Crawford: “What, me order a hit on Steve Moore?”
"If I can't see it, maybe my culpability can't see me!"
In one of those stories that’s becoming more and more like a Kennedy assasination-type conspiracy theory, Marc Crawford has now claimed in court that he did not, in fact, order Todd Bertuzzi to go out and pummel Steve Moore.
Great. Just what every party involved needed was for this to go on longer.
“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,” states Crawford’s third-party defence.
“After being directed to get off the ice, Bertuzzi was on his way back to the bench when, 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, was a direct disobedience of the instruction that Bertuzzi had been given from the bench to get off the ice, and was a violation of Bertuzzi’s duties which Crawford could not be expected to have reasonably anticipated, let alone control.”
This also contradicts the previous reports that Crawford asked someone in the Canucks dressing room to make Moore pay for an earlier hit on captain Markus Naslund.
Obviously Bertuzzi and Bertuzzi alone is ultimately responsible for the attack on Moore, but this, “Who, me?” attitude from Crawford is just stupid. We know Moore was targeted by the Canucks. Ask Brad May about the Reg Dunlop-like bounty. So many people have said that he called for the heads of individual players and that he wanted to send a message that it’s tough to swallow, more than four years after the fact, that he didn’t.
As a friend of mine just said, this Bertuzzi non-story is distracting us from the Sundin non-story. It’s all a consequence of this being Aug. 19. You wouldn’t hear a word about this if it were Jan. 19.
