Where have I seen a hit like that before…

Oh right.

So what’s the difference here? Well, Alex Ovechkin was suspended for two games for his hit and Marian Hossa gets to keep on playing since he’s never done something like this before.  Wait, sorry, that’s the reason I’m assigning to him. The master of the Wheel of Justice himself, Colin Campbell, had something different to say:

“I have made the decision that this play does not warrant supplemental discipline after considering all of the facts, including reviewing the video and speaking with Mr. Hossa.   This play is distinguishable from recent incidents by a number of factors, including the degree of contact involved; the fact that the consequences of the play do not appear to be as severe; that this was a hockey play involving a race for the puck; that Mr. Hossa is not a repeat offender and that the call of a major penalty by the Referee was significant and appropriate.”

Smell that? Yup, that’s the barn yard so let’s pull a Mike Rowe and go Dirty Jobs on analyzing this steaming pile of poo.

Colin says:

This play is distinguishable from recent incidents by a number of factors, including the degree of contact involved

Joe’s translation:

I know what you’re all going to say, it’s exactly like the Ovechkin hit and I’m going to put my foot down and say that it’s not. There, now it’s the Gospel According to Colie. If I can call Matt Cooke’s hit on Marc Savard a shoulder instead of an elbow, I can tell you that if you compare this hit to Ovechkin’s on Brian Campbell you must be some kind of jerk. Sure they’re both a push from behind that helped the player crunch himself into the boards and get hurt, but that’s where it ends. Hey, at least it didn’t happen on an icing play. Suck it.

Colin says:

The fact that the consequences of the play do not appear to be as severe

Joe’s translation:

Dan Hamhuis didn’t go get hurt for 6 weeks like that big pussy Campbell, therefore I get to be thoroughly inconsistent and make all you armchair geniuses get your Cheetos stained undies in a knot. By judging this hit based on the lack of severe outcome, whereas with other plays that are as dirty or less so that result in serious injuries, I can make a total mockery of the system every time I say that we don’t dole out suspensions based on the outcome and do so instead based on the act.

Colin says:

That this was a hockey play involving a race for the puck; that Mr. Hossa is not a repeat offender and that the call of a major penalty by the Referee was significant and appropriate.

Joe’s translation:

Races for the puck are OK, except on icing. That’s the new rule, bitches! Also, Hossa being a first timer means a get-out-of-scrutiny free pass for Ol’ Soupy! Also, the referee’s did put the guy in the box for five minutes, what else do you want? You want him tossed from the game?  Pssh, nonsense. How else were we to twist the knife in the Nashville fanbase by having him score the game winning goal in OT? Don’t worry though, next time he hits someone like that again maybe we’ll suspend him. If we feel like it. Or if the officials don’t kick him out of the game and give Ol’ Soupy another free pass!  Woooooo!

Pictured: A poor excuse for a sock puppet. Also, Scooter from “The Muppet Show”

I didn’t expect there to be any suspension for Hossa at all. Campbell’s total lack of consistency and his (and the league’s apparent help) with allowing guys who are first-timers to get away with one “oops” moment, especially if they’re stars, has become all too transparent. I know it and Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy knew it would be like this too and so did numerous others. Just because we’ve gotten wise to the game and sheer nonsense that goes into the NHL offices ability to make the waters as murky as possible when figuring these things out doesn’t make it any better.

The glaring lack of consistency as well as the underlying message that’s delivered when first-time offenders get the proverbial slap on the wrist from Ol’ Soupy for pulling off a scummy play is frustrating and yet still entirely too predictable. I know most fans were stunned just to see Marian Hossa deliver a hit of any kind but the fact that it turned into a lightning rod of controversy shouldn’t be all that stunning.

All that aside, my problem here, like always, is the extreme lack of consistency shown by the league regarding these things. I guess it’s what helps my Wheel of Justice become more popular, for which I am semi-thankful, but I wouldn’t feel too bad if it ended up being a product of a bygone era. Until that day comes, spin away you crazy wheel.

You’ve seen the video, if you want to watch it again you can do that in my previous post.  I’m not in the NBC business of milking video to hammer home a point.

Via Twitter, TSN’s Bob McKenzie passed along Colin Campbell’s comments on why there would be no suspension for Matt Cooke. There’s a big comment here that just infuriates me as a fan of the game and as a lover of all things common sense.

Colie Campbell explaining his decision now. Said it was a matter of consistency. No suspension for Richards. No suspension for Cooke.

The man who makes his rulings about as wide-ranging and inconsistent as possible is preaching consistency as the reason why there’s no suspension.  It’s things like this that make me feel as if Lewis Black is actually the lead writer for the NHL. This kind of explanation comes from the guy who handed out what was ultimately a six-game suspension for Sean Avery for making crass comments about his former girlfriends,  meanwhile allowing players that seek and destroy players with dirty hits to the brain to get a pass comes away as something Black would ramble about after his “if it weren’t for my horse” story.

