TORONTO (CP) - Martin Brodeur has been a reporter's dream for years for his willingness to open up rather than spout cliches.

And so it stands to reason his new autobiography "Brodeur: Beyond The Crease" provides a refreshing, candid look at his career and hockey in general.

More importantly, the New Jersey Devils goalie says he felt doing the book while he was still playing was key.

"I wanted to bring people to the level I'm at right now because it's easy to write a book after you're done," the 34-year-old told The Canadian Press in an interview Monday before his book launch at the Hockey Hall of Fame. "But I've got a few more years to go and I wanted to show how I felt right now as I'm experienced it."

Brodeur, who wrote the book with veteran Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox, brings the reader into his world both on and off the ice and doesn't avoid tough subjects.

He weighs into the Todd Bertuzzi story by saying unequivocally that the former Canucks winger has suffered too much for his attack on Steve Moore.

"I play the game, these kinds of hits happen over and over again," Brodeur reiterated Monday. "People are lucky they don't get hurt more. I'm not taking anything away from Steve and his injury . . . but it's tough, this guy's (Bertuzzi's) life is changed, his career is changed. It'll be tough for him to ever be the same player from the day before he did that."

The Montreal native also tackles another time bomb most Quebec-born athletes would rather avoid - separatism.

"It's just something in which I have no interest," he says in the book. "My preference is for Canada to stay together, but it's not unusual for Quebec-born athletes to get dragged into the endless debate over the province's future in Canada."

Asked about it again Monday, Brodeur didn't back down.

"Canada's been great to me and my career," said the three-time Olympian. "You'd be surprised how many people think the same way. It's not like I'm bashing Quebec. I mean I also mentioned in the book that if a French-Canadian player doesn't speak to me in French I don't think it's right. I'm proud of my heritage, I'm excited to be able to speak two languages."

There are less controversial but still interesting details, such as some of Brodeur's rituals. He uses a brand new stick for every single game, drinks three-quarters of a can of Sprite after pre-game warmups, then two more Sprites at the intermissions.

Why Sprite?

"Gatorade hurts my stomach and water just doesn't give me enough of a lift," he says in the book.

He also watches a DVD before each game on the team he's facing and watches video of his last game against that club. And the Devils watch a movie together before each and every playoff game.

The opening chapter of the book deals with the money he's made - or lack thereof according to some people in the game. Brodeur has frustrated some players and agents in the past for signing contracts some felt were below his market value, such as the six-year extension he signed last January for US$5.2 million a year, less than six other goalies are earning after Tomas Vokoun's new extension was announced by Nashville on Monday.

Brodeur defends his contracts by explaining that winning matters more to him than being the highest-paid goalie. Not making $7 million right now will help the Devils keep their core, which was proved true when star winger Patrik Elias was kept on this summer.

"At the end of the day I'll be 39 years old making $5.2 million," Brodeur said Monday. "Look at the older goalies now, like (Dominik) Hasek and (Ed) Belfour, they're playing for a lot less than they used to ($750,000 apiece this season). So I wanted it to do this so I could help them now and then at the back end I'm getting probably overpaid."

Brodeur also explains why he hasn't an agent since dropping Gilles Lupien in 1998, negotiating his last three contracts worth more than $87 million by himself.

"Don't give the agents too much credit," Brodeur says in the book. "It's not that hard."   

Brodeur, somewhat bitterly, recalls a contract negotiated in the fall of 2001, a $40-million five-year extension. The NHLPA, still under Bob Goodenow, filed a grievance, arguing that Brodeur's personal lawyer, Susan Ciallella (who basically crosses the T's and dots the I's) negotiated his deal even though she wasn't an NHLPA-certified agent.

"These were the same people who had certified David Frost as an agent," Brodeur says in the book.

Another chapter deals with his love for the Olympics, which began when his dad, photographer Denis Brodeur, played goal for Canada at the 1956 Games. Martin Brodeur brings the readers inside the dressing room at the Turin Games when Canada was knocked out by Russia in the quarter-finals, a disappointing tournament that also featured a 2-0 loss to Switzerland in the round-robin.

Brodeur, like most hockey observers had come to conclude, also believes the biggest reason for the disappointing tournament was Team Canada's inability to come together as a team.

He points to a Canadian power play when Bertuzzi tapped his stick on the ice in front of the net, "begging Joe Sakic to give him the puck.

"In Vancouver, that's where Markus Naslund would give him the puck, but Sakic didn't see him and was thinking about creating something different elsewhere on the ice. These are subtle ways in which the unfamiliarity of players is expressed," Brodeur says in the book.

He also tells the readers about an emotional speech from Sakic after the elimination, where the Canadian captain star said he didn't think Canada's younger players had understood what it was going to take to defend the Olympic title and hoped they would learn from the Turin experience heading into Vancouver 2010.

And finally, Brodeur also reveals a mistake made on Russia's winning goal in the quarter-final game by rookie phenom Alexander Ovechkin: he didn't know it was him shooting. For an instant, he confused the young right-handed star with a left-handed defenceman. From where the player was in front of the net and thinking it was a left-handed shot, he covered the lower part of the net. Ovechkin roofed it with his right-handed rocket.

"If I knew it was him he probably wouldn't have scored," Brodeur said Monday. "I just didn't see him there at all. I never noticed it was him. And that makes a big difference in the way I fell down."

Brodeur also doesn't hide which record he'd love to make his own one day - Patrick Roy's 551 career regular-season wins. Brodeur has 446 and counting.

"You play hockey to win," Brodeur said in the interview. "And he has the most wins. That's the record I want. I know it's not close right now but hopefully I'll get there. To be the winningest goalie, what else can you say? He has it and he deserves it and he'll have it for a long time but hopefully I'll get close and maybe one day beat him."

It might be a little personal, too.

Brodeur has never forgiven Roy for demanding that he play every single game at the Nagano Olympics, even in what most players on the team felt was a meaningless bronze medal game against Finland. Brodeur even says New Jersey's 2001 Cup loss to Roy's Avalanche was even harder to take because he so wanted to beat Roy.

One difficult topic he couldn't escape but tried not to spend too much time on was his 2003 divorce. His first wife Melanie, with whom he had four children, filed for divorce in the middle of the 2003 playoffs. He had been dating the former wife of Melanie's half-brother (whom Brodeur is still with today).

It's the kind of tabloid stuff Quebec and New York papers thrive on. Brodeur met the issue head-on during the playoffs that year by addressing it with the media once and for all. By the time he lifted the Cup a few weeks later, it was no longer a story.