CSI: BOOtuzzi

i was in my friend's kitchen in new york's chinatown when i found out the flames had signed todd bertuzzi. within an hour, i'd ruined duncan's vacation with the news and spent an unbelieveable amount of money on text messages, responding to queries regarding my thoughts on the subject.

i had decided to reserve my opinion until i'd seen the guy in action.

there's been some talk lately about big bert's advanced statistics, but one need only watch the guy on-ice to know that he deserves his new nickname, sore thumb. his neverending aimless floating in the defensive end is directly the cause of his inarguably terrible +/- [currently sitting at -12 !!!!!!!]. it's decidedly possible that bootuzzi can spell the word "backcheck" but he's made it abundantly clear that he does not understand its meaning...

on the third detroit goal, all flames players were engaging in board-battle except #7, who looked lost in front of the net. nobody took hudler coming off the bench because everyone was tying up guys already on the ice. everyone, that is, except bertuzzi who was essentially (at that point) doing a pretty decent job of screening kiprusoff....

on the fourth detroit goal, gio pinched on the wing with iginla and langkow both rooted firmly in front of the net. bertuzzi was in his usual no-man's-land, good-for-nothing area of the offensive zone, but instead of falling back into gio's spot on the blueline, he went for a hit on the opposite boards (where dion was covering). seconds later, when datsyuk broke out with only dion defending, bootuzzi was nowhere to be seen. infact, giordano ---who had been behind the redwings' net only seconds before--- was the next man back. where the hell was #7 ?!?!

the verdict is in: bootuzzi is useless.

other notes:
- gio gio gio. almost 22 minutes of icetime and some nice, hard, accurate shots directed at the net. congrats on the first goal of the year, pal. by the looks of things, it should be the first of many.

- with lombo back, prust spent the evening with andre roy in the pressbox. i didn't get a chance to watch the first two periods, so i'm not entirely sure how he performed.... he got 13 minutes of icetime, though, so it couldn't have been all bad...

-down in the QC, my boy johnnyA had a big 3 point night. it seems he's made his way up to the team's top line, getting a goal and an assist while playing with greentree & chucko. [of course, ryan mcgill seems to have his own line blender going on, because armstrong's other assist came while he was skating with pete vandermeer and adam cracknell]... anders eriksson also picked up a couple of helpers. hopefully his partner, brett palin, is only taking offensive notes from the aging swede....