Reckless justice

"I don't think it does the game any good to have Alex suspended."

-Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau

He's the two-time reigning Hart Trophy winner and captain of his club. He's the most exciting player in the game, and arguably the best hockey player in the NHL. Is Alexander Ovechkin earning his name another title - a dirty player?

For the third time this season he was given a misconduct, ejected, and assessed a major penalty for a hit on an opponent. He's straddling the fine line between playing hard and being reckless.

• On November 25 he ran Buffalo's Patrick Kaleta into the boards, leaving him bloodied as Ovechkin was assessed a five minute boarding major and a a game misconduct. Certainly a penalty, perhaps a major, debatably a game misconduct.

• Just two games later against Carolina on December 2, Ovechkin initiated a dangerous knee-on-knee hit to Tim Gleason, with Ovechkin himself agonizingly limping off the ice. He was rightly given a kneeing major and a tossed with a misconduct. A two-game suspension followed.

• Most recently, March 14 in Chicago, Ovechkin boarded Brian Campbell into the end boards. Another major-misconduct-ejection, and Campbell looks to be sidelined two months with a broken collarbone. This is a significant blow to the Blackhawks, who, like Ovechkin's Capitals, have spent the season atop the standings. Ovechkin was again suspended two games for the hit.

• Going back to last year's playoff series against the eventual Cup champion Penguins, Ovechkin ended comrade Sergei Gonchar's playoffs via a careless check. Ovechkin lunged at Gonchar in an attempt for the big hit; Gonchar saw this and tried getting out of the way, causing the hit to be knee-on-knee. Neither an ejection nor a suspension came from the hit, but it was nonetheless reckless.

• Even a few years ago, back when the Capitals were having a uniform crisis early in the Ovechkin era, he was given five minutes and sent to the showers for boarding Buffalo's Daniel Briere. That hit was eerily similar to the infamous Claude Lemieux-Kris Draper hit that sparked the Avs-Wings rivalry of the late 1990s.

I've heard the argument that Ovechkin should not have been suspended because the NHL recently decided not to discipline Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke for a nasty hit to the head of Marc Savard. This was because Mike Richards had not been suspended for his similar hit on David Booth earlier in the season. In these cases, the in-game penalties were allegedly sufficient. While I completely disagree with the NHL's decision on Cooke (and believe the Richards inactivity was a dangerous precedent), the league must look at each incident individually.

Following his star player's suspension, Washington coach Bruce Boudreau offered the opening quote. He would never admit to this, but with his quote he suggests Ovechkin is bigger than the game. He suggests that it will hurt the game to have one of the league's best, most exciting, and most popular players (on one of the league's best, most exciting teams) suspended for two games. Maybe he's right: the NHL doesn't need anyone suspended, and certainly not an ambassador of the game like Ovechkin. Boudreau goes so far as to try and blame Campbell for being injured on the hit:

"Brian Campbell is one of the best skaters in the National Hockey League. If he thought danger was coming, and he saw Alex right behind him, he would have moved. I think he was trying to spin away and the spin didn't work, and he got caught in the ice and he fell into the boards."

Since Boudreau clearly is about as narrow-minded as the elected politicians working across town from him, we'll let the league continue to determine disciplinary actions. I'm sure the Blackhawks believe it should have been a longer suspension, since they are now the ones who will go to the playoffs without one of their top defensemen.

No, Alexander Ovechkin is not a dirty player. He did not, in any of his questionable hits, intend to injure his opponent. But he is now a repeat offender and must be punished accordingly. (Matt Cooke is a repeat offender and a dirty player.) Ovechkin is deservedly praised for his hustle and emotion, and how he is not afraid to hit and finish his checks - rare among the league's finesse players. But he needs to play with more discretion and less irresponsibility, and stop short of crossing the border to recklessness.