I knew Cooke was a patently gutless scumbag, but I hadn’t seen several of those cheap hits before. Pretty funny that Cooke confronted Cherry last year.

As for Sutton, that’s not too shocking — Sutton hits and hits legally, so of course Cherry loves him. (Not sure how familiar Cherry is with the values exchanged on the rental market though.)

At least according to Mark Spector on Sportsnet:

It was the collective whisper we heard there from a gathering of men who know the NHL game well, but could never come out and verbalize what they really think about a cheap shot artist like Matt Cooke.

Do you recall that several general managers and league discipline czar Colin Campbell persistently reminded us that the new rules would be particularly tough for "repeat offenders?"

What they meant was, "guys who hit the way Matt Cooke, Colby Armstrong, Derek Boogaard and Patrick Kaleta hit will have to change their game, or change their vocation."

They are the cheap, dangerous hockey players who endanger the rest of their colleagues.

Brian Burke referred to it implicitly, while Sheldon Souray really ripped into Cooke and his kind.