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Briere: Vitale was “obviously trying to hurt me”

Vitale nails Briere

Flyers forward Danny Briere sounded off today about Sunday’s hit that put him out indefinitely with an upper-back contusion.

That hit, of course, was delivered by Pittsburgh’s Joe Vitale, and looked like this:

What did Briere think of it?

“Look, everybody knows that (they) put the line that was on the ice, on the ice with a minute left in a game that was out of hand,” he said, as per Philly.com. “Everybody knows the intent, what the intent was. Was it a bad hit? No. It was a clean hit.

“But obviously, you knew what he was doing. He was obviously trying to hurt me. We all know that.”

Briere might be right that Vitale was trying to hurt him, but just to play devil’s advocate, if Briere knew the game was out of hand, maybe he should’ve kept his head up circling through the middle of the ice. Vitale clobbered him seconds after a faceoff, so he knew who was out there for the Penguins.

But you can understand Briere’s frustration – there’s no telling if he’ll be back in time to seek revenge on the Penguins.

“I don’t know much at this point,” he said. “All I know is that my back is in spasms. They have some fancy words for it that I don’t understand. There is no timetable.

“I’d like to be ready for the playoffs, I just don’t know at this point.”