Matt Cooke : Head Hunter and Dirty Player

Finding someone who thinks that the Penguins Matt Cooke is the dirtiest player in the league isn’t a hard task.  Fans and players will tell you if there’s a cheap shot in the game they’ll be looking for Cooke on the ice.

Sadly, it hasn’t reached the NHL disciplinarians yet.  The current climate of sports is that concussions are the hottest topic in player safety.  The NFL has started to crack down on the injury as the NHL has remained a bit silent on the subject.  I’ve been seeing more calls when it comes to head injuries but the NHL needs to step up and set the standard, not react to it down the road.

The NHL’s biggest star, Sidney Crosby, remains sideline with concussion symptoms and poor Marc Savard of Boston looks to have skated his last game after a failed comeback from concussion. Hopefully the league will step up and enforce cheap and dirty hits that results in these injuries.

That brings us back to Matt Cooke. There are lots of videos of Cooke giving cheap shots to players. Here’s the most recent. Cooke lays a dirty hit on the Blue Jackets’ Fedor Tyutin. Watch the video and you’ll see an unnecessary hit in which Cooke leaves his feet to lunge at the upper body of Tyutin and the result is a brutal hit into the boards.

The league might look at this and shrug it off because Tyutin was able to get up and skate off the ice. But watch the play again and you’ll see the cheap shot. I’m all for a physical game and hits are just part of the game. I’ve taken my share of them over the years and that’s just how it goes. Not big deal.

But can you really say that Cooke isn’t just out to hurt players at this point?

Check out this game, just earlier this week, when Cooke led with his knee to hurt Alex Ovechkin. Seems pretty blatant, doesn’t it? Had the NHL stepped up and enforced this cheap shot you wouldn’t be seeing the fist Cooke video in this post. It won’t be long before we can string along a series of videos over the games Cooke plays to see the injuries he causes.

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