Pittsburgh Penguins forward Matt Cooke is at it again. This time he was given a five minute major penalty and ejected 4:36 into the third period of his team’s game against the New York Rangers. The Rangers won the game, but it was Cooke’s elbow on Rangers defenceman Ryan McDonagh that got most of the attention.

Cooke has been suspended three times over the last three seasons and was the catalyst, at least in part, to the NHL’s new but ineffective policy on blindside hits. He famously drilled Marc Savard of the Boston Bruins in March 2010 and received no suspension.

This time around, Cooke clearly stuck out his elbow to strike McDonagh near centre ice.

“I didn’t see him coming. I know it hurt, that’s for sure,” McDonagh said after the game. “I would hope it wasn’t his intent. It’s a tight game. I’m sure he’s not trying to get his team a five-minute penalty. He’d probably just trying to finish his check and just caught me wrong.”

But McDonagh has to be fairly oblivious to the type of player Cooke is to not recognize despicable intent in his actions.

One has to think that the Penguins organization would be fairly unhappy, to say the least, with their checking forward. It was team owner Mario Lemieux, after all, who lambasted the NHL after a brawl that tried to be a hockey game between the Penguins and the New York Islanders.

Then one has to think about possible league discipline. Cooke should, by all rights, get suspended for at least 10 games over this. Add his repeat offender status and his reputation to the mix and I think it’s a no-brainer.

Of course, there are those fools who continue to justify this sort of nonsense as “part of the game.”

But make no mistake about it: players like Matt Cooke have no business skating in the National Hockey League. He is a thuggish player and he deliberately attempts to injure and harm his opponents. His “brand of hockey” is something I want no part of and many, if the recent polls are any indication, feel the same.

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Matthew Hulsizer says that he’s willing to sweeten the pot for taxpayers in Glendale should be he able to buy the Phoenix Coyotes. The hopeful buyer spoke during the intermission of Sunday’s Coyotes/Blackhawks match-up and said that he’s willing to guarantee some million worth of the 6 million in bonds the city has been trying to sell.

This is a concession to the Goldwater Institutes’s objections, of course, and is a last-ditch effort of sorts to close the deal to keep the team where it is. Hulsizer will also cover any shortfalls in parking revenues, as these are found at the heart of the Goldwater lawsuit threat over the proposed lease agreement.

If the deal closes under its current circumstances, Goldwater says it’ll make good on its threats to sue the City of Glendale.

Hulsizer, for his part, told ESPN.com that he’s sure the deal is legal as is. In making these concessions to Goldwater, he’s hoping to grease the wheels to help things move forward.

The bonds have effectively been frozen because of the lawsuit threat and Goldwater Institute’s involvement, which is exactly what the conservative advocate group hoped for.

“We, on Friday, sent a letter to Goldwater to make it brain dead simple,” Hulsizer said. “We said ‘Look, we’re going to take the 0 million you get million back. million will guarantee it.’”

The “ million back” is presumably the amount the city would have to contribute to the team’s losses for the 2010-2011 season should the team not be sold. If a deal goes through, Glendale is not on the hook for the money.

It’s not known if this additional sweetener will be enough to get the Goldwater Institute to back off so that the bonds can be moved.

On top of it all, the Goldwater group is taking issue with the fact that Hulsizer will be paid about million to manage the Jobing.com Arena for a period of five and a half years. The Institute does not believe that Glendale is receiving fair value from Hulsizer for the portion of the deal. “Mr. Hulsizer is not providing roughly proportionate value for the payments he will receive from the city,” says the Goldwater website.

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Pittsburgh Penguins forward Matt Cooke has been suspended for 10 games, which amounts to the rest of the regular season, and the first round of the playoffs for his recent elbow to the head of New York Rangers defenceman Ryan McDonagh. Thankfully McDonagh wasn’t injured on the play.

“Mr. Cooke, a repeat offender, directly and unnecessarily targeted the head of an opponent who was in an unsuspecting and vulnerable position,” said NHL senior executive vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell. “This isn’t the first time this season that we have had to address dangerous behavior on the ice by Mr. Cooke, and his conduct requires an appropriately harsh response.”

Of course, it’s telling that the National Hockey League considers a suspension of a mere 10 games to be “appropriately harsh” for a repeat and known offender. This is the NHL trying to “throw the book” at Matt Cooke.

