Story behind Bertuzzi deal « Thread Started on Jul 23, 2009, 10:00pm »
QUEBEC CITY
The news of Todd Bertuzzi's trade passed with little fanfare, much to the relief of Nordiques management. There had been whispers of a potential PR disaster looming, and it turns out the bizarre sighting of bottled blood in Bertuzzi's locker at the Pepsi Coliseum last spring was one of the deciding factors.
"Yes, Todd has a bit of a problem," slobbered Nords' PR rep Pierre Riviere. "We asked the trainers to pretend it was a prank last year, but it turns out that playing in Quebec was just too much temptation for Todd."
When asked to elaborate, Riviere remarked that with the All-Star break looming he had asked Bertuzzi to meet with him for a discussion of something that happened during last year's playoffs.
Noting he thought it was common knowledge that Bertuzzi is addicted to the blood of infants, Riviere stated that, "Todd could not keep himself from the baby seal hunt here in our province. On off days, he was darting away to tag along with Newfies and the night we were eliminated he didn't even fly home with the team - he had booked a helicopter to take him right to the hunt. Those bottles of blood really were his last spring. I asked him to be honest with me and, to his credit, he admitted the cravings for babies' blood just will not go away.
"We decided to let Vancouver deal with it; sure, there is lots of wildlife in B.C. but we were offered a good trade," referring here to the return of Kyle Cumiskey, Rostislav Olesz, and Peter Budaj, "so it would have been foolish to keep Todd around and make all the rest of the guys have to watch him do his thing. Players were afraid to bring their kids to the rink during playoffs last year, it just made sense to get rid of the guy. He was brought in by old management, and we've been waiting awhile to get rid of him"