If You ask me, Matt Cooke’s lengthy rap sheet actually saved him from being suspended for the play in Pittsburgh on Wednesday against the Senators, when his left skate blade sliced through Erik Karlsson’s Achilles tendon on an attempted stick-and-pin gone terribly wrong.
For the NHL Department of Safety seems to have bent itself backward to an almost anatomically impossible degree in order not to appear biased against Cooke for prior bad acts while excusing this one as just plain bad luck.
The conversation in hockey’s public square was dominated by references to Cooke’s previous malfeasances, chief among them the vicious blow to the head that effectively ended Marc Savard’s career — “Inadmissible, Your Honor!” — for which he avoided punishment.
This isn’t an indictment of Cooke for intent to injure Karlsson, the reigning Norris Trophy winner. But since when is intent the sole measure of whether a player should be disciplined for a reckless act? There is a difference in our criminal justice system, after all, between premeditated murder and manslaughter.
Cooke swooped in on Karlsson on the boards in a thoroughly reckless manner while attempting to gain leverage. It’s the way the Pittsburgh winger generally attacks on a stick-and-pin, with one knee in a more overtly dangerous position than one generally sees on such generally routine plays.
This was a reckless play that resulted in a serious injury to an opponent. If a player were to habitually carry his stick shoulder-high and thereby cross-checked an opponent across the face, he would at minimum get a 5-minute major, even if the contact were inadvertent, and probably a suspension of a game or two.
Players are penalized routinely for accidental high-sticking, for they are under the obligation to have control of their sticks. Accidental tendon-slicing, however, gets nothing. It’s nonsensical.
Cooke had an obligation to maintain control of his skate and of his body. His failure to do so had severe consequences, though not for him. Funny how that works.
Blind justice is a worthy principle. But sometimes it is just that. Blind.
* So 6:30 into the third period on Tuesday night in Boston, Milan Lucic finished off his check against Rick Nash by using his forearm to drive the Rangers winger’s head into the boards.
There was no penalty on the play (though Nash received a minor for a feeble retaliatory hook) and there was no supplemental discipline issued, either, because Lucic initially and primarily got the body.
Now, a few days later, Nash isn’t feeling well. And though it may be a coincidence, it may not be one, either.
Here’s the thing: As long as the Department of Player Safety is or feels bound to give the benefit of the doubt to the transgressor rather than the victim, it is not living up to its charge to make the game safer.
* At some point while I was sleeping, Colorado center Ryan O’Reilly apparently became Peter Forsberg.
There is one time and one time only that teams have systemic leverage against an NHL player, and that’s when the athlete comes off Entry Level into his second contract, lacking salary arbitration rights.
It is entirely appropriate for teams to use that leverage, just as it is entirely appropriate for players to use leverage when they’re able to go to arbitration or are eligible to become free agents.
Avalanche management is doing the right thing here in holding the line on O’Reilly, a good player with a bright future, but hardly Steven Stamkos or Drew Doughty, to cite a pair of examples of players who deserved and earned exceptional second contracts.
The Colorado offer of two years at $3.5 million per hardly seems an insulting one for O’Reilly, who emerged as a strong defensive presence a year ago while recording 55 points (18-37) in his third NHL season. The 55 points, by the way, ranked 24th among centers.
An informed source has told Slap Shots the Avalanche’s offseason decision not to offer O’Reilly the club captaincy — instead awarded to 19-year-old reigning Calder winner Gabriel Landeskog — is not a factor in the restricted free agent’s estrangement from the organization.
Still, O’Reilly seems to be carrying a sense of odd entitlement here. Odder still are the cries across the NHL landscape from so many — and so many of whom were unabashed, vocal supporters of the owners in the lockout, no less — for the Avalanche to surrender their leverage and simply give O’Reilly what he wants in order to get him into uniform.
* Finally, it’s odd, but I don’t seem to recall Senators owner Eugene Melnyk’s outrage when Milan Michalek used his skate blade to kick Dan Girardi in the thigh during a goalmouth scrum in Game 6 of last year’s first round.
Of course then the skate was on the other (team’s) foot — his team’s.