It was ‘dirty’ without a doubt, but not clearly illegal given the current rules.

Cooke should have avoided suspension, but the rules should (and look like they will) be amended to make this hit illegal in the future.

If the rules were more clear, I’d have no trouble seeing Cooke get a suspension.

Another good reason to kill all the lawyeres.

If Cooke makes his hit before Richards does, then he gets suspended. I think that’s not in doubt, I think Campbell all but says as much in his comment about suspending Cooke the next year.

But therein lies the problem. Richards made his hit first and, since he’s a star, he’s immune to suspensions (you’d think it was a rule in the book the way it gets applied).

With this decision Campbell had painted himself in a corner. If he suspends Cooke, then he has to answer questions regarding Richards’ immunity and how there’s a different rulebook for different players. Despite how obvious this seems to most observers, the league likes to maintain the fiction that it applies its rules to all players equally. To not suspend Cooke while pleading consistency results in one ridiculous decision following another, but at least he doesn’t expose the league’s blatant two-tiered “discipline” for all to see. (Although it leads to some pretty silly messages about head hits. The most recent suspension, I believe, was 4 games to Lapierre — compare his hit to Cooke’s and see which one seems most malicious.)

Of course, maybe Campbell was trying to send a message to the league by taking the rulebook to the absurd extreme, a way of saying “I need a rule about this, right now, or this is what happens”. But I think that’s giving him too much credit.