Carkner's Decision to Fight Boogaard His First of Two Bloody Mistakes on the Night

The gesture Ottawa Senators defenseman Matt Carkner made to the New York Rangers bench on Thursday goes way beyond obscene. It borders on the dangerous.

There's no way to know for sure if malice was intended, because, even if the league were to look into the incident and ask the Rangers on the bench, it would all turn into a he-said, she-said fighting match, impressively enough without Sean Avery having to take on his usual role of the she. Due to the limited amount of camera angles available, no one can really tell for sure exactly what Carkner was doing, and he may very well be so stupid that he wasn't actually flicking blood at the Rangers, but experiencing a stoner's moment if there ever was one and just looking at the red stuff on his head and hands and wondering where it came from. Maybe Derek Boogaard beat in his head a little too well.

Whatever he was thinking (and the term "thinking" is used loosely), this is one of those rare instances where the league has to suspend based on the apparent intent and not the action itself. A player can stick out his knee 100 times during a game until the cows come home, but until he connects with the leg of an opponent all he is guilty of is looking weird and doing an even weirder aerobics routine minus the spandex. Here, there is an inherent danger as well as an extremely sensitive issue at play.

Of course, we don't know if Carkner is actually STD-ridden or just how he spends his nights on the road. For all we know, he may very well be in an uber-committed relationship with his wife and stay faithful to her. It's definitely no one's place to imply that he might be carrying something without the right amount of proof. However, by that same token, he shouldn't be making it anybody's business but his own.

The bottom line is if New York Islander James Wisniewski got two games for playfully letting the entire world in on what everyone already knows about Avery with his obsene gesture two months ago, than Carkner deserves at least that much for at the very least not being nearly as funny with his. Wisniewski's may have been classless, but Carkner's was downright filthy.