesn’t matter how many times you get called up, it still gets the juices flowing—and the nerves.
God, when I’m full of youthful exuberance, I get it wrong. And when I slip into world-weary resignation, I get it just as wrong. This time I was about to see something I’d never seen before. And experience something else I’d never see again. I couldn’t know that as I headed to Joe Louis Arena to meet up with the Canucks.
And here we go again. For the fifteenth time in my career, I was about to walk into yet another NHL locker room to introduce myself to an entire team. As excited as I was to get another shot in the NHL, I’m not going to lie to you: making the rounds to say “Hi, I’m Sean Pronger, nice to meet you” was getting old. I’m not sure if the guys sensed that, or perhaps it was because I was now considered a “veteran,” but they were great and went out of their way to spare me the trip around the locker room. It’s funny when someone like Trevor Linden comes up to introduce himself. “Hey Sean, Trevor Linden. Nice to meet you.”
As if I didn’t know who he was. He may have been just a little older than me but I had memories of watching Linden battling Joel Otto of the Calgary Flames in the playoffs as an eighteen-year-old. I didn’t know many of the guys on the team but there were some familiar faces. I’d played with Dan Cloutier in New York and Johan Hedberg in Manitoba, skated with Brad May a few times in the summer in Toronto, and remembered Mike Keane from some latesummer workouts in Winnipeg. That was about it.
At the time, Vancouver was battling for a division title so every game was important. I got a very businesslike feel as I walked around the room. There wasn’t a lot of chit-chat. It was mostly guys going about their business getting ready for a big game against the Red Wings. These guys knew what I knew: if you were not ready to play in Detroit, it would be a long and painful evening.
The irony certainly wasn’t lost on me that I was about to play my first game for the team that had drafted me thirteen years prior. I wasn’t naive enough to think this stint in the show was anything more than just a warm body filling a spot for an injured regular. Artem Chubarov was hurt and my number was lucky enough to get pulled out of the bingo call-up machine. Not that I cared how or why I got the call; I was just excited to get a chance to come full circle. As I said earlier, if you hang around long enough good things happen. Even if it was thirteen years, fifteen teams, and five leagues later, I was finally going to play for the team that wanted me first.
As I was lacing up my skates, the coach, Marc Crawford, walked in. He announced the starting lineup for the game.
“Boys, tonight’s starting lineup is the ‘famous brother’ line. Or the ‘other brother’ line.”
Gee, I wonder if I’m starting?
“Starting at left wing, Jarkko Ruutu. Starting at right wing, Fedor Fedorov. And starting at centre, Sean Pronger.”
I must admit, it was a pretty funny move by Crow.
Much like my first NHL game, my short-term goal was to play well enough to get a chance to play the next game. Which happened to be the next night in Columbus. My long-term goal was to play well enough to catch the charter back with the team to Vancouver after the Columbus game. Hey, goals are goals, and it’s far easier to achieve them if they are somewhat realistic.
We ended up losing to the Red Wings 3–1. I played as well as could be expected and chipped in with an assist. I figured that since it was back-to-back games and we were playing Columbus there wouldn’t be any unwelcome players from the farm team to take my spot and ruin my long-term plans.
It was Saturday night in Columbus for my first game back with the Blue Jackets since demanding a trade out of town. I was ready for the boo birds. Yeah right! I could only wish I got booed. Such pleasantries are reserved for my brother (at twenty-nine rinks a year). At least some sort of murmur would show that the fans cared. I’m 99 percent sure most of the fans had no idea I was playing for the Canucks, or that I was no longer with the Blue Jackets, or even who the hell I was for that matter.
Sean Pronger Night at Nationwide Arena ended up being a winner for the visitors and I couldn’t even celebrate because I was waiting to see if I was taking a cab or the team bus to the airport I knew all too well. Thankfully, I wasn’t given any cab fare. Phase two was to actually get on the plane. I’m happy to say phase two was a success. Off to Vancouver for a big tilt with the Colorado Avalanche, the division title still up for grabs.
