Cooke Takes a Few Punches, Penguins Win the Battle

BOSTON -- For a marked man, Matt Cooke played throughout the Penguins' 3-0 victory over Boston on Thursday like he didn't have a care in the world. Some of that had to do with the soft effort of the Bruins, who didn't touch him in the game's final 58 minutes. But it's also a little easier for Cooke when you're on the defending Stanley Cup champions and the team has this blindsider's back.

"We are 100 percent behind Cookie," said veteran Penguins right wing Bill Guerin. "There shouldn't be any confusion about that."

There wasn't on Thursday at the Garden. Cooke has been called a lot of things, with "gutless" leading the list. Say what you want about the serial sneak, but he had the guts of a burglar from the drop of the puck.Since the NHL failed to give him any, Cooke took his punishment just 1:58 into the game. On his first shift, Cooke accepted the invitation of Boston enforcer Shawn Thornton to fight. For a middleweight scrapper who had taken on the likes of Chris Drury and Ilya Kovalchuk this season, this was a major leap up in weight class for Cooke.

He took a beating as Thornton, against the hockey fight code, continued to pound away after the linesmen stepped in to break up the fight. The assumption was Cooke showed no ethics in his March 7 blindside head hit that left Marc Savard with a serious concussion, so the Bruins were not going to show him any mercy. Under NHL Rule 47.5, the bonus punches cost Thornton 10 minutes for misconduct. For the Bruins and the out-for-blood Beantown crowd, it was worth it.

"Him (Cooke) stepping up and doing the right thing put some water on the fire, I suppose," Thornton said.

Cooke didn't laugh it off like a Matthew Barnaby; he absorbed the revenge like a man. Then the game continued and the more talented, better team won. Especially without Savard, the Bruins could not get into a skills show with the defending Stanley Cup champions (even with Evgeni Malkin sidelined by injury). It was bad enough the Bruins didn't have the ability to keep up with Pittsburgh, but a lack of heart? What an embarrassment to Johnny Bucyk, Ed Westfall, Bobby Orr and the 1970 Bruins Stanley Cup team honored in a pregame ceremony.

"(Matt Cooke) is a really good person. ... People always want to see how a player plays as a direct line to his personality. He plays with an edge on the ice, but he's fun to be around as a teammate. He's a very big part of our team."
-- Bill Guerin If Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli didn't like his team's response in the immediate aftermath of the hit on Savard at the Igloo, one can only wonder how he felt sitting through 60 minutes of passionless play at the Garden. "Guys were coming back to the bench hanging their heads," said head coach Claude Julien. "There was no emotion." In the end, the Bruins were booed out of the building. "We deserved it," said losing goaltender Tuukka Rask.

With NHL executives Colin Campbell, Terry Gregson and Brendan Shanahan looking on -- turns out they could have left after the early fight -- Tyler Kennedy gave the Penguins the 1-0 lead 8:34 into the first. By then, the delirium from the Thornton-Cooke battle had subsided. With 8:17 left in the second period, Bruins captain Zdeno Chara tried to wake up his team by taking on Pittsburgh tough guy Michael Rupp and winning the fight. But 17 seconds later, most of the buzz came out of the TD Garden when Mark Stuart took a penalty. Alexei Ponikarovsky scored a back-breaker with 15 seconds left in the second, just after a Pittsburgh power play ended.

Rupp's goal five minutes into the third to make it 3-0 took the remaining air out of the building. The Penguins didn't lose the war over Cooke, and they won the game. This was Pittsburgh's first shutout of the season. Boston only managed 17 shots on goal on Marc-Andre Fleury.

"I was no different than anyone else coming in," said Cooke, who has been unsuccessful in his attempts to reach out to Savard, "I just wanted to win the game."

During Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday, Don Cherry unveiled a clip he said showed Sidney Crosby appearing exasperated after Cooke wiped out Marc Savard. Guerin's comments in the aftermath of Cooke's latest hit were interpreted as a sign that the Penguins do not always stand by their wild man. On Thursday, they proved otherwise.

"Cookie is a really good person," said Guerin. "He's ... how do I put it ... he's always in the middle of everything. He's always joking around. People always want to see how a player plays as a direct line to his personality. That's not the case with Cookie. He plays with an edge on the ice, but he's fun to be around as a teammate. He is a very big part of our team."

Said Crosby: "As teammates, it's understood we have each other's back. Once Matt got the fight out of the way quickly, we knew it was time to play the game. We responded tonight."

To his credit, Cooke responded the way he should.