i’m tired and i thought his was better handled by some japers’ rink commenters who i respect, so i’ll quote them and leave it at that:

JP:

I don’t think that players are absolved from all responsibility to defend themselves, but in this case, I think blaming the victim is a particularly weak argument, based on the event itself.

[Separate comment]

Right. An example of a guy "not protecting himself" is the dude who sees and turns his back to the oncoming checker at the last second. This was not that.

K_C:

I think there are cases where a player turns into the hit or doesn’t do enough to protect himself and the hitter isn’t completely at fault. But in this case, while Tyutin did have his back to Cooke his numbers were clearly showing the whole way. Just because you don’t like that a player is showing his back doesn’t mean you have the right to drill him in the numbers when you have ample opportunity to stop.

It also doesn’t matter that Tyutin saw Cooke. He was playing the puck, and the only way to play the puck given the position he was in was to turn his back on Cooke, which again doesn’t give Cooke the right to send him head first into the boards. If Tyutin were a righty he’d bare a lot more blame as he would have been able to play the puck without turning his back. Is Tyutin supposed to just not play the puck so that Cooke has an opportunity to hit him legally and take the puck?

Throw in the fact that Cooke jumped into Tyutin’s back, and there is just no defense for this play. Too bad the NHL will just let him off with a slap on the wrist because Tyutin is okay.

F&B:

Whether he saw him is almost irrelevant. Tyutin was never in a legally checkable position. If he was legally checkable, then turned his back to Cooke, then it would matter that he saw him. But you don’t always just expect people to blatantly break the rules so I don’t see what the point is. Even if Tyutin saw him, his numbers were facing Cooke the whole time, end of story. You don’t get to destroy guys and say "he should have been in a legally checkable position."

Knee high to a Duck:

If Tyutin had ever been anything but back-to-Cooke, then there’d be an argument for that. If he’d turned at the last second, there’d be an argument. At no point in Cooke’s approach was Tyutin in a spot where Cooke could have hit him without serious risk of injury.

It’s not his responsibility to make himself checkable when he’s going back for the puck.

Gould Old Days:

I hadn’t seen the play. Wow, that is fucking horrible. That same event happens in every game. And the forward finishes his check by coming in two feet to the left, so that he can give a nice controlled little shove. No excuse for that kind of hit.

I love this theory that Tyutin is in some way to blame because Cooke had so much damned time to plan his hit — like the fact that the play was developing for a long time somehow makes what Cooke did less bad, not worse.

and of course ThePensBlog…the same post where you found this pic:

You can’t hit a guy from behind. No way, no how. It does not matter if he saw him coming.

if the guy had been shoulder to the boards and then turned last second, then fine, it was his fault. as stands, he bears exactly 0% of the blame for cooke’s dangerous and potentially injurious hit.

one foot already in the air, the other foot ready for lift-off on his upward hop.

Usually the “leaving his feet” discussion is centered around whether the player leaves his feet before or after contact is made. In this case, it was clearly after. Not defending the hit, just defending the truth.

If you’d bother to look “over there”, you’d see plenty of fans speaking out against what Cooke did and has done.