I was thrilled to finally get the opportunity to play an NHL home game in a Canadian city. The city was buzzing for a number of reasons. The top two teams in the Northwest were about to go head to head, the trade deadline was the next day, and of course the playoffs weren’t too far down the road.
That’s all just hockey, though. Sports. What happened next was front-page news. I’ve thought long and hard about the night of March 8, 2004, and wondered if I could have missed something leading up to the game that would have given me a clue as to what would eventually happen. And you know what? There isn’t anything. Sure, knowing what I do now, I could easily look back and try to read something into words that were said and connect the dots, but really that would be me trying to force a connection. The fact of the matter is that what took place is an age-old hockey equation.
Player A does something to player B. Player C does something to player A for doing something to player B.
That’s it. If you don’t like it, you probably don’t like hockey— because that stuff is going on all the time. Only this one time, the result was far worse than what usually occurs. I’m not trying to say what Todd Bertuzzi did was right. And I’m not saying Steve Moore deserved what he got. I’m just pointing out that what Bert did wasn’t much different from what a number of players have done over the years.
On February 16, 2004, Steve Moore delivered an open-ice hit on Markus Naslund that knocked the Canucks captain out of the lineup for three games with a concussion.
On March 8, 2004, Todd Bertuzzi tried to get Moore to fight in a game, and when the Avalanche forward wouldn’t oblige Bertuzzi delivered a punch to the side of Moore’s head, rendering him unconscious before falling on him on the ice and knocking him out of the lineup—and hockey—for good.
Obviously this is a very simplistic view of the events, but I’m not here to argue intent or deliver a verdict. I’m just going to tell you the way I saw the mess.
Moore’s hit on Naslund is key to the whole thing for me, because as you well know by now, my ability was more Moore than Naslund (I was picked fifty-first overall in ’91; Moore was picked fifty-third overall in ’98). The 2003–04 season was basically Moore’s first full season in the NHL (he played only thirteen AHL games that season), and he was no doubt still trying to make an impression. Moore was averaging thirteen minutes a game that season, and believe me, that’s not a tonne of time to stand out. When you’re a journeyman or a guy trying to make his way into the league you do what you can to get noticed.
As a forward, hard work only gets you so far with a coach; sooner or later, you need to score a goal or provide some energy with a good offensive shift or a big hit or fight. Put it this way: if I saw a guy with his head down cruising through the middle of the ice I knew I had to try to lay him out, because if I didn’t the coaches would be more than happy to point out the fact that I’d passed up the hit. And if I didn’t want to make that hit, then they would surely find someone who would. I’m not talking about doing anything illegal (remember, Rule 48 was not in play when I was around); it was just about finishing my check—something you’re taught to do from the time you’re a kid. So I’m wondering if Moore saw Naslund in a vulnerable position in the neutral zone and thought he better try to separate him from the puck, by any means, or else he may not get another chance to do so in that game.
I can guarantee you that Colorado’s head coach at the time, Tony Granato, did not tell Moore to elbow Naslund and concuss him, but I’d be willing to bet that Moore was encouraged by his coaches in the AHL and NHL to finish his checks. It makes me laugh sometimes how people say the player always has a choice as to whether or not he makes a hit. It’s not that easy. I’ll concede that there are times when you absolutely know a guy is in a vulnerable position and you should ease up. Like when his back is to you five feet from the boards, or you come from the blindside and headhunt when the shoulder is as open as the chin. But it’s not always that simple. Many times it’s a split-second decision as to whether or not you’re going to make that hit. Sometimes your shoulder is lined up with his shoulder and he ducks at the last minute and ends up taking it in the head. Hockey is an incredibly fast game with big humans looking to make big hits. Shit happens.