If for nothing else, Matt Cooke has helped Mike Richards of the Flyers out a lot because his hit on David Booth of the Panthers now looks a lot nicer in retrospect.  At the time, I railed against Campbell to do something to set the tone that shots to an unsuspecting player shouldn’t go unpunished:

It’s at a time like this where maybe, just maybe, sitting down a high-profile team’s captain down for more than a few games might send the message that the league intends to be serious about protecting its players.

The league didn’t intend to be serious and instead fell back upon the five-minute major penalty and game misconduct that Richards was assessed to be penalty enough for the Flyers captain.  This is where I’ll draw on this penalty for comparisons sake with Matt Cooke.  Cooke didn’t receive a penalty for his hit and a lot of fans, because of that, have claimed that Cooke’s hit was “perfectly legal” and that’s why the league couldn’t do anything about it.

Pardon me folks, but if that kind of hit is legal, then how come Richards got booked for doing essentially the same thing but more in line of an actual hockey play? See how interpreting the rules is a fun game for everyone? By that standing, Richards got nailed on one of the new rules the NHL instituted and that hit was instead used to hold up to the rest of the league that, yes they’ll call major penalties for interference if the hit is bad enough.

Well… Where’s the consistency then with Cooke’s play?  Cooke blatantly went after Marc Savard, had every intention of clipping him in the head (whether with his shoulder or his elbow, I don’t think it mattered which) and did so knowing full-well that Savard had no idea the hit was coming. At the least, David Booth knew Richards was going to hit him he just had a microsecond to prepare himself for it.

Does this make Cooke’s hit legal though?  Look into your own hockey-loving soul and tell me what you come away with. Put yourself in the shoes of the objective observer, or the fan of the guy who got knocked into next week. What does your gut tell you when you look at that play? If it tells you that it’s OK and that Marc Savard should’ve known better… I don’t know what to say to you, I would just strongly advocate on behalf of the rest of the world to please stop watching hockey and most certainly stop talking about the game to other people.

If you thought the bad choices ended there, don’t worry the real slap in the face to fans of common sense comes through later on.

[Campbell] Said if this hit happens next season it is a suspension. And if it’s a repeat offender like Cooke, the suspension will be stiffer again.

Now I may not be a rocket scientist here and I may subscribe to the “chaos theory” and have a dark humor, but all I’m gathering from this is that the rest of the season and playoffs are open game for interpretive checks to the head as long as you’re in the neighborhood of the play.

Do I think this will happen? Signs point to “no” but what’s going to stop some other player with a checkered past and questionable nature from taking a run at a guy that’s been killing his team on the scoreboard now? He won’t get punished for his transgression and Jebus help us all if it happens in the playoffs where players traditionally get a slap on the wrist for dirty hits.

The real idiocy of this though, and amazingly enough, it spins back to Sean Avery again somehow. The NHL can’t get a ruling made on shots to the head until next season yet when Avery was dancing and putting on a show in front of Martin Brodeur in the playoffs, a ruling was made before that series between New Jersey and New York was even over that if a player was to conduct themselves the same way they’d earn a minor penalty for it.

Explain to me how the NHL Rulebook couldn’t get something penciled in under “roughing” immediately for clocking an unsuspecting player in the head. This type of thing, where we’ve already seen at least two high-profile ugly incidents just this year, has to wait until next season. What the fuck kind of boneheads do we have in charge around here that something that protects the players, the league’s top investment and main commodity, has to sit on the back burner while bureaucracy takes over to allow it to clear all channels.

From Colin Campbell, to Gary Bettman, to all 30 owners to the figment heads of the NHLPA to the general managers I ask this:

What’s the fucking hold up?

The NHL wants to preach consistency and that’s fine, that’s their right to do so.  In my defense, I’ll throwback ignorance in their face. They’ve ignored these hits in the past, they’ve left them unpunished or not punished strongly enough and in some cases they’ve gone so far as to hide behind a rulebook that’s been left wide open to interpretation as it is to claim that a hit is legal. It’s not consistency the league is rolling with here, it’s cowardice and now they’re turning this whole thing into a PR stunt to make it look like they’re doing their job.

This stuff is already in the rulebook if you want it to be there. Remember the big “re-do” of the rules the league did after the lockout ended in 2005? None of those rules were new at all, they were always there and were never enforced. Instead, the league slapped a coat of paint on things and told folks, “Hey look! We’re going to call these things now! SEE! WE CAN DO IT RIGHT!”

The league felt Sean Avery was making a mockery of the game with what he did to Martin Brodeur so they instituted an addendum to a rule that already existed (unsportsmanlike conduct)  immediately and then proudly showed it off to everyone during that series that it would never happen again.  Same rules, new paint.

