Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Alex Ovechkin is becoming a dangerous player and it was time for the NHL to step in.

It was a cool coincidence that Alex Ovechkin and Colin Campbell should meet like this, at this strange time in their careers, when both seem to be transitioning from the guy they used to be to a new and not-so-improved version of themselves.

The disciplinarian was losing his teeth, just as the player is finding a new, dangerous set of his own. One seems like he has been doing his best not to offend anybody, while the other is becoming a menace on the ice and petulant off of it, as he walks the corridors of NHL arenas like the anti-Crosby: dressed in torn up jeans and Affliction t-shirts, a cell phone on his ear and members of his posse covering each flank.

But there they were on Monday: The new rebellious Ovechkin, called on to the carpet of a National Hockey League’s discipline czar who seems to do now exactly what we used to criticize the NHL Players’ Association of doing — spending more time looking out for the rights of the Matt Cookes of the world, and not the Marc Savards.

In the end, a two-game suspension seems about right. Ovechkin loses $232,645.40 in salary, and is now a repeat offender.

But at first, Hockey Op’s office didn’t see a suspension in the dangerous Ovechkin shove on Chicago defenceman Brian Campbell Sunday, until news rolled in about the extent of Brian Campbell’s injury.

If he truly has a busted collarbone and broken ribs, he’ll be gone for the rest of the regular season at least. And just try taking freshly healing ribs into the playoffs as an NHL defenceman. This hit could have serious post-season ramifications for Campbell and his Blackhawks.

Outside forces came to bear, and on the heels of letting a lifetime cheap shot artist like Cooke walk — while his victim is still a shut-in, his Boston blinds closed and the phone ringer turned down — there was much pressure on Campbell to mete out some discipline here.

You’re just going to have to trust me on this: Had Colin Campbell only had to answer to himself, he would have suspended Cooke for 15 games for his hit on Savard.

But somewhere along the line, Campbell has either become compromised, or been neutered by such texts as the Collective Bargaining Agreement, or the NHL’s Rule Book. Nobody has watched the NHL mete out justice over the years will ever believe that Campbell couldn’t have found a way to suspend a career punk like Cooke for a few games.

But he didn’t.

On Monday morning, word leaked out that Ovechkin wasn’t really a repeat offender, despite all the injurious acts we seem to remember him committing over the past 12 months. The knees he stuck out on Sergei Gonchar and Tim Gleason don’t rank as priors for the boarding call on Brian Campbell, and the last boarding call he had was 41 games ago. The statute of limitations has apparently expired on that one, so he has a clean slate there too.

In the end, all of these excuses why an increasingly dangerous predator like Ovechkin should be sprung were exactly that — excuses. Even Campbell must have realized it, and gave the Capitals superstar a couple of games.

There is much danger in pushing Campbell with both hands in that situation, hard towards the boards, as the injuries prove. A dangerous hit doesn’t always have to preceded be a four-step run, does it?

Look — it’s time for an admission here:

I’m one of those people who believe that hockey should hurt once in a while. I am all for fighting in hockey, and I have no problem with any of those blindside hits that do not target the head, assuming they are legally executed body checks.

And what’s not to love about Ovechkin? He can score 50 and scare the hell out of the opponent at the same time.

But his game is changing. Ovechkin is becoming dangerous on the ice, and we’re betting his importance to the league and the networks is giving him a bit of an “untouchable” complex.

He has already informed the league that he’s going to Sochi in 2014, regardless of their decision to participate. Like he’s above both the league and the NHLPA.

Ovechkin is big-timing the game more and more it seems, and it is time someone set him straight on that.

We were beginning to wonder if Colin Campbell was that guy anymore.