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ST. PAUL, Minn. - With the crooked teeth, shadowy face and sinister stare, Vancouver’s Todd Bertuzzi plays the part of the hockey villain perfectly.
Fans in Minnesota sure haven’t forgotten him.
Accumulating five shots on goal, two assists and plenty of jeers from Wild fans in Sunday’s NHL All-Star game, Bertuzzi became one of the rare guys who actually gets booed while playing for the home team.
Though rooting for Bertuzzi’s Western Conference squad, the crowd of 19,434 was quick to remind the 6-foot-3, 245-pound right wing that he’s not well-regarded in this state.
Booed during warmups. Booed in the player intros. Booed almost every time he touched the puck. Even the mere mention of Vancouver — when the Canucks’ pregame video was shown on the scoreboard with others from around the league — brought boos from this passionate group.
“I just think it’s fun leaving an impression on people like that,” Bertuzzi said.
This isn’t a long-running feud, since the Wild have only been in the league since the 2000-01 season. In fact, it actually only dates back to last spring, when underdog Minnesota rallied from a 3-1 deficit in a Western Conference semifinal series and beat Vancouver in seven games.
That was a physical, fight-filled matchup that instilled in Minnesotans a hatred of the Canucks — especially Bertuzzi, who brings a unique combination of brawn and offensive ability to the ice.
Wild fans saw, basically, a big bully.
“He’s not very popular here, but that’s great because that’s what rivalries are made of,” said Vancouver coach Marc Crawford, who was in charge of the Western Conference team on Sunday. “We had a good playoff series. They won it, and obviously they remember a few of our players.”
Bertuzzi was matched with teammate Markus Naslund and Colorado’s Joe Sakic on a line that accounted for three West goals in a 6-4 loss to the Eastern Conference.
Sakic, the game’s most valuable player for scoring three times, jokingly asked Bertuzzi what he had said to the fans here to warrant such a not-so-warm greeting.
“We played here in the playoffs too, and they treat us pretty good,” Sakic said. “But not him.”
Bertuzzi, a 46-goal scorer in 2002-03, has 16 goals this season and is tied with Sakic for seventh in the league with 35 assists. He wasn’t exactly taken aback by the reaction he got.
“When you play a team in the playoffs and you build that kind of rivalry,” Bertuzzi said, “that’s what you expect.”
When they weren’t good-naturedly jeering Bertuzzi and anything Canucks-related, the crowd was cheering hard for the two Wild players in the game — goalie Dwayne Roloson and defenseman Filip Kuba.
Roloson, who stopped six of seven shots he faced in the third period, was asked about the way his fans treated one of his Western teammates.
“That’s the way they have to be,” he said, smiling. “It’s a love-hate relationship. Bertuzzi knows it, and he likes it. ... If he wasn’t a good player, they wouldn’t boo him, for sure.”
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Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
Doron Lamb hit a 3-pointer with 3:18 left to put No. 1 Kentucky ahead to stay, and the Wildcats took a big step toward a Southeastern Conference regular-season title by beating Vanderbilt 69-63 Saturday night for their 17th straight win.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.