Update: Nick Kypreos of Rogers Sportsnet reports that Matt Cooke has been suspended by the NHL for the rest of regular season and the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
During Sunday’s Penguins vs. Rangers game, Matt Cooke was up to his old tricks. The 32 year-old former Capital delivered an elbow to the head of a defenseless Ryan McDonagh. The Ranger player went down like a sack of potatoes but fortunately was uninjured. Cooke received a five minute major for elbowing on the play and a game misconduct. As Daniel Tolensky points out, Cooke has played in 881 NHL games yet has only been suspended a total of ten matches in his career. The League obviously deserves some of the blame for allowing Cooke’s dirty play to continue without significant consequences for his actions.
A month ago, Pens owner Mario Lemieux criticized the NHL for being too soft on the Islanders’ players that participated in the mega-brawl between New York and Pittsburgh. Just a week ago, Sidney Crosby said the NHL needed to fight deliberate head-shots. But now their own player, Matt Cooke, is once again under Colin Campbell’s review. Below, we’ve chronicled Cookie’s dirty deeds throughout the years.
02/08/11 – Matt Cooke boards Fedor Tyutin who has his back turned
NHL Supplemental Discipline: Four-game suspension
Penalties called on the ice: Five minute major for charging, five minute major for fighting
Two days after getting national attention for his dirty knee-on-knee collision with Alex Ovechkin, Cooke boarded Fedor Tyutin head-first. Cooke received a five minute major for charging and a five minute major for fighting after being engaged by Derick Brassard.
From the Columbus Dispatch after the game:
“It was the worst hit I’ve ever had from behind,” said Tyutin, who had an ice pack on his shoulder. “I wasn’t surprised, not when you see (Cooke) in the highlights all the time for dirty hits.”
Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said that Tyutin looked Cooke “right in the eyes” and knew the hit was coming.
Sure, Dan.
02/06/2011 – Matt Cooke’s knee-on-knee hit on Alex Ovechkin
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Two-minute minor for tripping
With 3:45 left in the third period of a 2-0 game, Matt Cooke hit Alex Ovechkin hard knee-on-knee. Cooke was accessed a minor penalty on the play and angrily confronted by Ovi. Luckily for the Capitals, the Russian Machine never breaks and he didn’t miss a game due to injury.
The Washington Post had reaction from both locker-rooms after the game:
Ovechkin played another shift before the contest expired and appeared fine afterward, but Coach Bruce Boudreau didn’t mince words when asked about the hit in his post-game press conference.
“It was Matt Cooke. Need we say more? It’s not like it’s his first rodeo,” Boudreau said. “He’s done it to everybody and then he goes to the ref and says: ‘What did I do?’ He knows damn well what he did. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s good at it and he knows how to do it. He knows how to pick this stuff. We as a league, we still buy into this [idea] that, ‘Oh it was an accidental thing.'”
…
Both Cooke and Coach Dan Bylsma downplayed the contact.
“I just tracked the puck and he tried to cut back on me,” Cooke said. “We clipped skates.”
Said Bylsma: “I didn’t think much contact was made. Maybe their skates get wound up together. But, you know, Ovechkin was out on the ensuing power play.”
Someone seems like an enabler here.
02/04/11 – Matt Cooke cheap-shots Steve Montador
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Two minutes for roughing, 10 minute misconduct
In this incident, Cooke does a few gutless things. First, he cross-checks Jordan Leopold from behind after Leopold takes down one of his teammates. Next, after Steve Montador engages him, Cooke lands an overhand right punch to an unsuspecting Montador after the linesmen separate the two.
Classy.
12/28/2010 – Matt Cooke elbows Evander Kane in the head
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: None
As both players go for a puck along the boards, Cooke raises his elbow and strikes an unaware Kane in the jaw. No penalty would be called on the play, however later in the period, Cooke would be whistled for kneeing. Go figure.
12/21/2010 – Matt Cooke elbows Keith Yandle in the head
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Two-minute minor for roughing
As both Phoenix defenseman Keith Yandle and Cooke go for a puck in the corner, Cooke delivers an elbow to the back of Yandle’s head. It certainly appears that the Phoenix defenseman was woozy afterwards. The announcer describes Cooke as “[getting] the arms up a little bit.” A little bit?
