“I think he had his finger in my mouth. I don’t think I bit him. He put his hand up, he put it in the other guy’s face, and a finger got in my mouth. That’s what happened."

Alex Burrows

Punk.

Make some room, Matt Cooke. There's a new villain in Bruins Nation.

Look, biting Patrice Bergeron's finger isn't in the same galaxy as Cooke's disgraceful blind-side elbow to Marc Savard (and let's not forget how much a healthy Savard would add to this pathetic power-play), but it is an act of cowardice and immaturity that better be answered with at least a Game 2 suspension by the NHL.

(If anything, this is going to lead to about three million talking heads recalling the time Danny Ainge bit Tree Rollins. Not sure when or how this story got crossed over the years -- I imagine it has something to with the fact that Ainge was one of the most hated players in the NBA in the 1980s and Tree Rollins was just some guy that Larry Bird would guard to stay away from Dominique Wilkins -- but Tree Rollins bit Danny Ainge. That happened. Can we get that right for once?)

There are those who get off on the fighting in the NHL, those who are morally opposed to it and then there are the rest of us, who can take it or leave it but understand that it's part of the game and isn't going anywhere. And when we see Bergeron and Burrows exchanging a couple of gloved punches we're OK with it in theory. It happens all the time. There's a code there.

(I wrote "in theory" because I sure don't like the idea of Bergeron -- who we already forget missed two games of the Tampa Bay series with a concussion, seems like 10 years ago -- out there with his helmet off in an altercation with a guy who was investigated by Quebec police for whacking a goaltender in the face during a 2009 summer league game. Bergeron is simply too valuable a player and is risking too much personally to get caught up with a moron like Burrows. I get the heat of the moment stuff, but sometimes you have to walk away. And, yes, that is one to grow on.)

But biting? Really? I mean, when you look at it, does it get lower in sports than biting another person? I give it the slight edge over spitting, if only because it has the combination of being both bush league and dangerous. There are moments that forever brand a player as a punk -- think Andrew Bynum at the end of the Lakers-Mavs series just a couple of weeks ago -- and we saw it on Wednesday night. An absolutely gutless moment, made worse by the fact that he A) tried to commit the crime while the linesman wasn't looking (not realizing, I guess, that the game was being captured in living color by this swell new invention called television) and B) did it to Bergeron, a guy with a serious concussion history (not that getting bit in the finger leads to a concussion, but rabbit punches to head easily could) and a Lady Byng-type of reputation.

Time for the NHL, minus Colin Campbell,  to step up and do the right thing. Armed with precedent -- Jarkko Ruutu was slapped with a two-game ban for his chomper action on Andrew Peters in 2009 -- the league has to force Burrows to sit out at for least Saturday's Game 2. 

There is no way for the NHL to spin this in any other direction, it was a clear and flagrant act. And this isn't January and I understand it is a brutal spot to lose a first-line forward, but that's life when you decide to get into business with a guy like Burrows.

And for Burrows, if the NHL feels the need to give him an explanation for the suspension, I think this would work:

Act like a punk, you pay the price.