And don’t forget your high school physics. When you run into a guy, he’s hitting you as hard as you’re hitting him. So you’re going to brace yourself. And that means you’re going to be as solid as you can be. That’s what makes a big hit. It’s not necessarily that one guy is faster than the other, or even that one guy is bigger than the other (though both things make a big hit bigger—just ask Andreas Dackell about what it’s like to get between Eric Lindros and the puck). Think about it—some of the best open-ice hitters are small guys. How many guys did Mike Peca absolutely crush? And Peca is smaller than the average accountant. The biggest hit Zdeno Chara probably ever took was from little Darcy Tucker, who ran the big guy over. What I’m saying is that you can’t expect guys to ease up or not hit players who aren’t ready. The whole point of hitting is being more ready than the other guy. That’s what bodychecking is. Plus, coaches in any contact sport will tell you the same thing: it’s when you’re not going 100 percent that you get hurt. In other words, easing up can be as dangerous as lowering the boom (at least for the guy doing the lowering).
Again, I can’t tell you what Steve Moore intended to do on February 16, 2004, but I can make a pretty good guess, since I know what I would have done if I’d had his spot in the lineup: I’d say he was just doing what he’s expected to do. As I said earlier, if you’re not scoring goals or making plays, you better be doing something to help the team. And that something can be taking the body when you get a chance. And if you have a chance to lay the body on the leading scorer of the Canucks (and the league), you better take it. However, it’s a double-edged sword. If you don’t, Tony Granato and Rick Tocchet will surely notice. If you do, you can bet your Gretzky rookie card the Canucks will notice. In fact, after Moore ran over Naslund he seemed to have been noticed by everyone but the referees, and no penalty was called on the play. Coaches always want the calls to go their way, but this bit of officiating seems to have really struck at Marc Crawford’s sense of justice. Crawford was visibly upset after the game when the cameras and the microphones were on: “It just mystifies me that this happens in this league. They talk about players not having respect for players. Do they not have respect for the leading scorer in the league? When does that come? When does that come? It could have been an obstruction call; it could have been an elbowing call. It could have been anything. Instead, they call absolutely nothing. I have no idea. It was a hardfought game, nobody is talking about that but that was a cheap shot by a young kid on a captain, the leading scorer in the league and we get no call. We get no call. That is ridiculous. How does that happen? That’s got to be answered. Why is there no respect from those referees for the leading scorer in the league? I do not understand that for the life of me. I don’t care if they fine me, I really don’t. That needs to be answered.”
Crawford was pissed. But he was more pissed at the officials than he was at Moore. And the Canucks were upset because their captain had to be helped off the ice after a borderline play. Todd Bertuzzi and Markus Naslund were best friends and teammates, so Bert probably took it harder than most. When a rookie takes a run at a star player it’s usually frowned upon by the star player’s team. And by frowned upon I mean it’s beating time. And if the hit is questionable AND it knocks the star player out of the game then it’s time to arm yourself, because you have a war coming. This is usually how brawls start. I was actually surprised one didn’t.
As everyone knows, I wasn’t an intimidating presence on the ice. I was more likely to share a beer with a guy than give him the Mark Messier stare, but there are some things that I believe in. To an extent I believe in street justice. I believe if one of your star players gets drilled, whether it’s legal or illegal, something should be done. The reason I say this is it needs to be made very clear, to the opposing team and the rest of the league, that it is not open season on our top players and there will be a response if it happens. You want opposing players to think twice about throwing their body around with reckless abandon. This is not to say that they’ll stop doing it. Nor should they. It actually takes a lot of courage to lay a guy out when you know you’ll be a wanted man. I know the feeling of having a guy lined up and having that little voice in the back of your head (call it the “self-preservation” voice) wondering if making this hit is worth it. Is it worth having the other team’s goon chase you around for the rest of the night? Most of the time I ignored the voice, but it did make me take a second to think about it. The idea of making a statement is to hopefully create enough of a deterrent that your best players are free to play at their best. The last thing you need is your top guys being intimidated because certain players on the other team are trying to run them out of the building. There are a couple of different ways to send this particular message when your guy gets hammered. One is to go out and run their star player. This is effective but sometimes difficult depending on line matchups. The other is to grab the offending party and try to lay a beating on him. Ideally, whatever path you decide on, it should happen immediately. To let things linger is a recipe for disaster. Needless to say, nothing was done to Moore after he hit Naslund.
