One of a kind
Easy-going Bertuzzi and the Bruins fit like a glove, but the big question is will he be a keeper?
The three Foligno kids were playing outside their lake house in Sudbury, Ontario, one summer morning when a strange man approached on a Jet Ski. He cut an intimidating profile.
Long, greasy locks underneath a backward cap. Missing front tooth. Dark shades. No shirt, tattoos everywhere, bright orange life vest. Throttle in one hand, fishing pole in the other — and now, he was hopping off his Sea-Doo Spark Trixx watercraft and onto the Folignos’ dock.
The kids were concerned. They called toward the house.
“Daaaaaad?”
Nick Foligno laughed as he told that story. Eventually, his children came to know Tyler Bertuzzi, who was stopping by on his way to catch some bass. They thought he was cool.
The Bruins enjoyed little more than a first impression of Bertuzzi, who arrived in a surprise March 3 trade with Detroit. The Bruins got a few weeks of the left-shot winger, who will be an unrestricted free agent on July 1, at half his salary-cap hit ($2.375 million) for their first-round pick in the 2024 draft and a fourth-rounder in 2025.
General manager Don Sweeney would love to re-sign Bertuzzi, though the price may be too high.
“We haven’t had any talks,” said Bertuzzi’s agent, Todd Reynolds, offering standard agent fare for this time of year. “Tyler was very positive about his time there and would be open to staying.”
No unrestricted free agent winger boasts recent production like that of Bertuzzi, who — before breaking both of his hands in the first half of this season — put up 20 or more goals in his last three healthy seasons, including a career-high 30-goal, 62-point year in 2021-22. Fellow UFA-to-be Max Domi was a 72-point scorer four years ago, the same year Andreas Athanasiou scored 30 goals. Alex Galchenyuk and Sean Monahan were productive in the mid-2010s, but not lately.
Bertuzzi, who turned 28 in February, will be in position to cash in on a long-term deal. The Bruins, who have a league-high $4.5 million in bonus overages and an $11.25 million extension kicking in for David Pastrnak, would have to clear significant cap space to compete with other suitors (such as Detroit, which should have plenty of room).
Bertuzzi’s arrival put a charge into the Spoked-B, no matter who his linemates were. He had 4 goals and 16 points in 21 regular-season games, and went off for 5-5—10 in the playoffs, tying Brad Marchand as the top-scoring Bruin in the team’s seven-game first-round collapse. Like the rest of the Bruins, he had little answer for the Panthers’ forecheck, coughing up several pucks that led to enemy chances.
But those who knew him expected nothing less than a front-line performance from the one they call “Playoff Bert.”
He played in 305 games for the Red Wings over seven seasons without making a playoff appearance, but Bertuzzi was a Calder Cup playoff MVP in 2017 with their AHL team in Grand Rapids.
“The guy you want on a playoff team,” said then-linemate and future Bruins teammate Tomas Nosek.
In 2014, Bertuzzi also was the driving force for his junior team, the OHL champion Guelph Storm, in their run to the Memorial Cup Final. Playing for coach Scott Walker — yes, for those who remember the 2009 Bruins, that Scott Walker
— Bertuzzi scored a tourney-best five goals in four games.
“It’s the type of game he plays,” said Detroit winger Robby Fabbri, his linemate on those OHL, AHL, and NHL teams. “It’s hard, in the corners, in front of the net. He always gives it that extra bit in the playoffs when everything’s on the line.”
Fabbri was the only one in the Red Wings dressing room the morning of March 3 when Bertuzzi walked in and started packing his bag. All Fabbri had to ask: Where?
“Boston,” came the reply. “Hey, best chance to go win a Stanley Cup,” was Fabbri’s encouragement.
“We had a hug and he got out of there pretty quick,” said Fabbri. “Didn’t need to say much.”
Free spirit
Bertuzzi quietly marches to his own beat.
“He’s a throwback,” Reynolds said. “In an era where there’s so much video and analysis, players watch and rewatch and rewatch, but he’s not that guy. He just goes out and plays.”
His unconventional jersey number — 59 — was met with a shrug when Detroit assigned it to him in 2013 rookie camp. Most players play with tape on the handles and blades of their sticks. Not Bertuzzi. The ends of his sticks are naked composite fiber, without the standard rubber plug to protect his hands. Some have tape on them, some don’t. Fabbri called them “bizarre.”
