Last week, the former Avalanche defenseman was talking in the same General Motors Place visiting dressing room where he was the most outspoken of the Colorado players after Todd Bertuzzi’s attack on teammate Steve Moore. In fact, he was about the only Avalanche player who would say much at all after the game that night.
“We’re not supposed to say,” Morris said that night. But he went on to call it “the worst thing I’ve seen. … That was a premeditated act. We got a guy hurt because of that.
“It was disgusting. There’s no other word for that. I haven’t seen anything like that in my seven years of playing hockey.”
His trade to Phoenix for Ossi Vaananen and Chris Gratton was announced the next morning.
But after the Coyotes’ morning skate Thursday, Morris said he agrees with the view that the matter is closed.
Morris said that Bertuzzi has “done a good job of handling it. It’s over with now. Well, not with you guys, but … I think he’s handled it very professionally. There were a lot of emotions involved at the time.”
With the ‘Yotes: Morris is playing well for the Coyotes, and has drawn praise from that rookie coach behind the Phoenix bench – Wayne Gretzky.
“When I got traded here, it was a different situation,” Morris said of the Coyotes. “We had a real young team, just trying to scratch together a few wins at the end of the year. Colorado made their trade for their (playoff) run, and I got sent into a rebuilding thing. They’ve done a great job here of bringing in young guys. We’ve got two young defensemen (rookies Keith Ballard and Zbynek Michalek) as good as anybody in the league.”
Backfires: Ballard, 22, is the former University of Minnesota star whose rights the Avalanche sent to the Coyotes in the same trade. And if you keep tracking back, it all goes back to the deal in which Colorado sent Chris Drury to Calgary for Morris.
Though Drury’s regular-season numbers never have been stunning, and he is off to a slow start with the Buffalo Sabres this season, the Avalanche has missed Drury and his winning aura.