“The suspension is warranted because that’s exactly the kind of hit we’re trying to get out of the game,” said Penguins general manager Ray Shero. “Head shots have no place in hockey. We’ve told Matt in no uncertain terms that this kind of action on the ice is unacceptable and cannot happen. Head shots must be dealt with severely, and the Pittsburgh Penguins support the NHL in sending this very strong message.”

This is Cooke’s fifth suspension and his fourth for a hit to the head or a hit from behind. He was most recently suspended just last month for hitting Fedor Tyutin from behind. The league’s response to that incident was to toss Cooke for a whopping four games.

While I applaud the NHL for suspended Cooke in this fashion, more needs to be done. A suspension of 10 games plus the first round of the post-season simply isn’t long enough for a player who will reoffend, but, then again, the league doesn’t exactly have the greatest of histories when it comes to dealing with problem players.

Now it remains to seen if the Penguins will follow up with any subsequent punishment for the player they rewarded with an “A” on his jersey. Will Mario Lemieux ensure that his organization backs up the league’s suspension or will be continue to send a hypocritical message?

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Matt Cooke has apologized for his brutal elbow on New York Rangers defenceman Ryan McDonagh and realizes that he needs to make some changes to the way he plays the game. “I realize and understand, more so now than ever, that I need to change,” Cooke told Pittsburgh reporters. “That’s what I wanted my message to be.”

By being banned for the rest of the regular season and one round of the playoffs, Cooke was just the fourth player in league history to be suspended for the rest of the regular season. Chris Simon, Todd Bertuzzi and Marty McSorley also make up that prestigious contingent.

“I’m fortunate that Ryan McDonagh wasn’t hurt,” said Cooke. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s not my intention. I know that I can be better…I made a mistake, and I’m the one who’s accountable for that. And I take full responsibility for it.”

We’ve seen sports apologies before. Bertuzzi choked up when he was delivering his apology for the Steve Moore incident. Simon said that there was “absolutely no place in hockey for what I did” after he whacked Ryan Hollweg in the face with his stick in 2007. Of course, the ever-apologetic Simon also was very, very sorry after he stomped on Jarkko Ruutu’s leg in…2007.

As with most of these sorts of apologies, it seems that the players are only “sorry” after facing the reality of the punishment. Whether these types of players can or will actually change is always up in the air, but it’s probably not a safe bet to side with a sudden transformation of character in the case of Matt Cooke.

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It’s getting harder and hard to find honourable players in today’s National Hockey League, I fear. Whether it’s players delivering cheap shots to one another on the ice or, as is the case here, cheap shots to one another off the ice, hockey players are quickly leaving behind the relatively cushy reputation they seemed

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With all of the trouble the NHL has been having as of late over its violent image, it’s helpful to remember that there are still sensible players out there and there are still teams looking to get into a playoff spot. There are also teams well within their post-season zones and, with two and a half weeks or so to go in the regular season, it promises to be a typically frantic finish.

In the Western Conference, the top slots are pretty much decided. The Vancouver Canucks are on top of the mountain and have been for weeks, seemingly punishing me for getting rid of my cable package. Thankfully streaming video and bar televisions have saved the day, but perhaps there’s something cosmic about the team’s success this season.

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Joe Sakic, one of the game’s all-time greats, has joined the front office of the Colorado Avalanche. He’ll serve as the Executive Advisor/Alternate Governor of the club and will take to his post at the end of the current season. According to NHL.com, Sakic “will serve as an executive advisor regarding all facets of hockey

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The Los Angeles Kings have lost two of their top offensive threats in the span of just six days. First it was Monday’s injury to Justin Williams that rose up to test the team’s resolve. And Saturday night saw Anze Kopitar, the team’s leading scorer, go down with a broken right ankle. Kopitar left his

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The CBC’s Tim Wharnsby has a tremendous interview with Los Angeles Kings defenceman Willie Mitchell up here. Wharnsby notes that Mitchell’s views on concussions are more than worth listening to, as he’s a player who’s been down the road before and has some insight as to the issue. Last season, Mitchell’s season in Vancouver

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The Boston Bruins have clinched a playoff spot, adding their name to the list of teams that’ll compete for the Stanley Cup out of the Eastern Conference. The Bruins defeated the Philadelphia Flyers Sunday night to snag the spot. The Flyers still sit atop the Eastern Conference, of course, and are followed closely by the

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