Bertuzzi shrugged. “I’m lazy,” he said.
“Psychotic,” corrected Bruins winger Jake DeBrusk, joking that the ends might be a subtle — and illegal — on-ice weapon. “Could be smart for scrums. You never know. Kinda scary.”
In 2021, Bertuzzi’s widely criticized decision to remain the NHL’s only unvaccinated player cost him $450,000 in fines for violating league COVID policies. The Red Wings supported his decision, though they suspended him without pay for the nine games he missed in Canada.
“We were behind him 100 percent,” Fabbri said.
Asked about it last month, Sweeney waved it away, calling it “a personal choice.”
In the summer, Bertuzzi would show up at Countryside Arena in Sudbury to skate with fellow local pros Nick and Marcus Foligno and Derek MacKenzie. Well, sometimes.
“You never knew if he was coming or going,” kidded Nick Foligno, who has followed Bertuzzi’s career since he joined the summer sessions as a 16-yearold. “But when he was out there, you realize the skill set and how smart he is as a hockey player, and how tenacious he is. He understands how to battle.”
That’s Bertuzzi. When he shows up, he shows up, and he doesn’t make a fuss.
“Doesn’t tape sticks,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “Doesn’t tie his dress shoes. Simpler the better.”
The first conversations with Sweeney and Montgomery, Bertuzzi said, weren’t long. Just do your thing, he was told.
“Yeah,” Bertuzzi said. “I’m easy.”
‘That’s the way he is’
He has always been a lowmaintenance person, said his mother, Angela Bertuzzi.
When the Red Wings drafted him in 2013 — earlier than the family expected, second round, No. 58 overall — he was hanging outside with his buddies, not sweating it out in Newark. Detroit executive Kris Draper placed a phone call. Bertuzzi accepted it, hugged his parents, and went back out to horse around.
Angela raised Tyler, 21-yearold brother Evan, and 14-yearold half-brother Matthew in Sudbury. Bertuzzi knows his biological father, but the man he calls his dad is Adrian Gedye, who accepted that role when Bertuzzi was 3. He and Angela split several years ago but remain amicable.
Former NHL power forward Todd Bertuzzi, Angela’s brother, also hails from Sudbury, though he spent most of his career in the Western Conference and is not particularly close with Tyler. That didn’t stop youth hockey parents from making crass remarks, Angela said, when her son landed in the penalty box.
He didn’t need a famous relative to get started in the game. Sudbury’s winter weather often dips well below zero degrees. Before becoming a rink rat, Bertuzzi learned to skate on rollerblades in his basement.
“He would be down there for hours,” said Angela, who works at Copper Cliff Public School, where her sons attended kindergarten through eighth grade. “I would leave supper at the top of the stairs. He would climb up to the top of the stairs with his rollerblades on, eat, and go back down.”
She was chomping her nails when, at 5 feet 5 inches and barely 140 pounds, Bertuzzi moved away at 16 and became a fighter as a rookie in Guelph. She was cheering him in Grand Rapids when he scored a thirdperiod tying goal in the deciding game, and in Boston, when he did the same thing in Game 7 (different results, obviously).
Bertuzzi’s tattoos are “all over the place,” Fabbri said, “legs, ribs, chest, he’s got it all” and include his mother’s birth date and a tiger on his upper arm that is a closely guarded secret. He also got a Team Canada logo at 16 — his mother had to sign the release form — when he was invited to national junior camp, though he couldn’t participate because of strep throat.
This June, he was hoping to get the kind of ink that Fabbri (a member of the 2019 Blues) has above his wrist, and Marchand (from 2011) has on his oblique.
Whether Bertuzzi wants to keep chasing the Stanley Cup in Boston is unknown. The fishing around here is best on the deep water rather than in one’s backyard.
He enjoyed his brief stay this spring. He and his wife, Ashley, and their daughter, Kinsley Lea, born last March, lived in the North End. They ate pasta and walked around daily, he said. They felt immediate acceptance.
“That’s the way he is,” Fabbri said. “No tape on his knob. Happy go lucky. Never a dull moment.”