30 years ago there was Ulf Samuelsson, among others, too. Guys like Ulf and Cooke are a special breed who can get his nose broken all of the time and will still go out and do whatever it did that ended up with his nose broken. It should be noted, though, that when the NHL started coming down hard on Cooke with suspensions his game cleaned up a bit, and took a bit of a dive.
I don't think having a guy who will drop the gloves with regularity is a be-all, end-all deterrence. I don't think it hurts, though, either. I think it also helps give their own teams a bit of...backbone, I guess? I brought it up before, but guys who fight normally also aren't afraid of playing a more physical brand of hockey. And I think that is the best deterrence to getting ran. Hit them first and initiate the contact.
I also want to continue to point out that I don't think anyone is calling for a five minute a night enforcer who does nothing but drop the gloves. We can find a fourth line forward who can handle ~10 minutes of ES hockey and not be an embarrassment, though. We can probably find guys who can play in the middle6 without paying them upwards for four million a year and for nearly a decade.
Also, a bit more size and physical play up and down the lineup would go a long way towards making Tatar and Nyquist less of a bad thing to have. If Sheahan and Jurco actually played to their size, this team would have been so much better, imo.