Todd Bertuzzi–Steve Moore incident
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| Date | March 8, 2004 | |||||||||||||||
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| Arena | Rogers Arena (then GM Place) | |||||||||||||||
| City |
Vancouver, British Columbia,  Canada
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| Attendance | 18,630 | |||||||||||||||
The Todd Bertuzzi–Steve Moore incident (also called the Steve Moore incident, the Todd Bertuzzi incident, and the Bertuzzi–Moore incident) was a highly controversial event in ice hockey that happened during a National Hockey League (NHL) game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche on March 8, 2004. In the first period, Steve Moore fought Vancouver player Matt Cooke and served a 5-minute major penalty for fighting. The Avalanche would go on to build up a large lead in a fight-filled game. Late in the third period, Todd Bertuzzi was sent onto the ice. After failing to instigate Moore to fight, Bertuzzi skated after Moore, grabbed his jersey and punched him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. Bertuzzi landed on top of him, driving Moore face first into the ice followed by Moore's teammate Andrei Nikolishin and Bertuzzi's teammate Sean Pronger. Moore was knocked out and lay motionless for ten minutes before being carried off on a stretcher. The combination of the hit, fall, and piling-on had resulted in three fractured neck vertebrae, facial cuts and a concussion. The incident ended Moore's professional hockey career, and resulted in criminal assault charges against Bertuzzi, and a civil lawsuit against Bertuzzi and the Canucks. On August 19, 2014, it was reported the civil trial ended with all parties agreeing to a confidential settlement.
On February 16, 2004, during a game between Vancouver and Colorado, Avalanche center Steve Moore injured Canucks team captain Markus Näslund by hitting him hard in the head while Näslund was reaching for the puck ahead of him. Näslund, the league's leading scorer at the time, suffered a minor concussion and a bone chip in his elbow as a result of the hit, knocking him out of the lineup for three games. Referee Dan Marouelli did not call a penalty, ruling the hit legal, a judgment shared by the league upon further review after the game.
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