NESN had reaction in Phoenix’s locker-room after the game:
“It’s just a dirty hit,” Yandle said after the 6-1 Penguins win, according to the McKeesport Daily News. “Dirty player. He’s got no respect. … His only intent was to hurt me with his hands high like that, and I hope [league officials] review it.”
What had the Coyotes fired up — aside from getting demolished on the scoreboard — was that Cooke wouldn’t answer the bell after laying the questionable hit.
“The fact that Matt Cooke comes at Keith Yandle in a 5-0 game and elbows him in the head, obviously we took it as a personal challenge,” captain Shane Doan told the newspaper.
“They’re up 5-0, and he cowers away from all our guys,” Yandle said. “I mean, every guy on our team tried to fight him.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quoted Bylsma as saying:
“We encourage our players not to finish checks on the penalty-kill, so from that standpoint we didn’t like putting ourselves in that situation,” Bylsma said Tuesday after the Penguins practiced at Consol Energy Center.
11/26/10 – Matt Cooke drives Erik Karlsson’s head into the boards
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Two-minute minor for boarding
After Max Talbot cleanly checks Erik Karlsson into the boards, Cooke follows-up a half second later with a hit of his own. Cooke drives Karlsson’s head into the boards and knocks him out. Cooke would recieve a two-minute minor penalty for boarding.
10/11/10 – Matt Cooke interferes with Rick DiPietro three times
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Cooke was given three separate minor penalties for goalie interference.
I won’t offer a description on the series of events above because there are no words satisfactory enough for how idiotic Cooke is being.
These hits however, would spark bad blood between the two teams and ignite two separate brawls a year later. The first brawl was on February 2, 2011 and it started after DePietro clotheslined Cooke. Brent Johnson would come to his teammate’s aid and knock DePietro out, injuring him for six weeks. The Islanders then sought immediate retribution during the teams’ rematch nine days later. In the end, 346 penalty minutes were doled out, and several players were later suspended by the league including Eric Godard (ten games), Trevor Gillies (nine games), and Matt Martin (four games). In addition to the suspensions, NHL disciplinarians fined the Islanders $100,000 for “their failure to control their players.”
03/07/10 – Matt Cooke elbows Marc Savard in the head
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: None
This is the play that would change the NHL rulebooks forever. As Marc Savard entered the offensive zone, he took a shot on net and then was greeted by a blindside elbow from Cooke. Savard was left motionless and unconscious on the ice. The Bruins best offensive weapon then missed the rest of the season with a concussion, and has not been the same player since.
Bruins blog captured Claude Julien’s reaction after the game:
“A guy like that has to be suspended,” the Bruins coach said. “That’s the way I see it, because it’s an elbow to the head from the blind side. That’s exactly the examples they show of what we’ve got to get out of this game. We have a guy who’s got a concussion. Our best player. He’s going to be out for a while. He was [unconscious] on the ice for a bit. That’s unacceptable.”
Not suspending Cooke was, in my opinion, a disgrace to the league and the biggest mistake of Colin Campbell’s career. Those e-mails about Savard made the whole thing even harder to swallow, too.
02/06/10 – Matt Cooke cross-checks Andrei Markov in the back from behind
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: None
As Andrei Markov looks to cycle the puck behind the net, Cooke delivers a cross-check to Markov’s left side, leaving him writhing in pain on the ice. There was no penalty called on the play.
11/28/2009 – Matt Cooke elbows Artem Anisimov in the head
NHL Supplemental Discipline: Two-game suspension
Penalties called on the ice: Two-minute minor for interference.
This hit, which seems like a carbon-copy of the one he laid Marc Savard out on, resulted in Cooke being suspended for two games.
Larry Brooks of the New York Post wrote this about the hit:
Cooke was somehow accessed only a two-minute minor for interference on the play by the officiating tandem of David Banfield and Stephen Walkom, the latter of whom served as the NHL VP of Officiating the past several seasons before returning to the ice this season.
