Cooke Avoids Suspension; My Thoughts

As the Pittsburgh Penguins return to the ice tonight in Raleigh, NC to start a 5-game road trip by facing a hot Carolina Hurricanes team that has won 8 out of its last 10 (despite falling in overtime on the road to the Washington Capitals last night), it appears that Head Coach Dan Bylsma will have an unexpected personnel decision to make.

While RW Bill Guerin is expected to return to the lineup this evening, it was thought that he would simply take the forward spot of the player that was sure to be suspended after his grade 2 concussion-inducing shoulder-to-head hit on Boston Bruins' star center Marc Savard in the Penguins' last game Sunday afternoon.

Alas, it was surprisingly announced yesterday by NHL head disciplinarian Colin Campbell that Cooke would not be suspended for the hit.

I and almost everyone else universally expected Cooke to be watching the next several games from the press box. It wasn't a question of when, it was more how many.

But Campbell didn't see it that way, citing the very similar hit early in the season by Philadelphia Flyers' center Mike Richards on Florida Panthers' young star winger David Booth that knocked Booth out of action almost 4 months.

Richards was not suspended for the play, even though just about everyone panned the dirty nature of that contact.

Here are links to the videos of each hit for similarity -- first the hit by Cooke, then the one by Richards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXtbMaTZNAk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIXcGOr4-04

Campbell was in a tough position on this one, but in choosing not to suspend Cooke (and in drawing a comparison to the Richards' hit), Campbell didn't just take the easy way out. He stood behind the current NHL rule book, which does not prohibit either type of hit. The fact that all 30 league general managers addressed this issue yesterday by recommending a rule to fill that gap for next season was coincidental, but it certainly didn't do anything to take the heat out of Campbell's kitchen.

The thought was that the timing of Cooke's hit would allow the league to send a message that these types of hits would not be tolerated. The league did that -- but by recommending a long-overdue rule adoption on the issue for next year, not by having Campbell suspend a player for doing something the current rules don't prohibit.

A tough stance to be sure, but for consistency's sake -- at this point, without any rule against the contact -- probably the right one.

What I found interesting was Campbell's comment that he couldn't just suspend Cooke because he was a repeat offender. That clearly says that a player's status as a repeat offender only affects the length of the suspension, if given, but not the existence of the one in the first place.

Not surprisingly, despite the fact that there was some logic to Campbell's decision under current NHL rules, his failure to suspend Cooke was not looked at with favor in Boston or throughout NHL circles.

Here are some pieces on that:

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Hockey/NHL/Pittsburgh/2010/03/10/13186911-qmi.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=4982930

I've watched Cooke's hit over and over and what stands out to me about it is that it appeared as if he was lined up for clear shoulder to body contact, but as Savard is following through with his shot, his momentum and forward skate carries him backwards a little bit after the follow-through. That seemed to put his head right flush in the place Cooke thought he was going to make contact -- the body.

The legality or illegality of hits on the ice in the National Hockey League is always debatable, and probably always will be. There are so many different situations that players can find themselves in and subtleties can make a huge difference -- whether it's a subtlety like the one I described on the Cooke hit, or a subtlety like a player turning to face the boards at the last minute after an opponent has already committed to what he thought was going to be a shoudler-to-shoulder hit, but then ends up being a 5-minute call for boarding and, potentially, a severe injury.

No matter what the league does, they'll never be able to regulate all of those situations. For that reason and other reasons, I agree that it's highly important for the players to maintain respect for one another and do all they can to avoid plays like that.

But hockey is a fast paced game played by large men with great skill who are supposed to play physical. In the end, the league never be able to legislate all unfortunate, injury-resulting contact out of the game, no matter how hard they try.

They've taken a step in the right direction with their latest proposed rule, but to say Cooke had a deliberate intent to contact Savard's head -- like Tampa Bay Lightning center Vincent Lecavalier did in one of the articles above -- is an opinionated, biased, stereotypical, closed-minded characterization of the intent of a player based solely on his reputation.

Cooke is an edgy, aggressive player who pushes the boundaries of the rules from time-to-time, but no matter what anyone says, he wasn't out there intending to put another player on the sidelines with a grade 2 concussion. I can't be convinced that Cooke said to himself, "I'm going right after this guy's head". That just doesn't happen. The end result may be that contact, but 99.% of the players in the game -- Cooke included -- don't play it that way, no matter how otherwise abrasive they are from shift-to-shift.

Make no mistake, Savard's injury was extremely unfortuante. And all players -- Cooke included -- need to avoid making that type of contact with their fellow players as much as they can; otherwise they're going to start sitting a lot of games out because of it. And that's the case even if, as Cooke did, he didn't jump, didn't throw an elbow, and led with the shoulder.

But criticizing the league for not suspending Cooke for a rule that doesn't exist yet is wrong.

It's one thing to dislike the NHL for not having such a rule in the first place. It's another to feel Cooke doesn't show enough respect to his opponents. But it should stop there.

The Penguins play in Boston next Thursday to finish their road trip in what should be a very intersting contest.

But first, the Hurricanes are on tap.

Game recap tomorrow.

Let's Go Pens!