I’m sure after reading the headline, many of you were hoping I was referring to Ron Cook of the Post-Gazette, and while I feel he should never be allowed to write about hockey again, I’ll have to leave that rant for another column.
Today I’m here to rant about Matt Cooke’s blatant blow to the head o Marc Savard in yesterday’s 2 -1 win over the Bruins. With about 5 1/2 minutes left in the 3rd period of a tight contest, the Bruins were heading into the Penguins’ zone and Savard let fly a wrister so he was still leaning forward and in a bit of a vulnerable position when Matt Coke comes in from the right side. It appeared as though Cooke was attempting to use his shoulder to lay one into Savard’s shoulder, and in all fairness, Cooke did keep his arm in tight. Instead of connecting with Savard’s shoulder, Cookes shoulder landed square into Savard’s head instantly knocking him to the ice leaving him unconscious for a few seconds. After being checked out by doctor’s from both the Bruins and the Penguins and having a neck brace put on, Savard was wheeled out on a stretcher and taken to a local hospital where it has been determined that he had suffered a concussion. Per NHL rules, he will miss a minimum of one week, but in all likelihood, it will be 2 – 3 weeks before he is back on the ice.
Now before anyone gets in an uproar and decides to start defending Cooke, first think to yourself, what would you be saying if Shawn Thornton or Milan Lucic had put the exact same hit on Sidney Crosby? There is no room in this great game of hockey for shots to the head especially now that players are wearing equipment that looks like it was originally designed for the movie Rollerball. Unfortunately, the NHL has no set policy on head shots as evidenced by the fact that some hits receive suspensions and others, like Mike Richards hit on David Booth do not.
The General Managers meeting is taking place in Florida today and high on their list of topics to discuss is coming up with some uniform way to deal with this recurring problem whether the hit is placed by a star or by a third liner with a history of questionable hits like Cooke. I think a sliding scale of suspensions would be a great place to start with the length of the suspension increasing with each subsequent hit. Hitting players in their wallet is a good way to get their attention and having them miss games especially at a crucial time of the year like it is now may help teams police their own players.
Listen, I’m as big of a Penguin fan as the next guy, but I can’t just sit idly by and watch one of our players pull the kind of crap that would have us all in an outrage if it was perpetrated on one of our own. I’d like to see Cooke get a minimum 5 games and possibly even 10 for this hit, and then maybe next time, he’ll think twice before 1. Hurting another player and 2. Hurting his own team by being forced out of the lineup.
Matt Cooke knocks out Marc Savard
Matt Cooke is found not guilty. However, the rumor is that Green Peace and the Tree Huggers want him found guilty.
LOL. The hit is deemed legal which it is but those tree huggers have to say it was cheap. Cheap? It’s the rules that are cheap. They stopped the clutch and grabbing and they can stop this. Just don’t nail Cooke because of it. The FAN radio, including Joe Starkey, Ron Cook and some others are attempting to make a name for themselves. Nonbe of them can ice skate. Not one of them. AAAAAAH… maybe Starkey can.
For the sake of argument let’s say that Savard gets up after the hit and shakes it off. That he misses a shift but he’s not laying on the ice and taken off on a stretcher. Would this be discussed at all?
I’m not defending borderline hits here but have something different to put out there for discussion. We keep hearing about the equipment being a weapon and the weight and the speed of players today but what isn’t discussed is the major difference in player’s height. In this case as evidenced by the replays Cooke held his arm tight to his body and it looked like Savard’s head hit’s mid-numbers on Cooke’s sweater. If Savard isn’t so short (by leaning over – they are about the same height)there isn’t a problem. If Cooke doesn’t go for the check it doesn’t happen either. But the game isn’t played in slow motion.
To illustrate what I’m saying let’s use Zdeno Chara in the place of Cooke and Marty St-Louis in place of Savard. How can Chara hit him with his shoulder without it being a head shot? My point being the NHL would have to have install a tall vs. short guy rule prohibiting tall guys hammering short guys.
Hits that are a second or less than a second late happen all game long. I’d guess 10 times a game, minimum – and nothing much is said about it. It’s the bang-bang decision that makes this game really excellent. There is no thinking because they isn’t any time to think.
Driving a player head first into the boards IMHO is much worse and leading with your elbow or leaving your feet to hit someone’s head should be major. IMO an immediate (get off the ice immediately) 10 minute major plus a game misconduct and maybe have the opposing coach determine who on your team serves the 10-minute would finally stop it.
But, when an experienced player who is 5′ 10 is leaning into a shot what’s the other player to do other than watch it. IMO getting rid of hits like Cooke on Savard would drastically change the game for the worse. No one (at least 99.9%)wants to see a player get hurt but seeing all the pacifists coming out of the woodwork is amazing. It’s a rough game.
You guys do recall the Kamikaze Ovechkin coming after Malkin for a few games don’t you. Do you think he was attempting to injure him? Hurt him? That kind of thing happens and it’s dealt with. Pretty soon it will get like football where they are close to putting dresses on the QB’s.
You got your wish, he got a 2 game suspension.
scratch that, when I searched the news to see if he was getting suspended, the two game suspension in november came up,my bad. I feel like I should be in the Bing search engine commercial.
I agree with both Boombastic and JP. First, I think that the hit deserves a suspension. Second, I agree that the league is in desperate need of a strict policy on such matters. They also need to enforce such a policy uniformly. The fact that the this is not the first time that Cooke has committed this type of hit makes it worse. He has already been suspended for a similar hit to the Ranger’s Artem Anisimov.
