The on-ice repartee between Todd Bertuzzi and assorted Detroit Red Wings Tuesday night must have kept the linesmen laughing all evening.
"They were calling me fat, can you believe that?" said Bertuzzi.
He was still mildly emotional from the game but cool enough to discuss Chris Chelios and Kirk Maltby, the two designated to make his life miserable for the evening by the Wings coaches, a job now assigned by every opposition coach when the Canucks take their great road act into another city.
"Fat? I told them if I'm playing 25 minutes a game, how could I be fat? That wasn't too bright. I told them, 'Is that the best you can come up with?'
"I told Chelios he's finished and should retire. I told him he just couldn't do it any more. And he can't. He should pack it in. He's finished.
"And he didn't like it. He shot back: 'I'll outlast you.'"
For the most part, the Bertuzzi-Chelios fun-fest, which began in earnest in last year's playoffs largely with the huge hit the Canucks forward made on the Wings defender in Vancouver, has been one-way, with Chelios doing most of the talking.
Given the outcome of last year's playoff series, he probably had the highest ground from which to shout.
When asked before Tuesday night's game about Bertuzzi, he was going around the Wings room trying out quotes on the media and calling Bertuzzi a "dirty" player, then declining to elaborate, saying he didn't want to make the Canuck feel any better about himself than he already does.
He said to at least two different reporters, 'What are you trying to do, get me killed?' when they would ask him to go further on everyone's favourite fued.
So after the Canucks roared back from a 3-0 deficit in their 4-3 overtime victory, Bertuzzi decided to return a little fire, the best part of it being you have two outstanding athletes who don't much care for each other letting out their true feelings.
And at the bottom of all the rhetoric, which is heartfelt, there is probably a certain respect for the jobs they do, even if those jobs are "dirty." But at the moment, neither is willing to admit any respect.
Unless the teams meet in the playoffs, which is a possibility, the next meeting between the two will have to wait until next year.
Given the 41-year-old Chelios's promise to outlast Bertuzzi, at least we know he's not planning to retire any time soon.
