Tyler Bertuzzi brings different style, leadership to Blackhawks: ‘He just does Bert’

LAS VEGAS — As a Red Wings fan growing up and playing in the Detroit area, Frank Nazar had no shortage of forwards to model his game after. Dylan Larkin and Andreas Athanasiou had the same kind of human-cannon speed bursts that separated Nazar — physically and metaphorically — from his peers. Henrik Zetterberg and Frans Nielsen were dynamic two-way centers who played the game the right way. And the incomparable Pavel Datsyuk was just about every hockey player’s favorite hockey player.

But as the Chicago Blackhawks young center hit his teenage years and really came into his own as a player and a prospect, one player in particular always caught Nazar’s eye: Tyler Bertuzzi.

There was the time Bertuzzi scored four goals in the 2021-22 season opener against Tampa Bay, with Nazar in the building, working out at the Little Caesars Arena practice facility. There were all the greasy goals Bertuzzi got around the net, planting himself in the corner of the goalmouth and refusing to budge. And there was the legendary development-camp goal in the summer of 2016, when a precocious Bertuzzi came in one-on-one against a defenseman, chopped the stick out of his hand with a backhand swipe, slid the puck between his legs, double-deked and roofed a backhander.

“I loved watching him,” Nazar said. “Every night it was like, this is insane. This guy’s nasty.”

Bertuzzi’s game is nothing like Nazar’s. Bertuzzi is all grit and grime, muscling his way to the net and jamming his stick blade against his skate so he can essentially legally kick in goals. Nazar is all speed and skill, dancing his way through defenders and firing off sneaky wristers and big one-timers.

But Nazar can’t help but admire Bertuzzi — his work ethic, his willingness to do the ugly work in the hard areas, his tenacity on the forecheck. And he can’t help but be inspired by it all.

“He’s actually insanely good at forcing turnovers on their D, stealing pucks — it’s pretty nuts,” Nazar said. “I never realized that about him. I watched him a lot when he was in Detroit just being from there. But it’s something that you get to see a lot more in person. It makes you want to play harder, too.”

That’s leadership, Bertuzzi-style. He’s a quirky guy, a singular presence in a Blackhawks dressing room chock full of clean-cut, polite young men in their early 20s. He’s got his own style in terms of personality and clothing, with a huge laugh but a quiet voice. He’s not going to give what Duncan Keith once derisively described as a “Disney-movie speech” in the middle of the locker room during the second intermission of a tied game. Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said Bertuzzi’s not afraid of telling a teammate when they’ve done something wrong, or when he thinks they can and should be better.

But mostly, he makes his teammates want to be better — to play harder — without having to say a word.

“I’m not going to be the biggest talker in the room,” Bertuzzi said before Saturday’s 4-0 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights, the team’s first outright clunker since the Olympic break. “But I try to lead on the ice by example, by playing the right way and making the right plays, simple plays. Just being hard to play against.”

Blashill didn’t hesitate to put an “A” on Bertuzzi’s sweater after the departures of the entire leadership group — captain Nick Foligno and alternate captains Connor Murphy and Jason Dickinson — at the trade deadline. Blashill coached Bertuzzi for six seasons in Detroit, and it was clear from Day 1 in Chicago that he adores the guy.

So he told Bertuzzi not to alter his personality to fit the letter. As if he was even capable of it.

“The most important thing when you get things like a letter put on you, is that you don’t change who you are at all,” Blashill said. “Certainly, I don’t have to worry about that with him. One thing I know about Tyler is, Tyler is going to be Tyler.”

That consistency in personality hasn’t always translated to consistency on the ice. Bertuzzi’s streakiness as a scorer has always been a huge part of his reputation, and it followed him to Chicago after brief stints in Boston and Toronto. He had goal droughts of 12 and 20 games last season, while peppering in enough two-week outbursts to still finish the season with 23 goals.

This season has been different, though. His longest goal drought has been just six games and he’s on pace to shatter his career high of 30 goals, with 28 so far in 63 games. But more than that, he’s been fully engaged almost every night, forechecking with abandon, digging out pucks and diving into post-whistle skirmishes on the regular. That wasn’t the case last season, when he was all but invisible for significant stretches.

At age 31, Bertuzzi is having arguably the best season of his career.

“The consistency’s been there, and that’s something I struggled with before,” he said. “A big thing is my body’s been feeling really good. Usually, throughout the year, you’re dealing with something on a nightly basis. But for the most part, I’ve been feeling really good and my body’s been giving me the chance to just go out there and compete and battle as hard as I can every night.”

The consistency extends to the way he plays, too. Nazar has been his center for most of the past two seasons, and Bertuzzi’s simple, reliable play has made Nazar’s life easier. Nazar never hesitates to rim a puck in the offensive zone because he’s confident Bertuzzi will retrieve it and find him with space, high in the zone. And once he does have the puck, Nazar always knows where Bertuzzi will be — camped out in the front of the net, waiting for that backdoor tap-in.

It might look easy enough, but there’s a reason so few players in the NHL can do it well and do it consistently.

“You’ve got to have a great mind,” Nazar said. “You’ve got to read the ice and know when to pop out, when to go to certain spots, when to screen, all that stuff. That’s his game and that’s what he’s really good at.”

This is Bertuzzi’s sixth 20-goal campaign and will soon be his second with 30. He’s put together a very solid career and has been a productive player whenever he’s been healthy. But crucially, given the makeup of the Blackhawks roster, Bertuzzi didn’t establish himself as a productive NHLer until he was 23 years old. A second-round pick in 2013 after putting up modest numbers in the OHL, Bertuzzi spent two more years in Guelph before graduating to the AHL. Then he spent two seasons in Grand Rapids before reaching the NHL. Then he spent another season splitting time between Grand Rapids and Detroit before he finally blew up with 21 goals in 2018-19.

So when 22-year-old Nazar or 21-year-old Oliver Moore or 20-year-old Nick Lardis aren’t posting points on a nightly basis and are frustrated and being hard on themselves, Bertuzzi serves as living proof that there’s still plenty of time.

“With anyone’s development, obviously it takes time,” Bertuzzi said. “We’ve got a lot of young guys that are 20, 21, and they’re great players. But they’re going to continue to get better. It just comes with age and experience over the years.”

Bertuzzi isn’t sitting down beside these young players, draping an arm over their shoulders and saying those things directly to them. That’s not his style. Nazar said Bertuzzi’s laugh can be heard in every corner of the Blackhawks’ locker-room complex, but he’s usually the one reacting, not instigating.

“You’ve got to get to know him to bring it out of him,” Nazar said. “He’s a good guy in the locker room and brings some laughs. But he brings out the best in us by his example. It’s just his care for winning and for the team. He puts in the hard work on the ice. You see him work his tail off in the corners, in front of the net, and that’s his specialty. That forecheck and the hard work on the ice is what motivates guys.”

Bertuzzi will never be a Foligno, or even a Murphy. But leadership comes in all styles — of play, of hair, of clothes, of personality.

“He’s Bert,” Nazar said with a shrug. “He does what Bert does. He just does Bert.”

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