[zoomwaffles]

Matt Cooke's nasty headshot on Bruins star Marc Savard is surely being reviewed by the league as we speak. But should Cooke be suspended? You be the judge.

[The Amazing Asian]

Hmm, the angle's not really good enough to tell if if was an elbow or just a head shot. If it was an elbow, definite suspension. Otherwise it's tough to tell, I'd say probably a 1-game or a fine because it was still a pretty late hit. the league probably also has to take Cooke's history into account and I'm guessing some sort of punishment is coming down.

[zoomwaffles]

It was definitely a shoulder... but yeah, a bit late, and a shot to the head. I'm guessing he gets a few games.

[fukufuji]

there has been a lot of talk about targeting headshot specific incidents for punishment. Will be interesting to see what they do. I always thought 1 or 2 games was a really weak punishemnt for most any infraction? Do you guys think 1 or 2 games relly sends the right message?

[zoomwaffles]

well i think what hurts more is the money they forfeit for missing 1-2 games. Figure a $3 million contract is over $36,000 per game. Suspend a guy two games and, well... that's well over my annual salary, haha.

[fukufuji]

zoomwaffles, on 08 March 2010 - 03:07 PM, said:

well i think what hurts more is the money they forfeit for missing 1-2 games. Figure a $3 million contract is over $36,000 per game. Suspend a guy two games and, well... that's well over my annual salary, haha.

LOL yeah but taking 60,000 grand from someone that makes 3 million a year is like fining us averege-lings 10 cents. Seriously anything less than a hundred dollar bill on the floor would be a waste of their time to pick up.

[zipper14]

Garbage play by a garbage player... but I'm biased, I've been on the hate Matt Cooke bandwagon since 2003.

[KingsFan24]

He's gonna get 5-10 games because of his reputation. A dirty hit by a dirty player. Not a Cooke fan either, but by playoff time he's gonna get punished by the players and I'm sure of it.

[zoomwaffles]

Especially with Godard injured... no one out there to protect Cooke at this point. And I gotta say... while Savard was being tended to on the ice, Bergeron and Crosby were having a conversation that more or less looked like they were in agreement. I have a feeling Cooke heard some harsh words from his teammates, especially those who know Savard personally (Dupuis from Atlanta, Sid & co. from the All-Star Game, etc.)

Nonetheless, I still haven't heard a peep from the league about the hit. Has anyone seen anything anywhere?

[shoebottom]

I suggested Cooke this year because I thought the thread was looking for the biggest worms or rats in hockey. He strikes again. I watched Cooke in the minors and he earns all the "cheap" reputation he can receive. He had time to adjust off of a head shot. He should be gone for the rest of the season if the league is serious about its concern about head shots.

As a Bruins fan I am shocked by the fact that all he got was a glove in the face from Savards team. I know that I will hear about how it being late in the game etc....blah blah. It was late in the game, your star forward is crushed. Gut check time. The Bruins failed on this.

I remember watching Chris Pronger jumping the boards after one of his team was victim of a cheap shot.thats leadership.

[zoomwaffles]

I'm with you on all that except the long suspension part. You can't punish a guy for breaking a rule that doesn't exist! The league needs to ban ALL hits to the head, IMMEDIATELY... before someone else gets seriously hurt.

[fukufuji]

I agree, a hit like that changes a player. These is a possibility we will never see the same shifty playmaking savard again. He may dodge a bullet and hav eno ill effects but why risk one of the better playmakers in the sport over some 2 bit goon. Take him out for the season and extend his suspension into playoffs. But first come to a conculsion on head shot rules.

[zoomwaffles]

Two bit goon?! Cooke is a huge part of hockeys greatest third line. He's a goon, but he's a huge part of the penguins success. You can't take a guy like that out for the year for a LEGAL hit he put on a guy. Savard didn't even go to the hospital, from what I read. Man I'm glad you guys aren't the nhl's disciplinarians haha

[fukufuji]

I take it back. Just don't like to see people get head hunted. After watching the replay I felt he had time enough to adjust so it wasn't a head shot but he followed through anyway. There doesn't seem to be any grounds to suspend beyond just a late hit or something like that so I doubt it will be anything big

I wasn't really talking about Cooke specifically but just in general goons can run stars with little consiqunce it seems.

[zipper14]

Am I the only one who thinks this was an elbow? It looks to me like Cooke's elbow is in Savard's jaw area. But I might be looking a little too closely for something, and the angle is not the best.

Either way, if he got two games for this Anisimov hit then he should get more than two for the Savard hit.