So what happened the next time the two teams matched up? Well, actually nothing. In the Canucks’ next game versus the Avalanche Todd Bertuzzi had six minutes in penalties, but none against Moore. Markus Naslund had a goal and two assists in what was a 5–5 tie. And Moore played just over seven minutes recording no penalties, no shots, no hits, no takeaways, no giveaways, and was a minus-1. If payback was on the mind of the Canucks, then they clearly forgot. And don’t even talk to me about Brad May’s supposed bounty on the head of Moore. I’m told May said that to reporters with a smirk on his face as a reference to the cult hockey movie Slap Shot and wasn’t serious at all. May didn’t even fight that game; the only tilt was between Wade Brookbank and Peter Worrell. The game was more important than any grudge, and since the game was close no one was willing to act up or be a part of any funny business.
On March 8, however, the game was not close. And what was supposed to be an unbelievable game between two teams competing for a division title and jockeying for home ice in the playoffs turned into a blowout. It was 5–0 after the first period. This is never a good thing. It’s especially bad when the two teams are division rivals. These are the kind of games where stupid things happen, messages get sent, and fireworks sometimes explode. For the record, I’ve never enjoyed playing in blowouts. I’ve been in my fair share and they’re not that fun, on either side. If you’re on the losing side, well, no one likes to get embarrassed. I don’t care if it’s a girls’ soccer game, if the score gets too lopsided it’s going to get chippy. If it’s a bunch of supercompetitive athletes with their livelihoods on the line, there is going to be just that much more frustration to boil over. And even if your temper is under control, you may feel that it’s your job to “send a message” or salvage some pride for your team by showing everyone that if you’re going down, you’re going down swinging.
And if you’re on the winning side, you’re skating with your head on a swivel, knowing that the other team has absolutely no incentive to play the puck and every incentive to run you through the glass. Not a fun way to finish a game.
I’m convinced it was the score that allowed the game to get out of hand. If the game was close, with all that was riding on it, nothing would’ve happened. It was not the pre-game talk by Crawford and surely not by some alleged bounty. I was in the dressing room for Crawford’s pre-game talk and I don’t remember anything specific at all. That’s how powerful it was. If Crawford said Moore “must pay the price,” he said it only after saying Joe Sakic, Milan Hejduk, Alex Tanguay, Rob Blake, Paul Kariya, Teemu Selanne, and John-Michael Liles must pay the price first. Unless some people were pulled into a secret room and given instructions I didn’t see anything to lead me to believe there was some sort of conspiracy. Believe me, if there was, it wouldn’t be Todd Bertuzzi getting pulled in, it would be someone more expendable, someone like yours truly.
Todd Bertuzzi wanted Steve Moore to fight for what he did to Markus Naslund. Yes, Moore fought Matt Cooke earlier in the game, but Bertuzzi obviously didn’t think that throwing a few whips with Cooke settled the tab. And you know what? I didn’t either. In my opinion, Moore should have just taken his medicine, accepted whatever challenge came his way, and got it over with. I remember a game a few years prior when Darius Kasparaitis drilled Eric Lindros for one of his many concussions. It was a huge, highlight-reel hit, and perfectly clean (in those days). The next time those two teams played, Kasparaitis fought three times. I’m sure he just figured he might as well get it over with. And that was it. He answered the bell, gained more respect from his teammates, and, almost as important, earned the respect of the Philadelphia Flyers.
I’m no hero and I’m under no illusion that I’m a tough guy, but right before Bertuzzi engaged Moore I tried to get Moore to fight. I wasn’t mad at him. I actually felt bad for him since our entire team was chomping at the bit to drop the gloves with him. That’s the way hockey works. I would have dropped my shoulder into Naslund if I had been Moore and caught him with his head down. And I would have fought Moore for doing something that I know I would have done myself. I’ve been on both sides of the equation. Remember my first game as a pro? I had to drop the gloves to defend myself after delivering a clean hit. It didn’t take me long to figure out the way things work. If you do anything that takes a bit of life out of the other team, you’d better be ready for the guys on the other bench to come get a bit of their momentum back. The night in question was only my third game with the Canucks and I knew that sticking up for our captain was the right thing to do. Even though I wasn’t a part of the game where Moore knocked out Markus Naslund I was prepared to do my part for the team. Again, it may not be right, but it is the culture of our sport.
