Davey Keon was a heck of a player at 5'9, Butch Goring, Curt Giles, Mike O'Connell, etc.
I watched a great deal of hockey in the 70's and 80's, 90's and the crap they used to get away with vs today's game is radically different.
Back then you could hook a player to slow them down, hold them for 3-4 seconds, clutch and grab anytime you like and there was no penalty.
You would have thought that these rules would have made it harder to score goals?
But the opposite happened, more goals were scored back then vs now.