Cooke’s hit on Savard reignites endless firestorm on respect, safety

“He falls; he concusses” seems well on its way to becoming a phrase as synonymous with NHL hockey as “he shoots; he scores”.  Yesterday afternoon, late in the Penguins’ 2-1 victory over visiting Boston, Pittsburgh left wing Matt Cooke lifted his left elbow or forearm just enough to deliver a check to Boston forward Marc Savard as the latter was following through on a slap shot inside the Penguins’ zone.  With 5:37 left in the game, Cooke unfortunately connected with Savard’s head and Savard immediately fell to the ice.  No penalty was called but according to a statement from Boston team officials posted on the Bruins’ website this evening, Savard suffered a Grade 2 concussion from the hit.

Which path could Matt Cooke have taken to avoid colliding with Marc Savard?

And so the merry-go-round of hockey’s dark underbelly comes to life once again.  Can’t you hear the eerie, incendiary calliope music already?  Can’t you almost see and hear the horses on the merry-go-round already neighing and braying their predictable songs in light of this most recent hitting-to-the-head incident?   The Penguins sang a song of regret and sympathy for Savard after the game, but stopped well short of labelling Cooke’s hit dirty, or calling Cooke a dirty player.  However, Boston coach Claude Jullien thundered about Cooke during his post-game comments and used the phrase “blindside hit to the head” four separate times to ascribe pugilistic intent to the incident and stated it was an “example … of what we’ve got to get out of this game”.

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NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell will review tape today and before the next Pens’ game on Thursday, issue a suspension that many will consider a tired song – too lenient, a joke compared to the number of games Savard will miss, not commensurate with the crime.  Fans and writers will sing a dirge and lament that yet another player has been felled with a dangerous, perhaps intentional blow to the head, and wonder how close we are to witnessing an on-ice death.  Ironically, NHL general managers will meet in Florida this week to discuss hits to the head and how to reduce them.

Yet I can’t help but think nothing substantial will be done, judging by the NHL’s historic intransigence on this issue.  Would anyone be surprised if the GMs emerged after their three-day meeting and continued to sing their rehearsed chorus that more study is required on this issue?

Seriously, aren’t we past the point of studies and reviews?  The issue is not whether hits to the head occur frequently or infrequently in an average NHL game or whether a hit to the head was intentional or unintentional.  The issue is that given the speed of NHL hockey and the physical nature of the game, any hit to the head is extremely dangerous, potentially deadly and must be curtailed through severely increased penalties and a renaissance among players of simple respect.

Concerned Slovakian teammates look on as Lubos Bartecko is carried off the ice on a stretcher after being hit in the head by the arm of Norway's Ole-Kristian Tollefsen in a 2010 Winter Olympic playoff game on February 23, 2010 at Vancouver.

The International Ice Hockey Federation showed its zero-tolerance policy at last month’s Olympics for hits to the head, most notably when Detroit Red Wing prospect and Norwegian team member Ole-Kristian Tollefsen elbowed Slovakia’s Lubos Bartecko in the head in a particularly gruesome incident.  Tollefsen was swiftly given a game misconduct, a five-minute major and an immediate one-game suspension (which turned out to be moot as Norway was eliminated that night).  Yet according to the current NHL rulebook, hits to the head are still a subjective, grey area.  Adopting the IIHF standard plus minimum suspensions of 15 to 20 games for any hits to the head would be a good start.

Players must get rid of any flawed ideas that new rules against hits to the head will either severely restrict good, solid bodychecking and physical play, or unjustly penalize accidental hits to the head.  To use Cooke as an example, in the diagram above, I have marked two blue arrows showing two paths he could have taken.  He could have turned and followed the puck shot by Savard (circled in orange) or he could have skated into the space vacated by teammate Jordan Staal and Bruin Dennis Wideman (skating direction shown by orange arrows).

Neither option, however, was practical.  If one clicks on the photo, I have linked the footage of the play in slow motion and one can easily appreciate that Cooke, already lining up Savard for a check, had no time to choose either of the two “blue arrow” options.  Cooke was quite correct to finish his check (as all players are properly taught from bantam level on up), but he was horribly incorrect in his split-second decision on how he carried out his check on two counts: 1) checking with any body part other than his shoulders or hips and 2) aiming his check, whether intentionally or not, above Savard’s shoulders.  Coaches must drill into players and players must drill into themselves that any hitting to the head shows a lack of respect for the game, is dangerous, potentially deadly and absolutely unacceptable.  If the whole point of checking, by body or stick, is to separate opponent from puck, wouldn’t logic dictate that aiming lower on an opponent’s body, nearer to the centre of gravity, would give a better chance at jolting a man off the puck?

Thus there can be no justification for “accidental” hits to the head.  They have absolutely nothing to do with trying to dislodge an opponent from the puck.  They have everything to do with dangerous and reckless play that has no place in a credible, professional hockey league.