[zoomwaffles]

If you look at the first video around 1:37-1:39... that's where the contact is made, in super slow motion. The top of Savard's head is well above the numbers on Cooke's sleeve, so unless savard has an abnormally long head, the elbow wasn't involved. There was also no follow through. That's the big difference between the savard and anisimov hits... that follow through against anisimov was ridiculous (@ 0:36).

[zipper14]

Folloe through happens after the hit and doesn't really play into it. I wonder what the NHL's ruling was for the Anisimov check.

[zoomwaffles]

The league has decided to not suspend Matt Cooke.

So that's that.

[zipper14]

Good article by Mark Spector (different Spector, no relation) of Sportsnet on guys that hit like Cooke. A few candid comments by Guerin and Souray are very interesting to read.

Quote

Matt Cooke has few friends on the ice and his style of play leaves him with few off it as well.

BOCA RATON, Fla -- Here’s what they didn’t say when they wrote up those new head shot rules. What they couldn't say.

It was the collective whisper we heard there from a gathering of men who know the NHL game well, but could never come out and verbalize what they really think about a cheap shot artist like Matt Cooke.

Do you recall that several general managers and league discipline czar Colin Campbell persistently reminded us that the new rules would be particularly tough for “repeat offenders?”

What they meant was, “guys who hit the way Matt Cooke, Colby Armstrong, Derek Boogaard and Patrick Kaleta hit will have to change their game, or change their vocation.”

They are the cheap, dangerous hockey players who endanger the rest of their colleagues.

As usual, Toronto GM Brian Burke wasn’t afraid to confirm one of the intents of the rule, when we asked him if the jobs of certain players might be in jeopardy when this new rule comes into effect.

“Good,” Burke said. “It’s a predatory act. If it’s a case where this is how a player is making his living, he should be making his living doing something else.”

Next Thursday, Pittsburgh visits Boston. By failing to find a way to suspend Cooke for even one game, the league puts the onus on the Bruins to mete out their own vigilante justice.

With that, we have the prospect of another Todd Bertuzzi-Steve Moore incident; an incident where Bruins players — who have been blasted at home for doing nothing at the time of the Cooke hit — act on the pressure to defend Savard.

Or worse, they target the Penguins best player. How would the league look if Savard were not the only one to miss the rest of the season because of a throw-away player like Cooke, but Sidney Crosby was injured as well?

Cooke’s problem, another NHLer said on Thursday, is that he likely doesn’t have any friends inside his own dressing room right now.

“Two guys punch each other’s lights out, then you go to bar and you have a couple of beers together,” said injured Edmonton defenceman Sheldon Souray. “When you’re Matt Cooke, you go to the bar that night and there is no camaraderie. There are no friends.

“When you fight, there is something honourable in that. But you flip that switch — you start hurting guys — there is noting honourable in that.”

Souray has been outspoken on the issue of players whose primary goal is to injure other players. He revealed Thursday that those players are becoming pariahs even within their own dressing room walls.

“Do you think the guys on the Minnesota Wild are in love with Boogaard? He might be the toughest guy in the league, and he serves a purpose for peace keeping. But when he’s running guys, smashing heads against the glass, taking guys’ knees out, are his teammates really looking to him and saying, ‘Way to go Boogie? Good hit?’ It’s not happening.”

More proof of that came on Thursday when Bill Guerin, a teammate of Cooke’s, spoke in measured words after learning that no suspension was handed down.

“If a guy gets hurt like that with a shot to the head, there's got to be something,” Guerin said to the Associated Press. “Actions happen. Guys don't mean to hurt each other, but they do. You have got to pay a price for that.”

Hearing a veteran, team-guy like Guerin say that about one of his own is about an 8.0 on the Richter Scale when it comes to failing to support a teammate. Of course, Guerin is right. And if they weren’t both Pittsburgh Penguins, Guerin would likely say what he really thinks about Cooke.

The way Souray did.

“He hits Savard,” Souray scoffed. “Would Matt Cooke do that to Milan Lucic? Those kinds of players, they’re spot pickers. He knew he was going to get Savard, that he was vulnerable.

“Matt Cooke, you put a guy like (Ottawa’s Jarkko) Ruutu in there with him. Cal Clutterbuck is a guy who’s in there, though he’ll fight some bigger guys. Kaleta’s in there.”

Kaleta has earned such a reputation as a cheap, dangerous hitter, an NHL player once told me that another Buffalo Sabre warned him before the game to watch out for Kaleta. That’s right, his own teammate warning the opponent.

Now Guerin, a respected leader in the Penguins locker room, throws Cooke under the bus.

It’s all falling apart for guys like Cooke now.

Couldn’t happen to a better guy.

http://www.sportsnet...ap_shot_souray/

[zoomwaffles]

interesting to see colby armstrong's name tossed in there... i recall a couple isolated incidents with him, but never thought he was a dirty player.