Tyler Bertuzzi will be back in the Red Wings' lineup Tuesday night after missing the past five games due to a bout with COVID-19, but he's not reconsidering his status as the NHL's only unvaccinated player.
"Natural immunity now," Bertuzzi said Monday.
One of the team's leading scorers and a key cog on the first line with Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond, Bertuzzi also missed three games earlier this season in Canada due to the country's restrictions against unvaccinated visitors. He's set to miss six more games in Canada, five of which come in March or April when the Wings could be in a playoff race.
Asked if that will make it harder to sit out, Bertuzzi said, "Obviously it sucks missing games, but it is what it is."
Bertuzzi, 26, said he didn't experience many symptoms the past two weeks, "just stuffy, a little headache." He said he got three or four workouts in and tried to stay active by taking his dog on daily walks to the park. He's hoping to have skated four times with the team before returning to the lineup for Tuesday night's game against the Islanders.
"Probably going to be a little bit tough getting back into it, but gotta start somewhere," he said. "Still a little bit stuffy, but I feel good now."
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The Wings have felt Bertuzzi's absence, no surprise for a player who has 18 points in 20 games. Detroit is is 11-7-2 when he's in the lineup, 2-5-1 when he's not. In other words, a playoff team with him, a bottom-feeder without him. Bertuzzi returns to a club on a three-game skid, having been outscored by 11 goals during that stretch.
He said the Wings need to "get back to (what we were doing during) the five-game winning streak: simple, hard at their net and the turnovers in the D zone are the biggest thing. If we're good defensively, we have a really good chance of winning games."