Cooke suspended for at least 14 games, Lemieux should write check

Winger Matt Cooke is going home after the league hit him his fifth suspension in three seasons.

Not long ago, Penguins Owner Mario Lemieux lamented runs taken at his team so much he wrote a letter to the league proposing teams be fined as a result of player suspensions.

Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero followed suit and called for an outright ban to head shots.

Like clockwork, Pittsburgh winger Matt Cooke was the first NHL player suspended since Lemieux’s pitch to make teams as responsible for their players’ actions as the skaters themselves.

Cooke, who has earned a reputation as a notoriously dirty player over an 11-year career, was banned for 14-17 games – the rest of the regular season plus the first round – as a result of a blindside elbow to the head of Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh.

The blow was perplexing as the Penguins were up 2-1 and in no desperation for a player to make any sort of impact. It was equally damaging, because it sparked a Rangers’ 5-2 comeback victory.

Everyone around the league has eagerly waited for this moment, a pivotal point where Lemieux has to either write a check or turn his back on himself.

Under Lemieux’s bid to punish teams for their players’ actions the Penguins’ owner would be fined at least $750 thousand and up to $1 million for Cooke’s suspension.

And, with Shero outspokenly condoning a complete ban of head shots, Pittsburgh also has to decide whether or not it parts ways with Cooke.

In three seasons as a Penguins player, Cooke has been suspended on four separate occasions for a total of 10 games, so Cooke meddling in the center of controversy is commonplace. Those figures now read five suspensions and at least 24 games out.

Matt Cooke’s deliberate headshot to Boston’s Marc Savard last season, which sidelined Savard for two months, sparked a league wide initiative to crackdown on hits to the head such as Cooke’s most recent infraction. Coincidentally, the Penguins were up 2-1 in that game, too, with five minutes remaining.

The league implemented new rules on headshots two weeks after Cooke’s hit on Savard.

Lemieux and Shero did not cry wolf then.

But this season Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, Mark Letestu and Maxime Talbot have received inadvertent and calculated headshots alike, and Lemieux and Shero cannot be more disgusted.

Finally, and we did not have to wait long, Lemieux has to support or thwart his and Shero’s outrage toward headhunting players like Cooke by maintaining the weight of his wallet or  lightening its load to a tune of $750 thousand.