A play like this should be no surprise from a player like Matt Cooke. He is a talented, yet dirty player, I can't say it any more clearly than that. Honestly, he may be the dirtiest player in the league right now. He has a history of plays like this. Earlier in his career he was known more for sticking his knee out and creating knee on knee collisions, which are extremely dangerous. Now he's moved on to head shots. He's committed several offenses and continually gets slapped on the wrist by the NHL. The leauge keeps saying they are going to crack down on this type of offense, yet fail to send a message each and every time an offense like this occurs.
The most recent occurance was the incident between Dany Heatley, of the San Jose Sharks, and Dallas' Steve Ott which happened this week. Heatley was given 2 games for that deliberate elbow to the head. Does any part of that sound like a crackdown on head shots to you? It sure doesn't to me. Two games is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. If you looked at Cooke's play from earlier today, you will also see a deliberate elbow to the head. It'll be interesting to see what the league does with this one since Cooke is a repeat offender. If the leauge is going to send this message, they need to do it now and they need to make it loud and clear.
Let's take a trip in the way back machine and look at the suspension history for Mr. Cooke. Keep in mind that these are just the suspensions, not the other cheap shots in which he was not suspended for.
In November 2008, Cooke was assessed a 2 game suspension for a check to the head against Rangers center Artem Anisimov.
Only 2 months later, Cooke was suspended again for 2 games for another shot to the head, this time against Scott Walker of the Carolina Hurricanes.
The next one is the big one, which sadly went unpunished. I know I promised that I would include only the suspensions, but I cannot have this conversation without mentioning Cooke's hit on Bruins center Marc Savard. This may be the worst of the bunch, yet he was not suspended for this one. Sadly, I believe that it had absolutely nothing to do with the evidence, which is the hit itself. He wasn't suspended because the hit just happened to be against Marc Savard. Colin Campbell, who is the current Senior Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations for the National Hockey League. Under his current position, he also serves as the primary NHL disciplinarian. Campbell has shown a bias involving incidents including his son, Gregory Campbell's team. After the incident, he also referred to Savard as a "litte fake artist." You can find the evidence of both of those incidents here. "I was very unhappy and upset with that hit," said [NHL Commissioner Gary] Bettman. "I was more upset there was nothing (in the League rules) to do to punish it." Mr. Bettman, you are the Commissioner of the National Hockey League, you can suspend any player, for any reason you want. It doesn't matter whether or not it is in the rule book, especially in a situation like this where a suspension can easily be justified. My favorite sound bite on this hit came from the mouth of Don Cherry. I'll let this speak for itself.
Let's fast forward now to 2011. In February, Cooke was assessed a 4 game suspension for a hit from behind against Fedor Tyutin of the Columbus Blue Jackets. The interesting thing about the Tyutin play is that it happened in the next game after this "questionable" play against Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals. As far as I'm concerned, he should've been suspended for both.
Now we're up to today's incident against the Rangers' Ryan McDonagh. I'll pretty much let that video speak for itself, seeing as though we don't have too much information on the play at this minute. I think it's a no-brainer than Cooke will be suspended for this incident. Now we just have to wait and see whether or not the NHL will actually do the right thing and finally drop the hammer for hits like this. They failed to do it with Heatley and should've done it a long time ago with Cooke. As the NHL on NBC was signing off today, Eddie Olczyk mentioned that he thought Cooke should be suspended 8 games for the hit. I personally would like to see a minimum of 10. With all of that said, I'm expecting something anywhere from 3-5 games from the NHL. They've made too much of a habit lately of slapping players on the wrist for plays like this, even though they are supposedly cracking down in the issue. So I have a hard time believing that they are finally going to drop the hammer on somebody until they actually do it. Considering the fact that Cooke is a repeat offender, you aren't going to find a better time to send that message if you are the NHL.
For humors sake, I'm going to close this post with a fight that took place between Evander Kane of the Atlanta Thrashers and Matt Cooke. Again, I'll let this speak for itself.
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