Cooke and Boston Meet Again Tomorrow

There's a can't miss game on tomorrow night, when the Pittsburgh Penguins head to Boston to take on the Bruins.

It's the first time the two teams will play each other since Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke took out the Bruins' top center Marc Savard with a blindside hit.

There was no penalty on the play, and Cooke wasn't suspended for the hit. The explanation from disciplinarian Colin Campbell said Cooke wasn't suspended because Mike Richards wasn't suspended for a similar hit on David Booth, and that there's technically nothing illegal about ramming a guy's head in with your elbow or shoulder pad.

"No one likes when a player like Marc Savard goes down the way he did," he said. "No one likes when a player like David Booth goes down the way he did. But we have to be consistent."

Complaining about the legality of hits in the NHL is a tradition like the seventh inning stretch in baseball or not playing defense in the NBA. Nonetheless, does anybody think these hits should be legal?

Don't get me wrong. Hitting is awesome. But the wimpy skate-across-the-middle-to-get-a-piece-of-a-guy isn't hitting. If the guy can't see you, it shouldn't be done.

Defenseman Dion Phaneuf got a lot of flak for questionable hits when he was with Calgary. At least, though, players like Denis Hamel and Owen Nolan saw Phaneuf coming (or would have had they kept their heads up). Even Brian Campbell knew Alex Ovechkin was there before Ovechkin shoved him into the boards, especially since he was a teammate when Ovechkin laid a far dirtier (yet suspension-free) hit on Danny Briere.

A simple rule for dirty hits: if you come from "out of nowhere," it shouldn't be legal. A lot of these hits people don't even catch live. You just see a player unconscious on the ice.

The league honchos are trying to push a blindside headshot rule through the NHL's Board of Governors, but that doesn't help the Bruins, who are now three points ahead of ninth place in the East and might have to play the rest of the season without their best forward.

The Bruins, to be sure, are still fuming over the lack of a suspension on Cooke, and that's why you should watch Thursday night. I doubt Boston retaliates with anything more than a hard hit on Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin and a fight with Cooke, but things can get out of hand fast in hockey, and this game has that vibe a little more than usual.