Cooke did not do anything necessarily against the rules, but it doesn’t make it right. It is the league’s fault for letting these things go; such as Mike Richard’s questionable hit. They are creating ambiguity. The league needs to get this kind of thing worked out.
The hit was almost exactly like Richards hit, same spot on the ice and everything. Richards wasn’t suspended. in my opinion Cookes hit was a little less severe. If the NHL doesn’t suspend Cooke, they should at least make a head shot rule and call it the “Cookie” rule and start enforcing it this minute, just like the “Hienz Ward” NFL rule.
I’m not going to sit here and stick up for Matt Cooke. I beleive suspending him is probably the correct thing to do, even if Savard does not sit out any games. One of the big problems is that what Cooke did was within the letter of the law. He didn’t leave his feet, he didn’t elbow and he was trying to get to Savard to stop the shot. Savard was doing cheap crap to the Penguins players all game and I think Cooke just didn’t feel like pulling up. Still, the NHL should probably pull a couple of the rules from the Olympics, especially the head shot rule.
So, your claiming that Cooke intentionally went after Savard? Or, are you saying Cooke should pull up and not hit? I think it was bad for hockey so before you start jumping all over me if Cooke looked to be laying a shoulder into Savard’s shoulder (as you say above) what’s your problem? It didn’t seem to bother the Bruin players as they did nothing at all. Nothing from Chara. Nothing from Lucic. Nothing from Thornton. Nothing from anyone.
The NHL is faced with a tough problem based on Colin Campbell decision in the Richards/Booth incident. I don’t recall you getting upset when Cambell recinded the automatic game suspension on Malkin for getting the instgator penalty. The NHL is screw-up and definately need to do something about the headshots. But right now Cooke didn’t do anything against the rules. Did he?
I thought the rescinding of the one game that Malkin should have gotten was just another case of the NHL protecting their stars kind of like they do every time Ovechkin cheap shots someone, and yes the Richards/Booth incident was a total cluster f**k, but that doesn’t mean that you stll can’t learn from your mistakes. What Derek Boogard jus did to Ryan Jones was “not against the rules” as you clearly describe it, and received a two game suspension so it shows that the NHL can sometimes get it right. Unfortunately, the reason Boogard was suspended is that he is an instigator a la Cooke and not one of the league’s elite.
I explained in my rant why the Bruins did nothing to retaliate (They couldn’t afford to do anything stupid in the closing moments of a 1 goal game when they need all the points they can get),but you seem to think it’s because they didn’t have a problem with the hit. Just take a look at the conversation that was being had between Patrice Bergeron and Sid while the doctors were checking out Savard. Believe me, the etaliation will be coming on the 18th.
And to use your argument, Mark McGwire didn’t do anything against the rules either, but no one would argue if all of his records were removed from baseball.
People get all revved up over a hit like this like it hasn’t been happening since the beginning of hockey. What makes it worse are comments like from Claude Julien who said, “A guy like that has to be suspended, that’s the way I see it, because it’s an elbow to the head from the blind side.”
Then he went on to say, “You’ve got four guys out there, so you think someone had seen it but even myself, I was looking elsewhere from where it happened.” My comment is this: If your looking someplace else you didn’t see it at all. He claims Cooke hit him with an elbow. He didn’t.
So, since there’s going to be retaliation shouldn’t Cooke be allowed to play on the 18th? And, do the Bruins really retaliate after the get the lead or will they play for the points again.
The NHL creates this problem because they can’t enforce the game with decisions made based on who the players is. And the NHL has to clean up it’s own act because this is a good example of the players not handling it themselves.
What did Bergeron do? Did he tell Crosby there would be revenge but they’d wait until the 18th? LOL.
I’m pretty sure Bergeron said something along those lines to Sid, and why should Cooke get to play on the 18th? He runs from most altercations now so why should it be any different then? He’s not the one any kind of retribution will be happening to anyway.
It’s a heck of a lot different taking a bad penalty early in the first period of a tie game than it is taking one in a game in which you’re losing by one with 5 minutes to go.
I don’t give any credence to whatever the hell Julien said if he didn’t see it happen, but in my opinion, hits like this just don’t belong in the game(and please skip any sermons about how guys were tougher and hits were harder in the old days – I grew up watching hockey in the old days, and guys today are bigger, and faster and wear equipment now that can almost be used as a weapon compared to what they were wearing in the good old days)
Yes, what Cooke did wasn’t against the rules, but how about having some respect for your fellow players. All doing shit like this is going to do is get Crosby or Malkin seriously hurt one of these days, and then we’ll all be screaming that the league should outlaw these kinds of hits.
This just in Crosby/Bergeron on ice conversation)
Patrice Bergeron: I am personally placing a hundred-dollar bounty on the head of Matt Cooke. He’s the chief punk on your team.
Sidney Crosby: A bounty?
Patice Bergeron: Yeah, a hundred bucks of my own money for the first of my guys who really nails that creep.
I hate when people misquote players – the conversation went like this:
Patrice Bergeron: I am personally placing a hundred-dollar bounty on the head of Matt Cooke. He’s the chief punk on your team.
Sidney Crosby: Bounty? The quicker picker upper? I think you can get it for less than $100
Patice Bergeron: No No No, I mean a hundred bucks of my own money for the first of my guys who really nails that creep.
Crosby: Ohhhhhh, why didn’t you just say that.