So now next year there will be a rule about targeting a player’s head. The rules are already there, be it interference, charging, elbowing or roughing but this new coat of paint and supposed stiffer punishments for offenders and repeat offenders are going to be what they’ll all pat each other on the back over for doing their jobs when all along they’ve been asleep at the wheel while officials both on and off the ice have been too feeble or beholden to old standards and lunkhead thinking to do jack shit about it.

It’s embarrassing all around and it says a lot about the state of the game when the fans have spoken out in a more coherent way than the league’s been able to.  Fans might be crazy, they might go out of their mind, they might say things a bit more colorfully and less PR-friendly… But a lot of times they get it, and seeing guys getting carted off the ice because another player took it upon himself to potentially ruin another man’s career gets everyone’s dander up.

We get it that hockey is a powerful and strong game, but we also know it when there’s a loose cannon running around out there with ill intent for everyone else on the ice.  We get it when that player has to face up to the consequences of his actions. What we don’t get is when those who are supposed to be smarter about these things and know better than us “common folk” can’t seem to put it together.

Photo courtesy of Matt Freed – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Dirty. Disgusting. Blind-sided. Unnecessary.

These are all the right words to use to describe that hit on Boston Bruins forward Marc Savard at the hands of long-time notorious douchebag Matt Cooke. No, he’s not a douchebag because he plays for the Penguins, he’s a douchebag because he’s been that way his entire career. He’s reckless, he very rarely faces the music on the ice for his actions and he’s got a sufficient record in which to put him away for a long time.

That is, of course,  if NHL Disciplinarian Colin Campbell feels that this time is the moment to send a message to the rest of the league that unnecessary shots to an unsuspecting player’s head are bad news for everyone.

The stars are aligned here for Matt Cooke to get a major-league spanking at the hands of the NHL for this hit.  Of course… The one hang up here is that Flyers forward Mike Richards essentially did the same thing to Florida Panthers forward David Booth and received no punishment from the league for it.

Consistency is  a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

So what does Colin Campbell do here?  Does he spank Cooke for being a repeat offender? Possibly.  Does he make an example of Cooke for both being a repeat offender and for not having learned a lesson from previous toothless offenses? I doubt that.  Just recently the league handed out punishment to previous offender Wild enforcer Derek Boogaard for a knee-on-knee hit to Edmonton Oilers forward Ryan Jones in the form of a two game suspension.  Considering he’s got an official record with the NHL two games seems about right considering.

That said, what will the NHL do with Cooke especially with league members meeting in Florida this week discussing the problem with head shots?

Seemingly so, this would seem like the right time to make Matt Cooke into the league’s whipping boy and pariah for how not to conduct one’s self on the ice when it comes to head shots.  Then again, the league’s wild inconsistency when it comes to head shots is maddening on it’s own. The lack of action against Mike Richards with his hit on David Booth was baffling.

Not to get morbid about things here, but it was reported that Savard was knocked unconscious by Cooke’s hit and he was carted off the ice on a stretcher.  For all that the NHL wants to do to keep up appearances, they come off seemingly lax when it comes to keeping their players’ sensibilities in order and there’s nothing worse for bad publicity than a player having to be taken off the ice on a stretcher.  That goes for any sport, mind you, but when it happens in hockey it gives you an immediate feeling of dread, generally because hockey fans and players and coaches are more accustomed to seeing guys fight their way to the bench to be taken care of in the bowels of the arena away from the public eye.

Hockey players are tough customers and to see them fallen in such a manner that it leaves them powerless to get off the ice… It’s stunning to all the senses from the fairweather fan all the way up to the most hardened veteran player and executive.  Joe Public is going to have that same sick feeling of dread as would, say, Steve Yzerman or Brian Burke.  That same fan is also going to have that feeling of outrage over no immediate justice being handed out.  Keep in mind that Cooke wasn’t penalized for the hit and that Savard will be out for a good amount of time with a concussion.

Concussions are not taken lightly any more, thankfully, and players are given whatever amount of time they need to to recoup from such a violent injury.   Look at Andreas Lilja of the Detroit Red Wings who missed a full year of hockey to recover from a concussion suffered in a fight with Nashville’s Shea Weber.  Rubbing some dirt on it doesn’t apply to brain injuries.

I know I sound like a horrible, broken record when it comes to these things but, again, this is a time when the NHL can step up and send a message that these kinds of plays will not be tolerated. The league doesn’t want the players to police themselves to the fullest and deal with line brawls to solve seeming on-ice injustice so they have to step up and show that this sort of ridiculous recklessness and total lack of respect for the fellow man on the ice will not be tolerated.

Moments like these and others like them are when the NHL should be stepping in and saying, “If you’re not going to respect each other on the ice, we’re not about to show you the same courtesy.  Please enjoy forfeiting your salary for the next ______ game(s).”

Unfortunately, I expect gutlessness from Colin Campbell here. I expect a slap on the wrist and I expect that nothing in any way is going to change until the “brain trust” for the NHL puts it together to make an official ruling or set of regulations.