Nick Kypreos

Nick Kypreos is a Stanley Cup champion and Hockeycentral analyst

Matt Cooke answered the bell against Shawn Thornton on the B's home ice.

Over the past week the NHL has shown its fans two examples of how to exact payback.

Fresh off the Matt Cooke/Marc Savard story comes the latest deemed cheap shot by Anaheim's James Wisniewski on Chicago’s Brent Seabrook.

Once again we are hearing the same media outcry: a reckless hit; no need for it; get it out of our game.

Sure, in a perfect world we'd all love to see senseless injuries out of the game, but with 1,300 games in a season it’s unrealistic to think the boys will play all of them like saints -- regardless of the consequences.

What we don’t need to remove from the game is the ability to avenge.

Case in point: Wisniewski and Boston's Shawn Thornton.

I had no problem with Wisniewski taking a healthy run at Seabrook on Wednesday night; he was perfectly in his right to go after Seabrook to settle a score from an earlier hit on Corey Perry.

Avenging hits has been around for 100 years. It's been a great part of the hockey culture since then and a great aspect of enhancing any game's story line. The obvious issue with Wisniewski, or any other player, is how each go about executing the payback. In the Wisniewski case, he executed it very poorly.

Charging, leaving his feet, high hands to the head -- it was a disaster from the very start. And for that Wisniewski will pay a heavy price: eight games and $268,292 in lost salary out of his pocket.

Prior to the Boston/Pittsburgh rematch on Thursday night, it was the same thing. You would have had to have lived on another planet to not anticipate that something was going to happen in that game.

The difference is that Thornton executed payback correctly and just beat the snot out of Cooke. Other than his additional 10-minute misconduct for being overzealous, he got the job done all within the parameters of league rules. And with that he alleviated much of the pent-up Bruins' frustration of losing its top player.

Hockey is to be played with passion and emotion. I'd like to think that the emotion combined with the skill is what separates it from most sports. I'll take 20 Wisniewskis and Thorntons on my team any day of the week; players who push the envelope trying to do the right thing for their team. Would you rather watch some of those other phonies who just play from paycheque-to-paycheque and would never think about sticking their neck on the line for one of their teammates?

I sure wouldn't. Let's hope we never lose that aspect of the game.