THN Archive: Penguins' Pest Among Top Free Agents

To think at one point in NHL history, one of the top free agents was former Pittsburgh Penguins pest Matt Cooke.

The Penguins forward had won a Stanley Cup with the Penguins in 2009 and was due for a nice raise before the 2010-2011 season.

In this piece from the free agent frenzy, The Hockey News and Cooke discuss the kind of role he plays and it's that hard-hitting game that has kept him around.

Vol. 63, Issue 25: The Dirty Dozen

In 11 NHL seasons, Matt Cooke has earned more than $9 million. That’s a lot to you and me. To be sure, it will be enough for his grandkids to brag to people that they come from “old Matt Cooke money.”

It’s not exactly minimum wage by NHL standards, but consider that five players in the league – including two on Cooke’s own team – pulled down at least Nine Large just this season. So you can understand why Cooke gets a smile on the gap-toothed face that 29/30ths of the league would like to punch in when he considers what might lie ahead. He’s an unrestricted free agent this summer and coming off a season where he not only proved to be a pretty valuable contributor, but also cemented his relationship as the biggest @#^%!* to play against in the league.

Cooke wears the black hat well, at least as well as Chris Neil of the Ottawa Senators does. The only difference is Neil signed a four-year deal last summer worth $2 million a season, while Cooke earned just $1.2 million. Both players will be 31 when the free agency floodgates open July 1. Cooke has averaged 28 points per season the past three years, nearly double what Neil has scored. Cooke has averaged 214 hits per season, Neil 204. Neil has almost twice as many penalty minutes (520) and four times as many fights (36) as Cooke in that time span.

In Cooke, you have a player who scores more, fights less and hits more and harder – just ask Marc Savard – than a player who earned $2 million on a long-term deal last season. So does that mean Cooke could conceivably double his salary on a three-year deal? You bet it does, particularly since his agent, Pat Morris, is rapidly becoming the Scott Boras of hockey (see Stajan, Matt).

“I’ve said it many times, I’m out there to be a physical player,” Cooke said. “That’s what has kept me in the league for 12 years and the moment that goes away, I don’t have a position anymore.

“A lot of people don’t understand that, they don’t realize that. There can only be so many finesse guys out there and trust me, I’d love to be in that role, but that’s not the way it is.”

But there is value in being despised by everyone but your teammates. That value is enhanced when you win a Cup, tie a career high of 15 goals and make skill players such as Jordan Staal more difficult to face. And as dastardly as the hit on Savard was, it was perfectly within the rules of the game until the NHL finally decided to do something about predatorial blind-side shots.

“People attacked me personally after that,” Cooke said.

The interest in Cooke will be intense this summer if he hits the market. And that’s what makes Cooke one of the 12 most intriguing potential free agents of the year. Will the Pittsburgh Penguins be able to keep him or has Cooke pulled a Rob Scuderi and played his way out of Pittsburgh?

All it takes is one team to decide it needs what Matt Cooke brings and is willing to pay for it. And if that’s a team other than the Penguins, Pittsburgh will learn to hate him, too.

This year’s crop of unrestricted and restricted free agents isn’t as deep as it has been in years past, but the players and the effect they’ll have on the league are still intriguing.