Payback has been, still is, and always will be a part of the NHL. And if you don’t like to think of it as revenge then you can phrase it as keeping guys accountable for their actions with physical acts. I don’t care if Gary Bettman puts a second type of instigator rule in the book; guys are always going to want to make other guys pay for their misdeeds. The players want to police themselves. In a CBC/NHLPA players’ poll that was released in 2010, 98 percent of the players polled said they didn’t want fighting out of the game. Why is that? Is it because they like to watch fights? Is it because they like staged fights? Maybe, but it’s more because they want players to think twice about doing something stupid, or else. I know it’s archaic, but that’s just the way it is. And yes, I am old-school—I agree with the 98 percent in that one.
The way I see it, Moore and Bertuzzi were terribly unlucky with the way things turned out. I saw hundreds of sucker punches in my career and exactly none of them had the result of that night. Watch a few junior-B or ECHL games and you’ll see a couple of punches like the one Bertuzzi delivered. That doesn’t make punching someone a noble deed, but it does show that when Bert went after Moore he wasn’t doing something he would have thought was dangerously out of the norm. Does anyone claim to be troubled by Tie Domi’s sucker punch that rang Ulf Samuelsson’s bell? People loved it then and still laugh when they talk about it.
The shift I’ll never forget: A Colorado defenceman (I believe it was Adam Foote) had the puck and was setting up behind his own net for a controlled breakout. I came from the bench on a line change and sprinted to the left hash mark to cover the Avalanche right-winger, who happened to be Steve Moore. When I realized it was Moore who was right in front of me, and knowing the score was 8–2, I thought I’d try to get him to fight me. I asked him to go and gave him a whack. He didn’t take the bait. The Avs broke out of their end and started heading toward our end. As I was backchecking I focused on the puck but I could hear the crowd start to buzz. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone grabbing a Colorado player. All of a sudden there was a roar from the crowd and I realized what had happened. Someone got Moore. I saw a couple of bodies hit the ice with a Canucks player on top of Moore. I started to skate over to the pileup and saw another Avalanche player, Andrei Nikolishin, jump on the back of our guy, who I realized was Bertuzzi.
So I jumped on Nikolishin’s back to peel him off. As I was on top of Nikolishin I heard him screaming for us to get off. Through the pile of bodies I could make out Moore on the bottom. I noticed a pool of blood growing around his head. This isn’t good. We immediately got off the pile. Moore didn’t move. I was so focused on Moore that I didn’t even realize the chaos going on around me. Brad May was engaged in his third fight of the night. Some of the Avalanche players were in shock and some were going nuts. The Avalanche coaching staff was going ballistic. As I was getting my bearings I noticed that Bertuzzi was nowhere to be found. Apparently, Bertuzzi was quickly removed from the pile, escorted off the ice and out of the arena. (The next time I saw Bert was four years later at a charity hockey game in Anaheim.)
An eerie silence came over the building in the aftermath. That tends to happen when someone lies on the ice for an extended period of time without moving and is taken away on a stretcher and then in an ambulance. I think if a vote had been taken the players and fans would have called the game right there. No one wants to see anyone get taken off the ice like that. I think both teams were so rattled that the remainder of the game was relatively uneventful.
It was a bizarre scene in the dressing room afterwards. There were mobs of media dying to speak to Bertuzzi and find out what exactly happened. The problem was no one knew where he was. So that left reporters having to wait until the following day to get the story. I must admit I was a tad curious myself.
Lost in the chaos was the fact that it was the trade deadline the very next day. The following morning, as I was walking into the dressing room, I was alerted to a team meeting held by General Manager Brian Burke. Burkie gave us an update on Moore and that he was still in the hospital. He gave us an update on Bert, which wasn’t much. He then informed everyone that they traded for Geoff Sanderson and Marc Bergevin. About thirty seconds after the meeting I was given the tap to go see Crawford in his office. And that was the end of my Vancouver Canucks comeback and, as it turns out, my NHL career.
