Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Matt Cooke's play on the ice will not earn him any free rounds after the game.

Matt Cooke has few friends on the ice and his style of play leaves him with few off it as well.

BOCA RATON, Fla -- Here’s what they didn’t say when they wrote up those new head shot rules. What they couldn't say.

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.

As usual, Toronto GM Brian Burke wasn’t afraid to confirm one of the intents of the rule, when we asked him if the jobs of certain players might be in jeopardy when this new rule comes into effect.

“Good,” Burke said. “It’s a predatory act. If it’s a case where this is how a player is making his living, he should be making his living doing something else.”

Next Thursday, Pittsburgh visits Boston. By failing to find a way to suspend Cooke for even one game, the league puts the onus on the Bruins to mete out their own vigilante justice.

With that, we have the prospect of another Todd Bertuzzi-Steve Moore incident; an incident where Bruins players — who have been blasted at home for doing nothing at the time of the Cooke hit — act on the pressure to defend Savard.

Or worse, they target the Penguins best player. How would the league look if Savard were not the only one to miss the rest of the season because of a throw-away player like Cooke, but Sidney Crosby was injured as well?

Cooke’s problem, another NHLer said on Thursday, is that he likely doesn’t have any friends inside his own dressing room right now.

“Two guys punch each other’s lights out, then you go to bar and you have a couple of beers together,” said injured Edmonton defenceman Sheldon Souray. “When you’re Matt Cooke, you go to the bar that night and there is no camaraderie. There are no friends.

“When you fight, there is something honourable in that. But you flip that switch — you start hurting guys — there is noting honourable in that.”

Souray has been outspoken on the issue of players whose primary goal is to injure other players. He revealed Thursday that those players are becoming pariahs even within their own dressing room walls.

“Do you think the guys on the Minnesota Wild are in love with Boogaard? He might be the toughest guy in the league, and he serves a purpose for peace keeping. But when he’s running guys, smashing heads against the glass, taking guys’ knees out, are his teammates really looking to him and saying, ‘Way to go Boogie? Good hit?’ It’s not happening.”

More proof of that came on Thursday when Bill Guerin, a teammate of Cooke’s, spoke in measured words after learning that no suspension was handed down.

“If a guy gets hurt like that with a shot to the head, there's got to be something,” Guerin said to the Associated Press. “Actions happen. Guys don't mean to hurt each other, but they do. You have got to pay a price for that.”

Hearing a veteran, team-guy like Guerin say that about one of his own is about an 8.0 on the Richter Scale when it comes to failing to support a teammate. Of course, Guerin is right. And if they weren’t both Pittsburgh Penguins, Guerin would likely say what he really thinks about Cooke.

The way Souray did.

“He hits Savard,” Souray scoffed. “Would Matt Cooke do that to Milan Lucic? Those kinds of players, they’re spot pickers. He knew he was going to get Savard, that he was vulnerable.

“Matt Cooke, you put a guy like (Ottawa’s Jarkko) Ruutu in there with him. Cal Clutterbuck is a guy who’s in there, though he’ll fight some bigger guys. Kaleta’s in there.”

Kaleta has earned such a reputation as a cheap, dangerous hitter, an NHL player once told me that another Buffalo Sabre warned him before the game to watch out for Kaleta. That’s right, his own teammate warning the opponent.

Now Guerin, a respected leader in the Penguins locker room, throws Cooke under the bus.

It’s all falling apart for guys like Cooke now.

Couldn’t happen to a better guy.