that is an AMAZING article and i agree with everything he says 100%. he touches on 2 key things that i left out in my post cause it was getting lengthy. one of the things are helmets and the gear today. hell i remember grapes (don cherry) talking about this back in 1992 i think it was, talking about the hard plastic equipment and how its going to kill somebody. also the old games like that and the old players, once they started introducing helmets into the game so many of the players said respect was going to be lost and people were going to be injured...and yup, it happened.
the second thing is the instigator rule. this is a problem IMO and the opinion of almost all hockey fans i know of. what happened to, you had a great hit or you're trying to rough up your star so what happens? the rough riders drop the gloves, fight, get it over with. now you can't do that the same you could back in the day because of the instigator rule...so now you literally have players carrying that revenge mentality over to other games until they can 'get them back' for whatever happened, and either headshot, hit from behind, knee em or something that could potentially end his career instead of just droppin the gloves.
anyway...so specifically speak on the crosby incident...i think that guy should have been suspended for the same time crosby remained out (so rest of the year). incidental contact my BUTT. he knew what he was doing, and where im sure he didn't mean to actually take him out of the game, that was the result to his action