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THE GREAT CANADIAN MALE

TODD BERTUZZI – The King of Mooks

Text: PHILIP PREVILLE

Intro | SEP 03

There are two types of hockey players in the NHL. First are the truly gifted, like Mario Lemieux, with so much natural talent they don’t need to work out every day. Then there’s everyone else: the mooks, who take what talent they have, develop it through countless hours of practice, supplement it with pith and vinegar and make something of themselves. Mooks range from 50-goal scorers to grinders to goons; what they have in common is hard work.

Todd Bertuzzi is king among mooks. For all his success, none of it comes easy. He calls his daily routine one long groundhog day: the grind of practices and workouts; the packing and unpacking and donning and removing of 10 kilograms of equipment; the blur of hotels and airports and fetid locker rooms. He is away from his family for long stretches. It upsets him when his kids get sick while he’s on the road.

Then there’s the media, who merely compound the tedium. "We played last night and lost, and then we did the interviews," he told me back in March after his Vancouver Canucks lost 4-3 to Dallas. "This morning we come back, we practise, and then the media come in, and what, what possibly, what is there to ask? What changed from last night to this morning? I respect that they have a job to do and newspapers to sell, but still, I never understood that."

In any man’s life, there comes a time when he loathes going into the office; for Bertuzzi that time is now. He is at the top of his game and his team is successful, but he wishes it didn’t take so much out of him.

If Don Cherry were Dr. Frankenstein, he’d have built Todd Bertuzzi to be his hockey monster. Bertuzzi is big: 245 pounds packed into a 6' 3" frame. He plays with a mean streak but is remarkably nimble, notching 46 goals last season. When he’s not scoring, he uses his size and strength to create open ice for teammates and havoc for opponents. Last spring, even when he wasn’t scoring, coach Marc Crawford double-shifted him throughout the Canucks’ playoff run, riding him hard.

Bertuzzi says he’s a morning person, which is hard to swallow from a guy who looks like he was born on the wrong side of the bed. He is ruggedly handsome, which is another way of saying that brute strength and athletic prowess really can change public perceptions of beauty. He wears a natural scowl even when he is perfectly relaxed, which makes him intimidating to anyone who isn’t on a first-name basis. Even the Vancouver media, who see him every day, tiptoe around him in the locker room. He might as well have bolts sticking out of his neck.

Other than that, he’s a regular guy. He was born in 1975 in Sudbury. He prefers Tim Hortons coffee. He has a weakness for doughnuts and Coffee Crisps. He doesn’t cook except to barbecue. He never shaves on game days. He married his junior hockey sweetheart, Julie, at the age of 19; they now have two young children. The coolest thing he ever owned was a Ferrari, which he replaced with a Hummer once he started a family. And he plays golf with a five handicap.

Todd Bertuzzi’s favourite film is Braveheart – a cult favourite among hockey players, which gives you some idea of how they see themselves. It’s the story of a Scottish mook who became a warrior, put his people first, spent his life drawing and shedding blood for the cause of victory and became a legend. It helps explain why every time the Canucks take to the ice, Bertuzzi is always the last man out. The clichéd explanation would be that he is putting his team first, but that’s not the whole truth. By going last every time, he elevates himself within the group. He becomes Braveheart.

Insightful, perhaps, but Bertuzzi doesn’t care. He’s not much for head-shrinking. "I just like coming last," he says. But the Braveheart analogy also helps explain why he and his team had such a difficult playoff run. If the rink starts to resemble the battlefields of 14th-century Scotland, you’re probably taking things too seriously. Bertuzzi, like most of his teammates, looked like he was holding his stick too tight during the Canucks’ second-round meltdown against Minnesota. Maybe he thought it was a battle axe.

No wonder work gets him down. No mere mortal can stand being Braveheart for more than 10 months of the year. Bertuzzi spends his off-seasons in Kitchener, Ont., surrounded by family and golf buddies who have nothing to do with hockey. "Which is good," he says. "With that group, I’m just Bert. That’s how I like to live my life."

He enjoys golf so much, he built his own 18-hole course. "There’s nothing better than getting up in the morning knowing you’re teeing off at 8 a.m. That’s a groundhog day I could live with for sure." A little more Bert and a little less Braveheart might make the groundhog days of hockey easier to grind out too. [ ]

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