Just 1:58 into the Bruins’ 3-0 loss to the Penguins Thursday night, the raucous sellout crowd at TD Garden burst into boos. At that point, the boos weren’t directed at the Bruins; they were for Matt Cooke, who had just come onto the ice for a faceoff. Shawn Thornton knew his dance partner had arrived.
“As soon as I went on the ice, I got booed,” Cooke said with a laugh after the game. “I think that was Shawn’s notice that I was on the ice from the fans. He came over and challenged me and I obliged.”
Thornton reluctantly credited Cooke, who is notorious for not accepting an invitation to drop the gloves and also has a history of turtling in fights. But Thornton also believed that the veteran leaders on the Penguins had a lot to do with Cooke fighting right away.
“I’m still not happy with the way he plays some games. But I guess, I was surprised a little bit,” Thornton said when asked if he expected Cooke to engage in a fight. “You’d have to ask [the Penguins], but I think some of their older guys may have helped in that. I think their older guys were aware that if he stepped up and did that, that was the end of it.
“Obviously, you can’t do that to a player,” Thornton added. “If someone did that to Sid [Crosby], it would be the same thing. So, it’s kind of an unwritten rule amongst hockey players, and I think they have some tough guys in their lineup that would step up and do the same thing.”
And that’s exactly why, despite teammates offering to do the job and take care of Cooke, Thornton got it done.
“I take pride in sticking up for my teammates at all times and as far as that goes, there are other guys in here that were more than willing and were actually, afterwards, telling me that they would have been happy to step up too,” Thornton said. “But I take full responsibility. I don’t expect anyone else to.”
Cooke, who was actually on the ice with Vancouver for the Todd Bertuzzi “revenge” hit on Steve Moore in 2004, said he fought on Thursday because he didn’t want a similar result (Moore broke his neck and lawsuits ensued). Cooke also claimed he didn’t want to hurt Marc Savard with the hit back on March
7 that still has Savard suffering from nausea and confined to his condo for now.
“I mean, for me, I didn’t intend on hurting Marc Savard at all,” Cooke said. “I am sorry that he is hurt. I have been a part of a game like this before in Vancouver. I wanted to do my part to make sure something like that didn’t happen again.”