Donald Brashear sought retribution upon Cooke’s release from the penalty box, but was prevented from doing so by an over-eager linesman. As a result, Brashear was issued a double minor for roughing while Cooke escaped unscathed. The Penguins then scored on both ends of the power play.
Of course they did.
06/02/09 – Matt Cooke tries to decapitate Chris Osgood with his skate
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: None
Just a hockey play, right?
Pensburgh had this to say about the incident:
One of the questions Coach Babcock was asked in yesterday’s presser was whether or not he saw Matt Cooke “kick” Chris Osgood. He admitted he wasn’t sure, but also made a face as if to say, “Oh. Matt Cooke. Right, that guy.” With Cooke you never really can tell.
Well, if that’s not blatant homerism, I don’t know what is.
05/18/09 – Matt Cooke’s knee-on-knee hit on Erik Cole
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: None
In Game One of the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals, the Hurricanes lost Erik Cole midway through the third period. Why? Well, Matt Cooke caught him knee-on-knee in front of the Pittsburgh net. Cole managed to play only one shift after the hit.
Canes Now had the reaction from both locker-rooms:
Asked if he thought it was a knee-on-knee hit, with the implication that it was an illegal one, a curt [Carolina coach Paul] Maurice said, “Yes, I did. I felt that was, yeah.”
Cole officially has a “lower body” injury, but he clearly hurt his left knee in the collision. Cooke said the contact was accidental.
“He was cutting across the middle,” Cooke said. “I turned sideways to hit him, and he turned the other way. I almost fell over, too.”
Totally.
3/16/09 – Matt Cooke’s knee-on-knee hit on Zach Bogosian
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Two-minute minor for tripping
After absorbing this knee-on-knee hit from Matt Cooke, Zach Bogosian left the game in the 2nd period and did not return. A Pens fan says in the comments on YouTube that this was a clean hit. His assessment is incorrect.
11/29/08 – Matt Cooke blind-sides Zach Parise into the bench
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: Two-minute minor for roughing
In the above video, Cooke drives Zach Parise into the Devils bench several seconds after Parise dumps the puck into the offensive zone. Yes, he chose to still hit him even though the bench door was open. Hey, at least the Penguins announcers dubbed it the “Subway Sandwich of the Game.”
02/16/08 – Matt Cooke drives Mathieu Roy’s head into the boards
NHL Supplemental Discipline: None
Penalties called on the ice: None
Here Cooke drives a defenseless Mathieu Roy head-first into the boards after chasing the puck in the corner. The game featured 14 fighting majors, eight misconduct penalties and 193 penalty minutes. Oilers Coach Craig MacTavish had this to say afterwards:
“I didn’t see anything dirty in the game,” said Oilers coach Craig MacTavish, who only took exception to an uncalled hit from behind by Matt Cooke on defenseman Mathieu Roy. “There was no back stabbing, there were eyeball to eyeball altercations and fights, and that’s part of hockey.”
In a feature published March 14, 2011 entitled “The Public Enemy,” Sports Illustrated spoke to both Erik Cole and Mike Keane. They had this to say about Cooke:
“There are times,” Cole says, “when I think he just doesn’t care if a guy is in a vulnerable position.”
“Matt Cooke has found his niche and [plays] his role very effectively,” says Mike Keane, who played 16 NHL seasons, including one as Cooke’s teammate on the Canucks in 2003-04. “He goes out and hits Ovechkin, hits guys from behind. If he hurts Ovechkin, who cares? The Washington Capitals won’t win the Stanley Cup. He did his job. For Matt Cooke, that’s perfect.”
And that’s the point of our post.
The NHL has to protect their assets on the ice. All they’ve done is constantly enable Cooke’s dangerous behavior over the years. They are the ones responsible for the monster he’s become. At some point you have to hand him a lengthy suspension, otherwise the message won’t get through. And — so far — the league is unwilling to do that.
Until then, let’s all get enraged by how few games Campbell suspends Cooke for his latest hit. And we’ll gladly eat our words if the NHL gets it right.
Additional reporting by Chris Gordon and Fedor Fedin.
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