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Q: While I feel Matt Cooke's hit on Marc Savard was unnecessary, I feel the league has to tread carefully here. So many of the arguments I hear are weak reasons to suspend players, i.e., he "knew" what he was doing, he is a repeat offender, etc. Does anyone really know what Cooke was thinking, vs. Mike Richards (of Philadelphia, when he hit Florida's David Booth earlier this season)? Is Alexander Ovechkin a repeat offender if his star status keeps him from getting suspended as often as lesser players? And is the potential for injury important in a foul, or is it based solely on if an injury occurs? With the money in the game now, players respecting each other only goes as far as your own contract. Do you think there is anything that can or should be done to keep the integrity of the game and make it safer?

Tim McCormick, Fox Chapel

MOLINARI: Wow. The points you raise could provide fodder for about a month's worth of discussions.

Here's an abridged response/reaction to each:

1) Obviously, no one except Cooke could know what he was thinking as he prepared to hit Savard, and while the fact that a player has previous offenses could subconsciously influence NHL executive Colin Campbell's thinking as he evaluates an incident, such a "record" should come into play only after the player has been deemed guilty of an offense, and the incident moves into the punishment phase. If Campbell concludes that a hit does not violate existing rules, whether the player being judged was guilty of an offense in the past is irrelevant.

2) Ovechkin is, in fact, a repeat offender, and any punishments he receives should reflect that. It seems pretty clear, though, that star players are going to get a bit more slack from the league in most situations than a run-of-the-mill teammate would. That doesn't mean stars have carte blanche, as Ovechkin's two-game suspension for shoving Chicago's Brian Campbell from behind Sunday proves. Just that the league doesn't benefit from having guys who drive ticket sales/TV ratings in street clothes any more than is necessary.

3) The thinking here is that punishment for an illegal hit should be based on the nature of the hit, not the amount of damage it causes, but the reality is that if a player is hurt by a hit judged to be in violation of the rules, it seems to lead to a greater suspension when one is issued. (Please, let's not have anyone try to sell the idea that a suspended player should be out as long as the player he injures. If a fourth-liner was hurt by an illegal check from a star opponent, the poor fourth-liner might not get back into a game for the rest of his natural life.)

4) There should be no correlation between the size of a player's paycheck and the amount of respect he has for opponents (and, by extension, the game). Cooke didn't hit Savard because he was a threat to Cooke's earning power, and Ovechkin didn't send Campbell hurtling into the boards over money, either.

5) The idea of a black-and-white ban on shots to the head, intentional or otherwise, has a lot of appeal, in part because it would relieve game officials of the burden of trying to assess a player's intention while preparing for a hit, but that apparently isn't going to happen. Nobody who loves the North American game wants to see body contact legislated out of it, and any concerns about that really are not rooted in reality. But if there's a quick-and-easy way to restore some players' respect for opponents -- and for the damage that can be done when they try to straddle the line between legal and dirty, and come down on the wrong side of it -- it hasn't surfaced yet.

Q: After reviewing televised replays of Steve Downie's takedown of Sidney Crosby on Sunday several times, it appeared to me to be an intent to injure. Clearly, the NHL did not, and I am wondering why. In my biased opinion, it actually looked worse than Ovechkin's infraction that brought a two-game suspension.

Glenn Martinson, Oakdale

MOLINARI: What Downie did to Crosby on the first shift of the Penguins' 2-1 victory at Tampa -- when he rode Crosby to the ice from behind and caused Crosby's right knee to bend at a nausea-inducing angle, was dirty, dangerous and completely unnecessary. The league obviously had at least a bit of a problem with it, because Downie subsequently was fined $1,000, although he was not suspended.

Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik bluntly accused Downie of trying to slew-foot Crosby, and Downie offered only a lukewarm defense of what he did.

When Crosby went down and his knee and ankle went in directions they aren't supposed to, the only question seemed to be exactly when his season-ending surgery would be performed. That he returned to the game less than three minutes later was nothing shy of remarkable. But while Crosby's knee apparently escaped significant damage, Downie's reputation did not.

He was widely regarded as a thuggish punk when he broke into the league with Philadelphia, but had been rehabilitating his image -- and playing some pretty good hockey -- with the Lightning this season. Tampa Bay coach Rick Tocchet has become his biggest booster and, while Downie certainly isn't going to win any gentlemanly play awards, he had become a pretty significant contributor in Tampa.

The ugly incident for which he was responsible Sunday doesn't undo all of the positive steps he's made, but did make it clear that not all of the demons have been exorcised from his game.

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