I don’t want this chapter to be a downer in what is otherwise a lighthearted book. However, since this incident occurred during my final game in the league, I felt it had to be addressed.
I’ll finish things with this story. A few years after the night in question I went to watch the Ducks versus the Wild in Anaheim. My brother was a teammate of Bertuzzi’s at the time and Steve Moore’s brother Dominic was a member of the Wild. I spent the entire night with my own personal “iso” camera on Moore wondering if he would ever try to do something to Bertuzzi. And you know what? He never went near him. Never tried to slash him, hit him, or rub him out along the boards. Maybe that was Dominic’s way of saying he didn’t agree with the NHL’s general acceptance of frontier justice, and wouldn’t be a part of it.
I’ve had many years to try to make sense of what happened that night. One player never stepped on the ice again, and the other never returned to the player he once was. On one side you have a player whose career was cut short by an ugly attack and on the other side you have someone who made a devastating split-second decision in defence of his friend and teammate that went horribly wrong. I’m not sure how this will all play out in the courts. Not that it matters to Moore or his family, but one thing I do know is that if Todd Bertuzzi could go back in time there isn’t a doubt in my mind he would just let go of Moore’s jersey and skate away.
After I arrived back in the ’Peg I was greeted by the whole Moose team asking whether or not a bounty was actually placed on Moore’s head. Apparently, the fellas were reading too much of the National Enquirer. While I attempted to make up a couple farfetched stories about the incident, no one believed me. Apparently I’m not that good at fiction. But someone else thought he was.
Dallas Eakins had a software program that allowed him to manipulate news stories on the Internet and make them look authentic. He found an article about the Steve Moore/Todd Bertuzzi incident that he liked and made some changes to the story. He was able to change the whole context of the article to make it look like Moore was injured when I jumped on the pile. He tried to get me to bite on the story. And he may have got me, except he just couldn’t keep his poker face long enough and he cracked. However, since he did such a masterful job I didn’t want it to go to waste. I knew just where to send it. Big Jim is always looking out for his boys, which makes him a perfect target. I emailed him the story and waited for his response. A couple hours later I got it: “Sean, I think you need to get a lawyer.”
Hook, line, and sinker!
The Manitoba Moose’s season came to an end and we didn’t qualify for the playoffs. There’s nothing worse than a long summer for a hockey player. The good news for me was that I had a new addition to the family. Vann Atticus Pronger was born April 2, 2004. Interestingly, this was the same date as my last goal in North America. His delivery was a cakewalk compared to his sister’s, so I was able to be at the hospital for his birth in the morning, make sure everyone was OK, and still be able to make it for the game that night. I’m sure you’ve heard of players putting money on the board when they play one of their old teams; imagine how much you have to put up when you have a kid that day! Ouch!
If you’re ever going to miss the playoffs, having a newborn is a great way to help you remember what is truly important in life.
Since the Vancouver Canucks qualified for the playoffs there was an outside chance that I could be called up. The Canucks were aware that I had a brand new baby so they didn’t want to pull me away from my family unless they absolutely had to. So, they proposed that I remain in Winnipeg but skate on my own. As great as that sounds, it’s difficult to try to stay ready for NHL playoff action when you’re skating by yourself. So I recruited some people to skate with me. In goal was our fifty-plus-year-old medical trainer, Ross Hodgkinson; up front was Winnipeg Sun journalist Ken Wiebe; and anchoring our blue line was Vaughn Hockey equipment rep Jorg Achenbach. What a lineup! This collection of Black Aces was trying to help me stay in game shape in case Vancouver needed someone to shut down Jarome Iginla and company. I guess that made me the Ace of the Black Aces! As it turns out, it was all for naught. The Canucks were eliminated in seven games by the Calgary Flames and I was spared the embarrassment of trying to keep up with NHLers after skating with my new men’s league team.